this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.
Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.
If privacy preserving ad features become good enough, we won't have as much privacy inversive ad tracking and a better internet overall. For the long game, this might not be such a bad thing as ads won't go away anytime soon.
Typical. You post a reasonable response and get a bunch of ad-pilled shit takes:
"But will you eat shit if I put a little chocolate on it?"
"If you don't eat shit, you don't deserve to ~~interact with the internet~~ eat."
"Maybe if you pay them a little money, they'll stop trying to serve you shit?"
Advertisers contribute nothing of value to our society and contribute little of value to even the companies they serve. Let them burn. Every action they take to "serve" me ads will be met with an equal counteraction.
We deserve to live a life without being constantly bombarded with messages telling us to buy, buy, buy! This significantly decreases our quality of life and is endemic within our entire society. What the hell are all of you who defend advertisers thinking?
Give them an inch and they will take a mile. It definitely won't be the first time.
If people aren't ready to see an ad or pay to support something. Then maybe they don't deserve that thing.
Fine.
But today they want us to pay and collect everything about us.
I highly recommend "Taking Control of Your Personal Data" by prof. Jennifer Golbeck, published by The Teaching Company, ISBN:978-1629978390, likely available at your local library as a DVD or streaming.
Exactly. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for content (I'm paying a bit for Nebula, for example), and my hope is that transitioning advertising to a privacy-friendly system run by clients will encourage more options to pay for content in lieu of ads.
I'd pay a few dollars a month to avoid ads on most sites, and I'm guessing that's about what advertisers are making from me, but instead the options are:
So the more we move toward privacy-respecting ads, the more likely we are to see more options than the above. At least that's my take.
exactly. If the price was as much as ads pay it would cost users fractions of pennies per view. They just charge paid users so much more then that for the same thing. Since google ads is one of the biggest ads supplier we could technically have a wallet that substracts the ad value to not see it directly with google.
I just sent feedback to google from the "my ad center" page describing the wallet idea to pay the ad price instead of watching the ad. Last time i sent youtube feedback they didn't come back to me but they did apply the change i was asking for. So we never know.
Cool, but I doubt Google honestly cares much. If they do it, it'll be something much higher than the actual amount that ad is worth as a way to nudge users to pay for some kind of subscription.
Yea. That's also what i think would happen if anything.
I mean, go ahead, rethink our digital economics. While we wait for that, what do we do in the meantime?
(And of note: Mozilla itself has launched several initiatives there as well (example), but none have panned out so far.)
Yeah it couldn’t happen overnight. I feel like ad blocking is a better solution to invest in up until that point however. We don’t need to enable advertisers.
We have adblockers. Websites keep finding ways to track us still, and/or to block people who are using them :/
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Mozilla doesn't monetise this; the whole point is to change the ecosystem to enable more privacy. It's not a moneygrab.
deleted by creator
Tell me, what data about you does anyone get? And why is there no benefit to legitimate advertisers who will be able to know which of their ads have resulted in sales, even if they don't know anything about you specifically?
The draw for privacy-invasive ones indeed needs a couple of extra steps, which requires being able to see the long-term vision: having a privacy-friendly alternative available enables both legislators to enact stricter legislation, as well as decrease the incentive to keep engaging in the cat-and-mouse game with browsers, trying to find new way to violate people's privacy.
deleted by creator
Sorry, I meant: what data does anyone get through this new capability? Mozilla could always get your IP address and other connection data when e.g. Firefox checks for updates, or add-ons, or safebrowsing lists, etc. Could you name one or two things that are part of "all the advertisement telemetry" that is new?
Better in the sense that they provide the same information with privacy guarantees that are just as good?
Also, why do you need a guaranteed privacy increase? Why would we want to miss "opportunity to get us a future with improved privacy for everyone"?
deleted by creator
I'll also argue that no new data is being collected for vertical tabs, but I don't see why that should mean that vertical tabs should be rolled back.
Hopefully in this universe, a couple of years down the road, when legislators have become confident that they can legislate away the most invasive practices without putting lots of potential voters out of a job.
deleted by creator
I'm saying it's not collecting new personal data. It will be helping advertisers know how many of the clicks on a particular button were preceded by seeing a particular ad, but they won't know a single thing about the people that did that.
deleted by creator
Of course whoever make my browser had the capability to siphon it all off. But nothing in the PPA news has given me reason to believe that is happening: nobody has pointed out the source code that does it, or intercepted network requests in which they see it happening, or even just been able to name a single piece of personal data that is apparently being sold to advertising companies. You have not done so either.
I also think that if Mozilla was trying to be sneaky, they could have done a better job than literally mentioning it in the release notes.
deleted by creator
The main difference between Mozilla and Google is that Google is actually sucking up your data. For example, I can specifically mention that they've got stored where you log in often, what age they think you are, what gender, how rich you likely are, etc. Even if they're completely honest about it, that's not good. You can't make such a list about Mozilla, and Mozilla doesn't actively try to hide what they are doing (non-invasive measurement of ad performance).
Of course, the average user doesn't read the release notes. (I'd go even further: the average user doesn't read anything.) But the only reason you know about PPA, is because Mozilla explicitly called it out in the release notes, after which some bloggers decided to make a stink.
You've accused Mozilla of two separate things:
deleted by creator
No; I have claimed that it doesn't collect personal data. You're disputing that claim, but if you can't mention a single piece of data, then I'm not inclined to believe you. (Fakespot and Anonym are completely unrelated to PPA. I'm not necessarily interested in branching out to discussing those as well, though I expect that we're more aligned on them anyway.)
No, I'm claiming that Google's actions in the past have been worse than Mozilla's, and I have named concrete actions that Google has done that Mozilla has not.
But go on, keep on telling people to avoid Mozilla, and see if that'll bring us a better world.
deleted by creator
Again, bringing Fakespot and Anonym is just moving the goalposts. You were complaining about PPA, and have failed to mention concrete data points that shares about you. It's really not interesting to move on to another subject only to have the goalposts moved again.
deleted by creator
OK, fair enough, that was me allowing myself getting sidetracked. You still haven't answered the earlier question about what extra data PPA provides anyone, though. I'll leave it at that unless you can name one concrete piece of data.
deleted by creator
Personally, I don't have a problem with ads. And if those ads can support further development on an open source product I get to use for free then that's even better. What I have problem with is privacy intrusive targeted ads. Even before the internet, newspaper, radio had ads. They sure were annoying, but not as bad of a situation as it is now.