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The lack of cross-site tracking makes the ads far less targeted, losing a good bit of the amount advertisers will pay for ads. Additionally, advertisers don't t

The lack of cross-site tracking makes the ads far less targeted, losing a good bit of the amount advertisers will pay for ads. Additionally, advertisers don't trust the logs of the site publishing the ads in the way they trust Google, further reducing the ad price. And adblockers already support hiding specific elements of the page, even if they don't involve making an HTTP request to a designated advertising domain. So people would stop using hosts files and start using proper browser extensions or HTTP proxies, and the ads would still be blocked (this could fix the iOS 9 content blocker problem, but not for long).

ubernostrum 11y ago
Ironically, Mozilla solved this in a privacy-respecting way, and the internet went apeshit over it and demanded its removal from the browser. That whole "sponsored tiles" thing was actually incredibly thoughtfully designed: * Third parties provide tiles to Mozilla, who gets to vet them, etc. * Tiles get put into bundles hosted by Mozilla and carrying metadata which can be used to target. * The browser periodically downloads bundles of tiles and client-side, the browser decides based on browsing history and bundle metadata which tiles to display. Nowhere in this process did advertisers or even Mozilla get to know the browsing history of the end user. Nowhere in this process did advertisers or Mozilla get to know which sites in the browser history caused the decision to display a particular tile. All storage of history and decision-making on what to show was done client-side-only. The more I think about it, the more I think something like that needs to be discussed as a real alternative to how things are done now.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Interesting, and thanks for posting that here. This points to a deeper problem, one not trivially solved via technology, of credibility. There've been several instances of technical solutions to problems for which I had a great deal of initial skepticism, some warranted, some less so. I was aware of both wireless networking and VOIP in the late 1990s, though neither broke through to mainstream for some years. Trust in the integrity of the underlying protocols being a chief concern (not entirely unwarranted). Challenge-response email anti-spam systems have a similar problem -- your CR system may be entirely legit, but other peoples' might well be spam-harvesting engines or otherwise bogus. Sponsored tiles requires a great deal of buy-in before it can gain mainstream acceptance. If there's a good description of the whole thing, might make for a good HN submission.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  The issue, of course, is that it was still downloading advertisements. Advertising isn't content, and Mozilla got screamed at because a. the way it was released was in a press release disguised as a blog post that attempted to sell why it was good for the Mozilla user (i.e. it wasn't useful for the Mozilla user), and b. advertising is advertising, nobody wants it unless they are getting paid to view the ads. It's irrelevant if the ads were selected in the browser or not. You'd still have to download a lot of advertising that was irrelevant. And advertisers wouldn't have been happy with just client side choosing, it would have evolved into Firefox tracking you. It was a very bad idea, and remains a very bad idea. I sure hope Mozilla never tries it again.

ubernostrum 11y ago

Ironically, Mozilla solved this in a privacy-respecting way, and the internet went apeshit over it and demanded its removal from the browser. That whole "sponsored tiles" thing was actually incredibly thoughtfully designed: * Third parties provide tiles to Mozilla, who gets to vet them, etc. * Tiles get put into bundles hosted by Mozilla and carrying metadata which can be used to target. * The browser periodically downloads bundles of tiles and client-side, the browser decides based on browsing history and bundle metadata which tiles to display. Nowhere in this process did advertisers or even Mozilla get to know the browsing history of the end user. Nowhere in this process did advertisers or Mozilla get to know which sites in the browser history caused the decision to display a particular tile. All storage of history and decision-making on what to show was done client-side-only. The more I think about it, the more I think something like that needs to be discussed as a real alternative to how things are done now.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Interesting, and thanks for posting that here. This points to a deeper problem, one not trivially solved via technology, of credibility. There've been several instances of technical solutions to problems for which I had a great deal of initial skepticism, some warranted, some less so. I was aware of both wireless networking and VOIP in the late 1990s, though neither broke through to mainstream for some years. Trust in the integrity of the underlying protocols being a chief concern (not entirely unwarranted). Challenge-response email anti-spam systems have a similar problem -- your CR system may be entirely legit, but other peoples' might well be spam-harvesting engines or otherwise bogus. Sponsored tiles requires a great deal of buy-in before it can gain mainstream acceptance. If there's a good description of the whole thing, might make for a good HN submission.
chris_wot 11y ago
The issue, of course, is that it was still downloading advertisements. Advertising isn't content, and Mozilla got screamed at because a. the way it was released was in a press release disguised as a blog post that attempted to sell why it was good for the Mozilla user (i.e. it wasn't useful for the Mozilla user), and b. advertising is advertising, nobody wants it unless they are getting paid to view the ads. It's irrelevant if the ads were selected in the browser or not. You'd still have to download a lot of advertising that was irrelevant. And advertisers wouldn't have been happy with just client side choosing, it would have evolved into Firefox tracking you. It was a very bad idea, and remains a very bad idea. I sure hope Mozilla never tries it again.