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So just gonna go through their list of bullet points about how this is Different™ (tl;dr: not very): * Privacy "Delivers personalization without needing to va

So just gonna go through their list of bullet points about how this is Different™ (tl;dr: not very): * Privacy "Delivers personalization without needing to vacuum up all of your personal data or sharing it with others." But... > Your Firefox browser compares your browsing history with the list of related websites to sort and filter through each day’s stories and recommend the ones that are most likely to interest you... The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox. When Recommendations from Pocket are displayed on your new tab, we collect information about how many times they appear and whether or not you interact with them [1] So that's the exact same model the Brave browser was (is still?) pushing: FF will use your browser history to decide which ads (and "personalized stories") to show you; but will do it locally rather than serverside. This is good if your only concern was the collected private data leaking to third parties; it is less good if your concern is with the use of that private data in the first place. * Quality. "Rewards valuable content, worthy of your time. Not driven by clicks." I see literally nothing that supports this statement. They're selling native advertising slots in a push-model content stream, and tracking clicks on those ads just like the rest of the industry. The incentive is towards the highest bidder whose ads won't actively repel too much of the userbase too quickly. * Control. "If you see a story you’re not a fan of, you can hide it. Or you can disable sponsored content altogether." No snark on this one; this is good. The entire feature can be disabled, or the advertising slots can be disabled within the feature; the controls for this are clear and unobfuscated. * Transparency. "Sponsored stories will be clearly marked." Because that's the law, pardner * Openness. "As an open organization, all code in Firefox is open source" Shades of Brave, again, but fair enough. [1]https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-recommendations https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco...

Dylan16807 9y ago
> This is good if your only concern was the collected private data leaking to third parties; it is less good if your concern is with the use of that private data in the first place. Can you go into more detail on this? Firefox uses private data locally every time you start typing in the address bar. What leads someone to object to this particular use (specifically for privacy reasons), but to leaving history on in the first place?
- funkymike 9y ago
  Imagine if your browser history was local but every time you use the history feature to revisit a page that URL was sent to Mozilla. How private is that really? The Pocket code tells Mozilla what ads are being shown and which are clicked on. Since they know that the criteria for ad X is that phrase Y or Z is in the history, then they are gathering data on the type of content you are looking at on the web. This is only one step removed from the actual URLs.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > The Pocket code tells Mozilla what ads are being shown Really? It definitely shouldn't do that. > and which are clicked on That's pretty hard to avoid, though. How much of a problem it is depends on how precise the targeting is. But since you're showing interest by clicking the ad, there's not necessarily much of a privacy issue.
- outsidetheparty 9y ago
  With the Pocket / Brave model, the user's private information still winds up in the advertisers' hands -- in the form of which ads the engine recommends be shown to the user. The advertisers may not be able to directly see which specific sites or pages the user has in their history, but they still get the aggregate information which is what they were after in the first place. The one advantage to the local parsing compared to serverside is that there isn't a cloud full of everybody's browser history ready to be hacked or resold. That's a real benefit, I don't want to undersell that, but it's not the entirety of the story. As for your example: Firefox using your browser history to autocomplete urls as you type in the address bar is innocuous because that information never goes anywhere but to that user; it's solely for the user's benefit. Firefox using that same browser history to tell advertisers which subjects the user might be interested in is not innocuous; it's broadcasting information to third parties that the user might prefer be kept private. The user's data is no longer being used for the user's benefit, but for the advertiser's.

Dylan16807 9y ago

> This is good if your only concern was the collected private data leaking to third parties; it is less good if your concern is with the use of that private data in the first place. Can you go into more detail on this? Firefox uses private data locally every time you start typing in the address bar. What leads someone to object to this particular use (specifically for privacy reasons), but to leaving history on in the first place?

funkymike 9y ago
Imagine if your browser history was local but every time you use the history feature to revisit a page that URL was sent to Mozilla. How private is that really? The Pocket code tells Mozilla what ads are being shown and which are clicked on. Since they know that the criteria for ad X is that phrase Y or Z is in the history, then they are gathering data on the type of content you are looking at on the web. This is only one step removed from the actual URLs.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > The Pocket code tells Mozilla what ads are being shown Really? It definitely shouldn't do that. > and which are clicked on That's pretty hard to avoid, though. How much of a problem it is depends on how precise the targeting is. But since you're showing interest by clicking the ad, there's not necessarily much of a privacy issue.
outsidetheparty 9y ago
With the Pocket / Brave model, the user's private information still winds up in the advertisers' hands -- in the form of which ads the engine recommends be shown to the user. The advertisers may not be able to directly see which specific sites or pages the user has in their history, but they still get the aggregate information which is what they were after in the first place. The one advantage to the local parsing compared to serverside is that there isn't a cloud full of everybody's browser history ready to be hacked or resold. That's a real benefit, I don't want to undersell that, but it's not the entirety of the story. As for your example: Firefox using your browser history to autocomplete urls as you type in the address bar is innocuous because that information never goes anywhere but to that user; it's solely for the user's benefit. Firefox using that same browser history to tell advertisers which subjects the user might be interested in is not innocuous; it's broadcasting information to third parties that the user might prefer be kept private. The user's data is no longer being used for the user's benefit, but for the advertiser's.