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What is your criticism here exactly, given that you find this "ironic"? You call for transparency - that's exactly what the published tool provides. I think th

by gcp 15y ago

What is your criticism here exactly, given that you find this "ironic"? You call for transparency - that's exactly what the published tool provides. I think the understanding is that advertising is required for many free things on the net (including Firefox), but that unless advertising behaves in a reasonable manner, and the user has some control and understanding over it, it'll be self-defeating as everybody will go start running Adblock, Ghostery, etc. Do Not Track works due to exactly the same economics. I think there was a public statement that if Do Not Track were enabled by default - no-one would respect it. There is no conflict of interest here. You either self-police or you're shut down.

magicalist 15y ago
My criticism is exactly what I wrote. If that "you're the product" statement is always true, then we are necessarily Mozilla's product that they sell to Google. If it's not always true or is in no way an informative reductive statement (in that all economic gradients could be "products" in a trivial sense), then it should be dropped from the page because it serves as nothing more than a (disingenuous) marketing slogan. The purpose of this tool is ostensibly activism from transparency, not activism from the rabble-roused. It's a similar argument for the name "collusion". Good marketing, yes, and maybe that's important to get attention and the name isn't that negative. At the same time, it paints everyone with the same brush when, again, the ostensible goal is not to shut down all ad networks on the internet, or the sites that are funded by them, but to give transparency into the links between the ad networks and the sites we visit, in order to hopefully force responsible behavior and give plain choices to end users. And that's why I pointed to the EFF's statements in that article. They acknowledge the tensions inherent in the internet we've built and inherited, and postulate that it's possible to force everyone to be better actors without having to burn the house down. Moreover that meaning is exactly what they say, without resorting too much to rhetoric.

by gcp 15y ago

magicalist 15y ago

My criticism is exactly what I wrote. If that "you're the product" statement is always true, then we are necessarily Mozilla's product that they sell to Google. If it's not always true or is in no way an informative reductive statement (in that all economic gradients could be "products" in a trivial sense), then it should be dropped from the page because it serves as nothing more than a (disingenuous) marketing slogan. The purpose of this tool is ostensibly activism from transparency, not activism from the rabble-roused. It's a similar argument for the name "collusion". Good marketing, yes, and maybe that's important to get attention and the name isn't that negative. At the same time, it paints everyone with the same brush when, again, the ostensible goal is not to shut down all ad networks on the internet, or the sites that are funded by them, but to give transparency into the links between the ad networks and the sites we visit, in order to hopefully force responsible behavior and give plain choices to end users. And that's why I pointed to the EFF's statements in that article. They acknowledge the tensions inherent in the internet we've built and inherited, and postulate that it's possible to force everyone to be better actors without having to burn the house down. Moreover that meaning is exactly what they say, without resorting too much to rhetoric.