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Mozilla acquires privacy-focused ad tech company Anonym
- jimmydoe 2y agoThis is even shadier than Google. Google at least shows lengthy detail about their cookie approach; this Anonym has nothing on their website.
- hammyhavoc 2y agoThe cognitive dissonance of this versus encouragement to block ads: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/features/adblocker/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/features/adblocker/
- type0 2y agothey are trying to be like Adblock Plus
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- maverick74 2y agoI'm not sure what to think of this................. if it's 100% private (e.g.: users are not at all identifiable) then it's probably ok... but i'm not sure it will be 100% private...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _lvbh 2y agoThis is why I use Librewolf. Firefox makes a good browser but keeps putting shit in it. (E.g. Pocket)
- beretguy 2y agoShould invest in tab groups instead.
- altairprime 2y agoAlso: https://www.anonymco.com/anonym-today/anonym-acquired-by-mozilla https://www.anonymco.com/anonym-today/anonym-acquired-by-moz...
- 39896880 2y agoThere is no such thing as privacy focused ad tech. The purpose of ads is to know you and influence your future.
- browningstreet 2y agoOr to let you know about a market option. I think there’s a need for a business to let customers know they exist. I’m not against ads per se, but certainly against tracking and poorly integrated and over-stuffing of ads into content. And at times I’ve wished there was a non-tracking, “tasteful” ad company.
- ndriscoll 2y agoA business directory or trade magazines are legitimate ways for people to find out about businesses, services, and products they're interested in. i.e. a pull model. A push model inevitably is used not just to inform, but to manipulate people's desires to increase consumptive behavior, turning them into worse humans. Many businesses prey upon and amplify people's insecurities to do this, making people deeply unhappy. The spying is evil. The actual messages delivered are evil. The entire industry is rotten to the core.
- Groxx 2y agoI completely agree that pull vs push is a core, super-relevant distinction and pull is vastly less dubious in basically every way... ... but isn't a search engine's response basically a pull? You've explicitly stated that you're interested in X by searching for it. "An x" vs "The x" is of course relevant, but you can't reliably infer that. Or do you mean that the difference is whether you're looking in advertising-focused places? Like having a dedicated "include ads" option on search or something.
- mikeiz404 2y agoWhen people place a search query their intent is not always to purchase something (though the search results these days often seem to suggest otherwise).
- sorenjan 2y agoWhat money are they using for this? The money they get from Google, the world's biggest ad company, or the money users have donated to them?
- JohnFen 2y agoThis is an incredibly disturbing announcement. Does this mean that Mozilla is going to become an ad broker now? > By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology I can't think of a time when any company got into the ad business without it seriously damaging that company's reputation.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoMozilla and Apple sell your traffic to Google already, it's not like any major party is leaving that money on the table. If any of them had a clean reputation before now it's because people weren't paying attention.
- berkes 2y agoHow does Mozilla sell my traffic to Google?
- greyface- 2y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus... https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-google-search-deal/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-go...
- berkes 2y agoHow is that "selling my traffic"?
- greyface- 2y agoChoice of default search provider impacts where search traffic goes. When you enter a search query into the location bar, you generate traffic for the default search provider. When Google purchased the right to be the default search provider, they were purchasing that traffic.
- ndriscoll 2y agoIt's astounding how shameless Mozilla can be sometimes. They've received billions of dollars over the last 2 decades and accomplished nothing toward an "open and free Internet", if anything regressing. How about an open and free Internet where anyone can right click a folder and choose "share on the web"? Nginx hasn't had a security vulnerability in 10+ years that affects a basic, static http 1 site. How about a wysiwyg editor for blog posts with some basic themes and RSS? How about browsers with built in RSS (oops they removed that) driving a start page? How about a browser with built in torrent/magnet link support to share videos? Have the wysiwyg editor generate magnets by default when dropping a video. If you want to be real counter-culture, how about p2p overlay comment systems like dissenter (oops they banned that)? They've obviously been Google's thrall/controlled opposition for at least a decade. Instead of building infrastructure to give people autonomy to share and interact directly without the control and influence of the web's Owners, the say things like > digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free content, services and experiences. i.e. "you need your owners". Meanwhile there are threads about how $200 mini-pcs have enough horsepower to easily serve 10s of thousands of web requests/second and you can buy 1 TB of flash for $50. Computers are so incredibly cheap and powerful today that it is obvious that there is no vision in that organization for a "free and open Internet". Anyone familiar with tech knows mega corporations aren't needed to fund it. It's entirely about making it easy/normie friendly to self-host, which Mozilla is somewhere between uninterested and hostile toward.
- poikroequ 2y agoMost of the functionality you're describing is better relegated to third party websites/software/extensions. I want my web browser to just be a web browser, no unnecessary add-ons. There's already lots of great solutions for RSS. Ditto for torrents. You can't build a wysiwyg editor that will work across the entire web, there's countless formats which are specific to each website. They just need to focus on building a top-notch web browser, no unnecessary bells or whistles.
- berkes 2y agoWhy do you presume it must be built into a browser? Mozilla alteady has mumore products and services than just ff. These ideas could be standalone too.
- FounderBurr 2y agoNext up: ad-Blocking is old and gross and hard to maintain so we removed it, oh by the way totally unrelated here is Pocket(tm).. err Anoym(tm)! Mozilla has become a bunch of ad supported grifters. Time to fund a real replacement.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- WhackyIdeas 2y ago‘Meta executives’ and ‘privacy’ - I wasn’t born yesterday.
- solarkraft 2y agoSo much money for acquisitions, so little money (or motivation) to do their job.
- hulitu 2y ago> privacy-focused ad tech company "privacy-focused", "ad tech company". Chose one. /s