7 ms·

"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

93 points by nechuchelo 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
martin_a 2y ago
It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise. If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.
- out-of-ideas 2y ago
  https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ - only a few tweaks to enable/disable to have sessions persist across quitting and re-opening but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)
  - zahma 2y ago
    I recently installed LibreWolf to separate online lives, but I remain ignorant of what actually distinguishes FF and LW. Also, to which tweaks were you referring?
    - mod50ack 2y ago
      LibreWolf is essentially a custom build of Firefox with stuff like this disabled or removed.
      - thomassmith65 2y ago
        What distinguishes LibreWolf from Waterfox? Other than not being available for Mac, obviously. edit: oops, there *is* a LibreWolf Mac port now
        ohmyiv 2y ago
        It's been a minute since I've used Librewolf so maybe things changed, but I remember that not being able to sync between devices was the biggest difference. There wasn't an account login option in LW, but there is in Waterfox. Other than that, I dont remember any real differences. Waterfox has been fine for me because of the sync, but if you don't need account syncing, LW is fine.
    - out-of-ideas 2y ago
      sadly i do not remember them all: it was basically cleaning history + session on quit (or in my case my rebooting) - and my main profile i prefer to have tabs reopen ect
- blibble 2y ago
  > So please stop it, Firefox. with this acquisition https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... Mozilla is now an ads company it's downhill only from here folks
- maccard 2y ago
  > It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. Even with this, it's still better than chrome.
  - account42 2y ago
    I too prefer eating the excrement of a male bovine over other forms of manure.
greatgib 2y ago
So sad to see that the Mozilla corporation completely lost its way. I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily... The tldr that says it all: One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default. ... The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser's server. The "advertising network" only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers!
- anticensor 2y ago
  Yeah, why isn't the DP applied at the client side? It's not like a simple Gaussian shuffler is so computationally expensive.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Because the advertisers wouldn't trust that?
  - imajoredinecon 2y ago
    The article’s description of the feature is very inaccurate. The way it works is using secure two-party computation to aggregate data and apply DP server-side without Mozilla or the advertiser being able to see pre-aggregation data. This has much better utility than applying DP client-side but still has similar privacy guarantees
    - greatgib 2y ago
      All in all, I don't see why my own "privacy preserving" browser would snitch on me doing calls to an external server with aggregated data about my browsing history just to please advertisers... Even if they pretend that data is "obfuscated" in some way...
nubinetwork 2y ago
I'd switch browsers if it weren't for plugin compatibility...
- yencabulator 2y ago
  https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ welcomes you.
BoredPositron 2y ago
Well, bye bye official Firefox. Not gonna lie it's getting rough in the browser space. What a shame.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Yeah, I can't say I didn't see this day coming, but it's still weird to think I'll be saying goodbye to Firefox after so long. I moved to Firefox from Netscape!
- endemic 2y ago
  Ladybird couldn't have come at a better time.
pleasecalllater 2y ago
I hope unchecking the setting really disables the feature. I have hard time trusting Mozilla now... or rather I should write "again". On the other hand: there is a ticket [1] asking for container-based-extensions, so something like Grammarly (aka the keylogger) could work only inside a container. It's been there for years, nothing changes. Seems like people are not interested in this kind of privacy stuff. The good news: the CEO salary is really nice... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075
- brador 2y ago
  For anyone wondering the Moz CEO salary is near $7 million.
  - panja 2y ago
    Is this actually that high for comparable roles?
    - michaelt 2y ago
      Google's Sundar Pichai took home $226 million for managing 182,000 employees and making $305.6 billion in revenue, so $1,238 per employee and 0.07% of revenue. Mozilla's Mitchell Baker took home $6.9 million for managing 750 employees and making $593 million in revenue, so $9,200 per employee and 1.16% of revenue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's CEO earns $1.28M with 2000 employees and revenue of $328 million, which is $640 per employee and 0.4% of revenue. Although I can't say for sure whether that figure is full-time-equivalent employees or if they have a large number of part time staff. So you might consider the Mozilla CEO's salary very low or very high, depending on what you mean by "comparable" In terms of value for money - a generous salary might be justified if Mozilla is a thriving organisation that's going from strength to strength thanks to the wisdom of its leadership. But is it?
autoexec 2y ago
Firefox should have just focused on privacy, security, and customization/personalization. It's a niche that isn't filled by anyone else. That wasn't going to make them rich the way selling out their userbase to advertisers will, but it would have made them loved and successful. Right now, people who want their privacy violated are better off using chrome. Every time firefox pulls shit like this they piss off and alienate their users. What do they think is going to happen? If I were a Mozilla employee and my goal was to destroy firefox, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd be pushing for. I have no idea what firefox thinks it's doing, or if it's thinking about anything other than how to get more money from advertisers, but it shouldn't be hard see what exploiting users will lead to. Maybe they've already given up and their plan is to sell their users until they don't have any left. Personally, I'll be exploring alternatives and forks and I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can.
- illiac786 2y ago
  They are focussing on privacy. They just didn’t communicate their approach very well. https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/ https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    He's just saying what Mozilla said about it. Perhaps there are people who didn't understand Mozilla's statements, so this is a useful thing. Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.
    - illiac786 2y ago
      What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way. However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those cases, I don't see what's wrong (and I see plenty right) with doing in exchange for money. Also, there were plenty of free services before advertising wormed its way into the web, and there still are ad-free free services now. The ad world wants you to think that they're an essential online component, of course, but I am far from convinced that's actually true. All that said, ignoring whether or not online advertising is a positive, the online ad industry itself is an extreme negative. We'd be much better off if it ceased to exist and was replaced by companies that don't treat people in such a contemptible way.
1GZ0 2y ago
Legitimate question here: Is there a legit reason to Firefox over Chrome at this point? I mean, its not performance, its not convenience, and now its not even privacy. At this rate, it looks like Firefox is going to end up just like Chrome, but slower and less fully featured.
- mogoh 2y ago
  Manifest V2/V3 is a reason to still use Firefox. There are still a lot of differences between the two browsers and a monoculture is still bad. How ever I see the pull towards Chromium.
  - sabbaticaldev 2y ago
    without PWA and a terrible service worker support, firefox holds the web behind.
    - nubinetwork 2y ago
      Users don't care if their favourite websites are PWAs.
      - 1GZ0 2y ago
        Not having PWA & Webworker support isn't a win. I use PWAs myself.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - sabbaticaldev 2y ago
        users don’t care about firefox anymore either
    - 1GZ0 2y ago
      Well, they would be holding back the web, if they had significant marketshare. Personally at my job we dropped Firefox support. I imagine we're not the only ones to do so.
copywrong2 2y ago
Holy shit okay, I might have to reconsider using firefox. This is hard to argue for.
prime17569 2y ago
FYI Safari has been doing this (also enabled by default) for years on all Apple platforms. To disable it on macOS: Safari > Preferences/Settings > Advanced > Uncheck "Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness" To disable it on iOS: Settings > Safari > Advanced (scroll all the way down) > Turn off "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement"
imajoredinecon 2y ago
This article makes a couple highly misleading claims about the privacy properties of the feature and its value - would suggest reading the docs to see how it actually works then forming an opinion In particular saying you’re sending your activity to Mozilla is not accurate: you’re sending the output of a postcomputation step that makes it cryptographically infeasible for Mozilla to see your activity.
- delichon 2y ago
  That's nice but I also care about being profiled by advertisers. I'd even be OK with an opt-in to that. But an opt-out isn't good enough.
arp242 2y ago
Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 - Jul 2024 (80 comments) "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - Jul 2024 (164 comments) Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - Jul 2024 (185 comments)
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330

93 points by nechuchelo 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise. If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.

out-of-ideas 2y ago
https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ - only a few tweaks to enable/disable to have sessions persist across quitting and re-opening but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)
- zahma 2y ago
  I recently installed LibreWolf to separate online lives, but I remain ignorant of what actually distinguishes FF and LW. Also, to which tweaks were you referring?
  - mod50ack 2y ago
    LibreWolf is essentially a custom build of Firefox with stuff like this disabled or removed.
    - thomassmith65 2y ago
      What distinguishes LibreWolf from Waterfox? Other than not being available for Mac, obviously. edit: oops, there *is* a LibreWolf Mac port now
      - ohmyiv 2y ago
        It's been a minute since I've used Librewolf so maybe things changed, but I remember that not being able to sync between devices was the biggest difference. There wasn't an account login option in LW, but there is in Waterfox. Other than that, I dont remember any real differences. Waterfox has been fine for me because of the sync, but if you don't need account syncing, LW is fine.
  - out-of-ideas 2y ago
    sadly i do not remember them all: it was basically cleaning history + session on quit (or in my case my rebooting) - and my main profile i prefer to have tabs reopen ect
blibble 2y ago
> So please stop it, Firefox. with this acquisition https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... Mozilla is now an ads company it's downhill only from here folks
maccard 2y ago
> It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. Even with this, it's still better than chrome.
- account42 2y ago
  I too prefer eating the excrement of a male bovine over other forms of manure.

greatgib 2y ago

So sad to see that the Mozilla corporation completely lost its way. I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily... The tldr that says it all: One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default. ... The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser's server. The "advertising network" only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers!

anticensor 2y ago
Yeah, why isn't the DP applied at the client side? It's not like a simple Gaussian shuffler is so computationally expensive.
- fsflover 2y ago
  Because the advertisers wouldn't trust that?
- imajoredinecon 2y ago
  The article’s description of the feature is very inaccurate. The way it works is using secure two-party computation to aggregate data and apply DP server-side without Mozilla or the advertiser being able to see pre-aggregation data. This has much better utility than applying DP client-side but still has similar privacy guarantees
  - greatgib 2y ago
    All in all, I don't see why my own "privacy preserving" browser would snitch on me doing calls to an external server with aggregated data about my browsing history just to please advertisers... Even if they pretend that data is "obfuscated" in some way...

nubinetwork 2y ago

I'd switch browsers if it weren't for plugin compatibility...

yencabulator 2y ago
https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ welcomes you.

BoredPositron 2y ago

Well, bye bye official Firefox. Not gonna lie it's getting rough in the browser space. What a shame.

autoexec 2y ago
Yeah, I can't say I didn't see this day coming, but it's still weird to think I'll be saying goodbye to Firefox after so long. I moved to Firefox from Netscape!
endemic 2y ago
Ladybird couldn't have come at a better time.

pleasecalllater 2y ago

I hope unchecking the setting really disables the feature. I have hard time trusting Mozilla now... or rather I should write "again". On the other hand: there is a ticket [1] asking for container-based-extensions, so something like Grammarly (aka the keylogger) could work only inside a container. It's been there for years, nothing changes. Seems like people are not interested in this kind of privacy stuff. The good news: the CEO salary is really nice... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075

brador 2y ago
For anyone wondering the Moz CEO salary is near $7 million.
- panja 2y ago
  Is this actually that high for comparable roles?
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Google's Sundar Pichai took home $226 million for managing 182,000 employees and making $305.6 billion in revenue, so $1,238 per employee and 0.07% of revenue. Mozilla's Mitchell Baker took home $6.9 million for managing 750 employees and making $593 million in revenue, so $9,200 per employee and 1.16% of revenue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's CEO earns $1.28M with 2000 employees and revenue of $328 million, which is $640 per employee and 0.4% of revenue. Although I can't say for sure whether that figure is full-time-equivalent employees or if they have a large number of part time staff. So you might consider the Mozilla CEO's salary very low or very high, depending on what you mean by "comparable" In terms of value for money - a generous salary might be justified if Mozilla is a thriving organisation that's going from strength to strength thanks to the wisdom of its leadership. But is it?

autoexec 2y ago

Firefox should have just focused on privacy, security, and customization/personalization. It's a niche that isn't filled by anyone else. That wasn't going to make them rich the way selling out their userbase to advertisers will, but it would have made them loved and successful. Right now, people who want their privacy violated are better off using chrome. Every time firefox pulls shit like this they piss off and alienate their users. What do they think is going to happen? If I were a Mozilla employee and my goal was to destroy firefox, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd be pushing for. I have no idea what firefox thinks it's doing, or if it's thinking about anything other than how to get more money from advertisers, but it shouldn't be hard see what exploiting users will lead to. Maybe they've already given up and their plan is to sell their users until they don't have any left. Personally, I'll be exploring alternatives and forks and I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can.

illiac786 2y ago
They are focussing on privacy. They just didn’t communicate their approach very well. https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/ https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/
- JohnFen 2y ago
  He's just saying what Mozilla said about it. Perhaps there are people who didn't understand Mozilla's statements, so this is a useful thing. Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.
  - illiac786 2y ago
    What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way. However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those cases, I don't see what's wrong (and I see plenty right) with doing in exchange for money. Also, there were plenty of free services before advertising wormed its way into the web, and there still are ad-free free services now. The ad world wants you to think that they're an essential online component, of course, but I am far from convinced that's actually true. All that said, ignoring whether or not online advertising is a positive, the online ad industry itself is an extreme negative. We'd be much better off if it ceased to exist and was replaced by companies that don't treat people in such a contemptible way.

1GZ0 2y ago

Legitimate question here: Is there a legit reason to Firefox over Chrome at this point? I mean, its not performance, its not convenience, and now its not even privacy. At this rate, it looks like Firefox is going to end up just like Chrome, but slower and less fully featured.

mogoh 2y ago
Manifest V2/V3 is a reason to still use Firefox. There are still a lot of differences between the two browsers and a monoculture is still bad. How ever I see the pull towards Chromium.
- sabbaticaldev 2y ago
  without PWA and a terrible service worker support, firefox holds the web behind.
  - nubinetwork 2y ago
    Users don't care if their favourite websites are PWAs.
    - 1GZ0 2y ago
      Not having PWA & Webworker support isn't a win. I use PWAs myself.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - sabbaticaldev 2y ago
      users don’t care about firefox anymore either
  - 1GZ0 2y ago
    Well, they would be holding back the web, if they had significant marketshare. Personally at my job we dropped Firefox support. I imagine we're not the only ones to do so.

copywrong2 2y ago

Holy shit okay, I might have to reconsider using firefox. This is hard to argue for.

prime17569 2y ago

FYI Safari has been doing this (also enabled by default) for years on all Apple platforms. To disable it on macOS: Safari > Preferences/Settings > Advanced > Uncheck "Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness" To disable it on iOS: Settings > Safari > Advanced (scroll all the way down) > Turn off "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement"

imajoredinecon 2y ago

This article makes a couple highly misleading claims about the privacy properties of the feature and its value - would suggest reading the docs to see how it actually works then forming an opinion In particular saying you’re sending your activity to Mozilla is not accurate: you’re sending the output of a postcomputation step that makes it cryptographically infeasible for Mozilla to see your activity.

delichon 2y ago
That's nice but I also care about being profiled by advertisers. I'd even be OK with an opt-in to that. But an opt-out isn't good enough.

arp242 2y ago

Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 - Jul 2024 (80 comments) "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - Jul 2024 (164 comments) Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - Jul 2024 (185 comments)

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330