8 ms·

The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. T

The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category.

ants_everywhere 2y ago
Isn't it the same old tools used by other ad companies, like differential privacy?
- JW_00000 2y ago
  A major difference is that the data is stored in your browser, and aggregated anonymously by Mozilla (also using differential privacy). Using the techniques you refer to, the ad platforms both store the data and then aggregate it, possibly promising to add differential privacy. The advantages I see are: (1) you can verify which data is collected by the browser and when/how it is sent to Mozilla, because this code is open source and running on your machine; (2) you maybe trust Mozilla more than an ad company.
  - pietervdvn 2y ago
    According to their blog post, Let's Encrypt will run the aggregator service - which is even better.
    - account42 2y ago
      Better for whom? Even more of normal internet operations flowing through ISRG is concerning itself. Let's Encrypt alone already gives them more power than any private organization should have.
    - throwawa14223 2y ago
      That’s bad because it could make it difficult to block.
  - ants_everywhere 2y ago
    I was under the impression that click data is stored in your browser under Webkit's Private Click Measurement. Am I misunderstanding? For example, here's a 2021 blog post describing the protocol https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-measurement-pcm/ https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas...
Symbiote 2y ago
Those are normal quotes, not "scare quotes".
rvnx 2y ago
"Privacy-enhancing/preserving", mhh, it's rather "Mozilla launches new tools to help advertisers stay compliant with latest regulations". It's not to protect privacy, because to protect privacy there is already a solution: it's to block the ad hosts and not talk to them at all (anti-fingerprinting techniques don't work).
hypeatei 2y ago
> it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers This is it. We're polluting the web browser with even more bullshit so that companies can squeeze a few pennies out when someone visits a page. It was bad enough when pages are loaded with tracking cookies and JavaScript but at least you can block those. Now we get browser functionality on by default cooperating with advertising networks. Insane.
account42 2y ago
> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. It is strictly less privacy-preserving than not implementing this "feature" that has zero benefit to the user running the browser. At the very least it pings yet another third party, most likely it effectively leaks much more. > The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category. That is a very very generous assumption of the browser makers' goals. Particularily when one of them IS an online advertising company and another one is almost exclusively funded by said advertising company. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
- close04 2y ago
  The worst part isn't mentioned here. I'm fine with making any tools available to the users. But enabling by default is a very different discussion. This is not the kind of tool/setting that justifies having it auto-enabled, it's not "we auto-enabled MFA to protect your most critical data". Enabling it was not done for my benefit and it wasn't even made obvious in any way, I had to find out from internet discussions. It's my daily driver on all platforms and have nightly, beta, and stable channel installations. None gave me a hint of this extra enabled setting. If I'm going to use a browser where shady settings are pushed on me it might as well be one which 99.999% of the internet is built for rather than the one where (too many times) I have to fiddle to get things working. I'll take the fiddling or the lack of control but certainly not both. Mozilla is walking on really thin ice.
  - mortos 2y ago
    The update page that opens in a new tab mentioned this change, once updated to Firefox 128. Perhaps you have that turned off, many power users do, making them oblivious to updates and the changes they bring. Also I believe this is to the benefit of the general populace, who would never enable it otherwise. It allows ads to work in a more privacy-preserving manner.
  - 2y ago
nextaccountic 2y ago
> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising This would be my preferred outcome no doubt. And after widespread adoption of content blockers like uBlock Origin, the next step should be mass adoption of webpage mirrors (like archive.is and Wayback Machine do now, but more comprehensive), and stop giving impressions to read-only websites. In this sense, paywalls are a blessing in disguise: I don't ever visit wsj for example and thus any articles from it must be read from archive.is. But reading from mirrors should be more widespread, even for websites not behind a paywall. If browsers want to improve the situation regarding ads, besides bundling and automatically enabling content blockers, they should also provide integrations to mirrors like archive.is to go further than that and not even risk a page access to ad-infested sites. > or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. However there are more than two options. If society reach a compromise to ban targeted ads, this doesn't shut down advertising completely but sets it back to TV-era levels of analytics. This discussion should have happened after Cambridge Analytica. > Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category. I thought Chrome were in the business of making sure ads stay bad.
tjoff 2y ago
Only IF it is correctly implemented. And only if you trust all relevant parties involved in this feature. And honestly, whenever I see that something has been anonymized I assume it isn't. Mostly because the industry has a terrible track record, secondly because the incentives are almost always misaligned to begin with. I'd trust mozilla more than most, but not enough to give them free rein and opt in things for me. I don't (yet) know enough specifics on this matter to make an informed decision, but if it weren't for hn I'd have missed this. I doubt firefox would ask the user after install (again, incentives). I should go through all options for every update (not just for firefox). But I can't, I don't have enough time. I need to be able to put some trust into the software I use, and things like this erode that trust.
- einpoklum 2y ago
  > I'd trust mozilla more than most More than Google or Microsoft does not say much. And - judging by how hard it is to fully disable telemetry and call-home on, say, Mozilla Thunderbird: https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798 https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798 I wouldn't trust them very much. (Yes, I know it's a different project and not the same team but Mozilla is still the parent entity etc. etc.)
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Gahh! I'm planning a move from macOS to some Linux-based OS once this laptop dies. I've had 20+ years of using Mail.app and thought that Thunderbird would be the appropriate replacement. But that link, and the comments at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-should-by-default-have-all-telemetry-as-an-opt-in/idc-p/24957 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-should-by-d... ('Given that significant parts of Thunderbirds user interface (addons manager details, welcome page, whats new on updates etc) are essentially served as web pages into Thunderbird, perhaps your expectations are becoming unreasonable.') tell me that Thunderbird does not respect my desire to minimize my info leakage to the outside world.
    - einpoklum 2y ago
      The "served as web pages" is a bit misleading. It just means that the UI layout engine takes HTML or XML, not that information is passed through a web server.
rpastuszak 2y ago
> The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. 90% of Mozilla’s revenue, ca. $500,000,000 comes advertising partnerships (almost exclusively Google) https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+Consent#%24510%2C000%2C000 https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C... My point is: it’s not just lifting a finger for advertisers. It’s deception. Defaults matter.
- zihotki 2y ago
  And only a fraction of that money is used for Firefox development. Remember that you can't donate to Firefox (like you can for Thunderbird).
zihotki 2y ago
> it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers It's that an ads vendor is lifting a finger for ads. Mozilla is an ads vendor now - 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...
madeofpalk 2y ago
> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving It is net negative though. It is more privacy-preserving to just not implement this in the first place. It is baffling why Firefox ships with this on by default. Even Chrome prompted users with a (misleading) dialog box to turn it on or off.
- jampekka 2y ago
  > It is baffling why Firefox ships with this on by default. Not really. The reason is that Mozilla wants to make money by selling your data/preferences. Probably so that the incompetent CEO can get even more obscene "compensation". They just bought a spyware adtech company.
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    Do they get money from selling this?
tgvaughan 2y ago
My problem with this is that ideally, software I deign to run on my computer acts with only my interests in mind. The overarching goal of these changes is not to preserve my privacy, but rather to help advertising companies to learn something about how I interact with their ads. I don't care that Mozilla's particular implementation is not as bad for my privacy as it could be, I only care that their motivation has switched from acting in my interests to acting in the interests of advertising agencies.
- pasc1878 2y ago
  Fine. Then pay for the tools you use rather than force them to get money from another source. The toolmakers work to earn a living.
  - prepend 2y ago
    Firefox is open source. I do pay for it as a tool. Toolmakers also work out of desire to practice their craft. Many projects are written, not to “earn a living.”
    - pasc1878 2y ago
      True but Firefox is mainly written by people who want to earn a living. Much FOSS is actually written by people who are being paid to do it, How do you fund the producers of Firefox and the infrastructure needed to get it built and released. Currently the only way is that the sellers of the adverts you read give money to fund Firefox. Now if you paid for Firefox then they don't need to get money from advertisers. Similarly to get ad free webpages you need to pay the authors.
      - ndriscoll 2y ago
        Perhaps they should consider accepting money from their users then? Wikipedia doesn't fund itself by spying on you and selling the data. They ask for money.
chatmasta 2y ago
The scare quotes are useful, because the real story is that Firefox is enabling ad measurement by default. It’s an opt-out system being forced on users. They also claim it’s “privacy preserving,” but that’s a qualifier that deserves scrutiny, especially in an opt-out system. If it was really privacy preserving, why isn’t it opt-in?
AlexandrB 2y ago
> I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. We've been giving advertisers new tools for 20 years. Over that time advertisements have only gotten worse. The less bad state is a myth. There's no economic incentive to be less bad.
lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
> The best objection to these proposals The best objection is that I want my software to work for me, not for someone else. Simple.
lapcat 2y ago
> I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. You mean online tracking, not advertising. Advertising without tracking has existed for as long as commerce has existed. The elimination of tracking is not a threat to advertising. Historically, tracking is a very recent "innovation", an unwelcome one IMO.
RobotToaster 2y ago
> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Internet advertising worked fine before user tracking, it was just based on the contents of the webpage. Before that it existed in newspapers and magazines for over a decade, without advertisers insisting the publisher spy on each of their readers.
ibejoeb 2y ago
>The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. Doesn't this break most modern methodologies. Can I do next best action without knowing who did what?
dtx1 2y ago
I remember when Browsers were User-Agents and worked for the sole benefit of the user. These days they are Advertisement-Agents. And especially for Firefox to survive Mozilla should go down the road of being a user agent and a user agent only. What other use is there for firefox? It's not faster, it's soon not going to be more private and it is less secure than chromium based browsers.
RockRobotRock 2y ago
Do you work for an ad company by any chance?
- doe_eyes 2y ago
  No.
barnacs 2y ago
> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising Yes, please. Both online and offline. Advertising is probably the most useless, annoying and wasteful industry out there. We could have pull-only databases of businesses, products and services instead. Ideally, with independently verified, fact-checked information and authentic reviews. Realistically though, this kind of objectivity would probably be infeasible to enforce and maintain. But even if we allow for misinformation, paid rankings and whatnot, the point stands: any such database should follow a pull-only model, users access it voluntarily to search for products and services and it's not an unsolicited broadcast to everyone everywhere all the time.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  Ideally governments would provide an index of registered businesses with some basic filtering (e.g. location or category of services provided) with a name, address, phone number, and url. Present in random order to be fair. My state seems to have a search tool, but no list. It also only has name/address (so presumably it's more for serving legal papers or whatever). If I want to find a plumber, I should be able to ask my government for a list of the licensed plumbers in my area.
EasyMark 2y ago
the big deal is it should have been opt in.
firebaze 2y ago
Incredible that this is the #1 post on HN. The slightest amount of basic research what this functionality does is absent, combined with the obviously ignored knowledge WHY firefox still has any users at all. Glad the whole thread was apparently flagged to death though. I'd guess 90% of firefox users already turned that off and are actively looking for the next best alternative.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad." If this is "privacy", then it appears so-called "(ad) tech" companies are attempting to redefine the term. Question for readers: Is knowing the identity of a person a prerequisite for that person to lose (some) privacy. Consider the dictionary definition: Webster's: "The state of being in retirement from the company or observation of others; seclusion." Wordnet, from the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton: "the quality of being secluded from the presence or view of others [syn: {privacy}, {privateness}, {seclusion}]" Example: A person in a building in a large city on a busy pedestrian street draws the curtains or blinds in a window facing the street to prevent passers by from seeing in. The passers by do not know the identity of the person(s) inside. The scare quotes around "privacy-preserving" are justified. The act of allowing measurement destroys some privacy. It is less private to let people on the street see into the building. Allowing measurement destroys privacy. How can marketers make it easier to swallow. Using a term like "privacy-preserving" is obviously deceptive, it is sleight of hand to conceal the frog boiling. This is not Mary Poppins. You are not being given a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down in a delightful way. It's poison in small doses. Eventually, the frog will die. The "frog" is the concept of your privacy. The notion of "privacy" for so-called "tech" companies is not being targeted. Even when courts ask them to share what they are doing, they evade such discovery claiming it would put them at a competitive disadvantage: they might ultimately lose money. Whereas if opening yourself up to 24/7 observation causes you to lose some advantage and ultimately to lose money, then your loss is their gain. There are certain risky activities in life that some folks choose not to engage in. These activities can be made "safer" and even "safe enough" that many will choose to do them despite the risk. But it does not remove all the risk. There are endless examples. Skydiving, bungy jumping and so on all the way down to relatively mundane stuff. But in almost every case, there is an incentive to participate. There is a "reward" for taking the risk. The incentives for Mozilla, "ad tech" and all those who support this nonsense "business model" based on surveillance is easily discernable. Finding an incentive for anyone using a web browser to want to participate in this "measurement" requires mental gymnastics. And so it must be opt-out. No one would knowingly subject themselves to such needless observation.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 2y ago
> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad It's not like we've just invented this new advertising thing and are now struggling to make it fit the internet. We've been living with it for decades now, and over all this time that industry haven't expressed even a slightest desire to be "less bad" in any meaningful way. I think we can safely set aside the idea that they don't do it because they just didn't have any tools. No, they don't do it because they are doing just fine without it, and they have zero motivation to do it. And a lot of motivation - billions upon billions of dollars of motivation - to keep doing exactly what they are doing, or worse.

ants_everywhere 2y ago

Isn't it the same old tools used by other ad companies, like differential privacy?

JW_00000 2y ago
A major difference is that the data is stored in your browser, and aggregated anonymously by Mozilla (also using differential privacy). Using the techniques you refer to, the ad platforms both store the data and then aggregate it, possibly promising to add differential privacy. The advantages I see are: (1) you can verify which data is collected by the browser and when/how it is sent to Mozilla, because this code is open source and running on your machine; (2) you maybe trust Mozilla more than an ad company.
- pietervdvn 2y ago
  According to their blog post, Let's Encrypt will run the aggregator service - which is even better.
  - account42 2y ago
    Better for whom? Even more of normal internet operations flowing through ISRG is concerning itself. Let's Encrypt alone already gives them more power than any private organization should have.
  - throwawa14223 2y ago
    That’s bad because it could make it difficult to block.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  I was under the impression that click data is stored in your browser under Webkit's Private Click Measurement. Am I misunderstanding? For example, here's a 2021 blog post describing the protocol https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-measurement-pcm/ https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas...

Symbiote 2y ago

Those are normal quotes, not "scare quotes".

rvnx 2y ago

"Privacy-enhancing/preserving", mhh, it's rather "Mozilla launches new tools to help advertisers stay compliant with latest regulations". It's not to protect privacy, because to protect privacy there is already a solution: it's to block the ad hosts and not talk to them at all (anti-fingerprinting techniques don't work).

hypeatei 2y ago

> it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers This is it. We're polluting the web browser with even more bullshit so that companies can squeeze a few pennies out when someone visits a page. It was bad enough when pages are loaded with tracking cookies and JavaScript but at least you can block those. Now we get browser functionality on by default cooperating with advertising networks. Insane.

account42 2y ago

> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. It is strictly less privacy-preserving than not implementing this "feature" that has zero benefit to the user running the browser. At the very least it pings yet another third party, most likely it effectively leaks much more. > The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category. That is a very very generous assumption of the browser makers' goals. Particularily when one of them IS an online advertising company and another one is almost exclusively funded by said advertising company. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

close04 2y ago
The worst part isn't mentioned here. I'm fine with making any tools available to the users. But enabling by default is a very different discussion. This is not the kind of tool/setting that justifies having it auto-enabled, it's not "we auto-enabled MFA to protect your most critical data". Enabling it was not done for my benefit and it wasn't even made obvious in any way, I had to find out from internet discussions. It's my daily driver on all platforms and have nightly, beta, and stable channel installations. None gave me a hint of this extra enabled setting. If I'm going to use a browser where shady settings are pushed on me it might as well be one which 99.999% of the internet is built for rather than the one where (too many times) I have to fiddle to get things working. I'll take the fiddling or the lack of control but certainly not both. Mozilla is walking on really thin ice.
- mortos 2y ago
  The update page that opens in a new tab mentioned this change, once updated to Firefox 128. Perhaps you have that turned off, many power users do, making them oblivious to updates and the changes they bring. Also I believe this is to the benefit of the general populace, who would never enable it otherwise. It allows ads to work in a more privacy-preserving manner.
- 2y ago

nextaccountic 2y ago

> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising This would be my preferred outcome no doubt. And after widespread adoption of content blockers like uBlock Origin, the next step should be mass adoption of webpage mirrors (like archive.is and Wayback Machine do now, but more comprehensive), and stop giving impressions to read-only websites. In this sense, paywalls are a blessing in disguise: I don't ever visit wsj for example and thus any articles from it must be read from archive.is. But reading from mirrors should be more widespread, even for websites not behind a paywall. If browsers want to improve the situation regarding ads, besides bundling and automatically enabling content blockers, they should also provide integrations to mirrors like archive.is to go further than that and not even risk a page access to ad-infested sites. > or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. However there are more than two options. If society reach a compromise to ban targeted ads, this doesn't shut down advertising completely but sets it back to TV-era levels of analytics. This discussion should have happened after Cambridge Analytica. > Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category. I thought Chrome were in the business of making sure ads stay bad.

tjoff 2y ago

Only IF it is correctly implemented. And only if you trust all relevant parties involved in this feature. And honestly, whenever I see that something has been anonymized I assume it isn't. Mostly because the industry has a terrible track record, secondly because the incentives are almost always misaligned to begin with. I'd trust mozilla more than most, but not enough to give them free rein and opt in things for me. I don't (yet) know enough specifics on this matter to make an informed decision, but if it weren't for hn I'd have missed this. I doubt firefox would ask the user after install (again, incentives). I should go through all options for every update (not just for firefox). But I can't, I don't have enough time. I need to be able to put some trust into the software I use, and things like this erode that trust.

einpoklum 2y ago
> I'd trust mozilla more than most More than Google or Microsoft does not say much. And - judging by how hard it is to fully disable telemetry and call-home on, say, Mozilla Thunderbird: https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798 https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798 I wouldn't trust them very much. (Yes, I know it's a different project and not the same team but Mozilla is still the parent entity etc. etc.)
- eesmith 2y ago
  Gahh! I'm planning a move from macOS to some Linux-based OS once this laptop dies. I've had 20+ years of using Mail.app and thought that Thunderbird would be the appropriate replacement. But that link, and the comments at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-should-by-default-have-all-telemetry-as-an-opt-in/idc-p/24957 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-should-by-d... ('Given that significant parts of Thunderbirds user interface (addons manager details, welcome page, whats new on updates etc) are essentially served as web pages into Thunderbird, perhaps your expectations are becoming unreasonable.') tell me that Thunderbird does not respect my desire to minimize my info leakage to the outside world.
  - einpoklum 2y ago
    The "served as web pages" is a bit misleading. It just means that the UI layout engine takes HTML or XML, not that information is passed through a web server.

rpastuszak 2y ago

> The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. 90% of Mozilla’s revenue, ca. $500,000,000 comes advertising partnerships (almost exclusively Google) https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+Consent#%24510%2C000%2C000 https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C... My point is: it’s not just lifting a finger for advertisers. It’s deception. Defaults matter.

zihotki 2y ago
And only a fraction of that money is used for Firefox development. Remember that you can't donate to Firefox (like you can for Thunderbird).

zihotki 2y ago

> it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers It's that an ads vendor is lifting a finger for ads. Mozilla is an ads vendor now - 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...

madeofpalk 2y ago

> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving It is net negative though. It is more privacy-preserving to just not implement this in the first place. It is baffling why Firefox ships with this on by default. Even Chrome prompted users with a (misleading) dialog box to turn it on or off.

jampekka 2y ago
> It is baffling why Firefox ships with this on by default. Not really. The reason is that Mozilla wants to make money by selling your data/preferences. Probably so that the incompetent CEO can get even more obscene "compensation". They just bought a spyware adtech company.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Do they get money from selling this?

tgvaughan 2y ago

My problem with this is that ideally, software I deign to run on my computer acts with only my interests in mind. The overarching goal of these changes is not to preserve my privacy, but rather to help advertising companies to learn something about how I interact with their ads. I don't care that Mozilla's particular implementation is not as bad for my privacy as it could be, I only care that their motivation has switched from acting in my interests to acting in the interests of advertising agencies.

pasc1878 2y ago
Fine. Then pay for the tools you use rather than force them to get money from another source. The toolmakers work to earn a living.
- prepend 2y ago
  Firefox is open source. I do pay for it as a tool. Toolmakers also work out of desire to practice their craft. Many projects are written, not to “earn a living.”
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    True but Firefox is mainly written by people who want to earn a living. Much FOSS is actually written by people who are being paid to do it, How do you fund the producers of Firefox and the infrastructure needed to get it built and released. Currently the only way is that the sellers of the adverts you read give money to fund Firefox. Now if you paid for Firefox then they don't need to get money from advertisers. Similarly to get ad free webpages you need to pay the authors.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      Perhaps they should consider accepting money from their users then? Wikipedia doesn't fund itself by spying on you and selling the data. They ask for money.

chatmasta 2y ago

The scare quotes are useful, because the real story is that Firefox is enabling ad measurement by default. It’s an opt-out system being forced on users. They also claim it’s “privacy preserving,” but that’s a qualifier that deserves scrutiny, especially in an opt-out system. If it was really privacy preserving, why isn’t it opt-in?

AlexandrB 2y ago

> I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. We've been giving advertisers new tools for 20 years. Over that time advertisements have only gotten worse. The less bad state is a myth. There's no economic incentive to be less bad.

lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago

> The best objection to these proposals The best objection is that I want my software to work for me, not for someone else. Simple.

lapcat 2y ago

> I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. You mean online tracking, not advertising. Advertising without tracking has existed for as long as commerce has existed. The elimination of tracking is not a threat to advertising. Historically, tracking is a very recent "innovation", an unwelcome one IMO.

RobotToaster 2y ago

> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Internet advertising worked fine before user tracking, it was just based on the contents of the webpage. Before that it existed in newspapers and magazines for over a decade, without advertisers insisting the publisher spy on each of their readers.

ibejoeb 2y ago

>The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. Doesn't this break most modern methodologies. Can I do next best action without knowing who did what?

dtx1 2y ago

I remember when Browsers were User-Agents and worked for the sole benefit of the user. These days they are Advertisement-Agents. And especially for Firefox to survive Mozilla should go down the road of being a user agent and a user agent only. What other use is there for firefox? It's not faster, it's soon not going to be more private and it is less secure than chromium based browsers.

RockRobotRock 2y ago

Do you work for an ad company by any chance?

doe_eyes 2y ago
No.

barnacs 2y ago

> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising Yes, please. Both online and offline. Advertising is probably the most useless, annoying and wasteful industry out there. We could have pull-only databases of businesses, products and services instead. Ideally, with independently verified, fact-checked information and authentic reviews. Realistically though, this kind of objectivity would probably be infeasible to enforce and maintain. But even if we allow for misinformation, paid rankings and whatnot, the point stands: any such database should follow a pull-only model, users access it voluntarily to search for products and services and it's not an unsolicited broadcast to everyone everywhere all the time.

ndriscoll 2y ago
Ideally governments would provide an index of registered businesses with some basic filtering (e.g. location or category of services provided) with a name, address, phone number, and url. Present in random order to be fair. My state seems to have a search tool, but no list. It also only has name/address (so presumably it's more for serving legal papers or whatever). If I want to find a plumber, I should be able to ask my government for a list of the licensed plumbers in my area.

EasyMark 2y ago

the big deal is it should have been opt in.

firebaze 2y ago

Incredible that this is the #1 post on HN. The slightest amount of basic research what this functionality does is absent, combined with the obviously ignored knowledge WHY firefox still has any users at all. Glad the whole thread was apparently flagged to death though. I'd guess 90% of firefox users already turned that off and are actively looking for the next best alternative.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad." If this is "privacy", then it appears so-called "(ad) tech" companies are attempting to redefine the term. Question for readers: Is knowing the identity of a person a prerequisite for that person to lose (some) privacy. Consider the dictionary definition: Webster's: "The state of being in retirement from the company or observation of others; seclusion." Wordnet, from the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton: "the quality of being secluded from the presence or view of others [syn: {privacy}, {privateness}, {seclusion}]" Example: A person in a building in a large city on a busy pedestrian street draws the curtains or blinds in a window facing the street to prevent passers by from seeing in. The passers by do not know the identity of the person(s) inside. The scare quotes around "privacy-preserving" are justified. The act of allowing measurement destroys some privacy. It is less private to let people on the street see into the building. Allowing measurement destroys privacy. How can marketers make it easier to swallow. Using a term like "privacy-preserving" is obviously deceptive, it is sleight of hand to conceal the frog boiling. This is not Mary Poppins. You are not being given a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down in a delightful way. It's poison in small doses. Eventually, the frog will die. The "frog" is the concept of your privacy. The notion of "privacy" for so-called "tech" companies is not being targeted. Even when courts ask them to share what they are doing, they evade such discovery claiming it would put them at a competitive disadvantage: they might ultimately lose money. Whereas if opening yourself up to 24/7 observation causes you to lose some advantage and ultimately to lose money, then your loss is their gain. There are certain risky activities in life that some folks choose not to engage in. These activities can be made "safer" and even "safe enough" that many will choose to do them despite the risk. But it does not remove all the risk. There are endless examples. Skydiving, bungy jumping and so on all the way down to relatively mundane stuff. But in almost every case, there is an incentive to participate. There is a "reward" for taking the risk. The incentives for Mozilla, "ad tech" and all those who support this nonsense "business model" based on surveillance is easily discernable. Finding an incentive for anyone using a web browser to want to participate in this "measurement" requires mental gymnastics. And so it must be opt-out. No one would knowingly subject themselves to such needless observation.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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smsm42 2y ago

> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad It's not like we've just invented this new advertising thing and are now struggling to make it fit the internet. We've been living with it for decades now, and over all this time that industry haven't expressed even a slightest desire to be "less bad" in any meaningful way. I think we can safely set aside the idea that they don't do it because they just didn't have any tools. No, they don't do it because they are doing just fine without it, and they have zero motivation to do it. And a lot of motivation - billions upon billions of dollars of motivation - to keep doing exactly what they are doing, or worse.