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It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire

It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire to actually improve privacy, they'd rather just kill the feature. If killing PPA meant the internet would suddenly be advertising free, I would be 110% on board, but that's not going to happen. Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away. The alternative to privacy respecting advertising is the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists today. Yes, on an individual level you can mostly opt-out of this surveillance nightmare by using pi hole, uBlock origin, AdGuard etc. I do so myself. But keep in mind that this solution only works because of the 95% of users who do not use these tools and thus subsidize your browsing. They deserve privacy too. So I'm holding out hope that Mozilla and others can succeed in developing a truly privacy protecting solution.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
Why would an ad company ever use this instead of tracking users? Even if it exceeded <5% of users (or whatever Firefox has these days), why not just keep tracking and add this one more data point? It's a little like how "if you aren't paying, you're the product" turned into "if you pay, you're still the product".
- adjfasn47573 2y ago
  This. I never read any discussion about the obvious question: Who guarantees that enabling Privacy-Preserving Ad Measurement will keep all the other tracking away from me? No one! I've never read anything at all about the thought process behind this. As you said, with current (EU) law and regulations, it's just one more data point. So it's worth nothing.
- izacus 2y ago
  Because it's easier and because it makes it impossible to make a case for any other kind of tracking under laws like GDPR once this exists.
  - dietr1ch 2y ago
    People running ads in paper and public signs should just sue advertisers for anti-competitive tracking technologies as they have no way to compete against that.
- cjpearson 2y ago
  Well of course it would have to go beyond Firefox to be effective. But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance, then the business case for surveillance-based advertising goes away. This would make it easier for governments and browsers to more aggressively limit surveillance. Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    > Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors. The current ad industry can hardly be seen as worse actors than they already are. Yet it doesn't seem to deter them in any way.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance It cannot show that advertising can function without surveillance because PPA is surveillance (with privacy enhancements built in). If it succeeds, it means that surveillance will be even further baked into things.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> I'm holding out hope that Mozilla and others can succeed in developing a truly privacy protecting solution You're holding out for the feature built by former Facebook ad executives, who started the company Mozilla bought [1] to help advertisers get around Apple's ATT [2], to develop a privacy-respecting standard? What you describe can be done. But it would need to happen at a public-interest group, e.g. Wikimedia or noyb. Not an ad seller. [1] 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... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-facebook-execs-launch-startup-adding-to-efforts-to-improve-ad-measurement-cdfd6b3f https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-facebook-execs-launch-st...
- cjpearson 2y ago
  I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group. It's understandable that Meta's involvement is seen as a red flag, but if you want it to actually happen, part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers. In the end any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers There is a massive difference between cooperating with an advertiser and buying one. > any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors Sure. But when we're discussing hypothetical proposals, track record is all we've got.
    - NoGravitas 2y ago
      The evidence of Google's history shows that when you buy an advertiser, you're being reverse-acquired.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    > I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group It should be but it is in bed with Google and founded by dirty money. I mean, there seem to be some resistance internally, but the leadership seem to be bought.
hulitu 2y ago
> because of the 95% of users who do not use these tools and thus subsidize your browsing We had open source browsers before.
- cjpearson 2y ago
  They are not subsidizing the browser, but the content you consume through the browser. Firefox is free and will always be free.
raverbashing 2y ago
Honestly yes > To make matters worse, Mozilla has turned on its “privacy preserving attribution” by default. Users have not been informed about this move, nor have they been asked for their consent to be tracked by Firefox. So more privacy by default is bad? What kind of inverted logic is that? > If killing PPA meant the internet would suddenly be advertising free, I would be 110% on board, but that's not going to happen. Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away Obviously At some point, this exagerated antagonism causes more troubles than it solves This is the same logic of people who think rent controls do anything but cause more problems than it "solves"
- Cpoll 2y ago
  > So more privacy by default is bad? Is this necessarily the case, though? 1. Does this bypass user's cookie blocking measures (e.g. PiHole, ad blockers)? If so, it's reducing those users' privacy and opting them in by default. 2. If the user was previously interacting with GDPR-compliant websites only, is this reducing their privacy? They're not given the opportunity to consent or revoke consent to this collection of their data. 3. What are the implications of a data breach of Mozilla's servers? Would this have a greater negative impact on users' privacy than a breach of a single website?
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    > Does this bypass user's cookie blocking measures (e.g. PiHole, ad blockers)? If so, it's reducing those users' privacy and opting them in by default. This is a nonsensical way to act upon this. You don't make collective choices putting the exceptions in front of the general case. 3. well it is not better than most brokers out there right?
    - Cpoll 2y ago
      > exceptions By some (possibly spurious) Google search results, there may be ~900 million ad block users, so not exactly "exceptions." That number seems possible: consider there are 3.5 billion people that use Chrome (i.e. took steps to switch from their default browser, in most cases). > 3. Good point, I admit.
bugtodiffer 2y ago
"Privacy preserving Advertising" is bullshit. Just do context based ads. Oh you're in a car subreddit? Maybe show car ads... instead of hyper personalized diet ads for my fat ass... Advertising is not hard to do without collecting tons of data, it's just a little bit more expensive if you can't target that well. I don't care. Only they care about that.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  PPA is about attribution. It doesn't determine ad types you're seeing like Google's Topics. What it's for is having an allegedly private way to determine if you actually bought a product based on an ad you've seen. Marketeers love having that data so they can determine if their ads are effective to trigger purchases (called "conversions") I'm not in favour of PPA by the way. I turned it off everywhere. But I just wanted to highlight this.
bigiain 2y ago
> The alternative to privacy respecting advertising is the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists today. That's just not true. TV, newspapers and magazines supported themselves just fine using zero tracking on the advertising they ran. That is still an alternative for websites today. We could shut down every single method of tracking user's actions in a browser, and WidgetCo would still pay to advertise using static ads on the widgetclub.com website with no more privacy invasive data that the webserver page views and the click throughs to their destination urls. Doing that would make _some_ of the forms of advertising polluting the web these days uneconomical, but seeing fewer Temu ads or "sponsored content" or "around the web" blocks filled with scams, conspiracy theories, and political donation begging at the bottom of every page on half the websites is a good outcome not a bad one. The idea that advertisers are owed any more data than that, or that the developers of web browsers need to bend to the will of the surveillance capitalists is insane. Sure, if you choose to run a "free" web browser developed by the DoubleClick advertising company (masquerading as a web search company), then I guess you have to expect the browser to serve that advertising companies interests more than your own. But most of us expect more than that from Mozilla. They are _supposed_ to be on our side.
- rlpb 2y ago
  > The idea that advertisers are owed any more data than that, or that the developers of web browsers need to bend to the will of the surveillance capitalists is insane. It's a zero sum game. If others are doing it, then their advertising is more effective, the advertising cost per sale is lower, they are more competitive, and so every company is forced to do the same. But if nobody is able to do it, then there will be no great loss for the consumer. Advertisers could argue that the inherent advertising overhead of every product is slightly higher and so consumers would have to pay higher prices. I would argue that this is a reasonable price to pay for privacy across the board, just as we all have to pay for the implementation of regulations that mandate safe products. So we can expect advertisers to push for competitive reasons, but equally if we comprehensively resist so as not to favour competition that isn't similarly restricted, then I agree with you that there is no actual threat to commerce.
  - 2y ago
bugtodiffer 2y ago
> subsidize your browsing Well, I do not have the option to pay for a privacy preserving browser, so I don't.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  https://ladybird.org https://ladybird.org might be an option in the future
Timshel 2y ago
> Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away. Not sure it's as strong as you suggest. I read the recent fight between Youtube vs Addblocker more as a weakness and a bit of hope that it might make YT less user friendly and could help other platforms. > They deserve privacy too. I agree so helps them install blocker and stuff like Consent-O-Matic instead of sneaking in features to help advertiser on their browser ... Using PPA does not bring any privacy unless I missed a meta anouncement that they disable tracking when ppa is activated ?
- cjpearson 2y ago
  Blocking ads only works because just a small percentage of users block ads. It's a free-rider situation and someone has to pay. If everyone blocks ads then sites will either counter ad blockers or if that's not possible, implement a pay wall.
  - Timshel 2y ago
    I'm all for pay walls. Privacy respecting service would finally have a chance.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      The problem for me with paywalls is that you have to give a lot of information in order to pay. So you still don't have privacy.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        Maybe services should take Monero. I know some that do.
        dietr1ch 2y ago
        This protects your wallet's privacy, but as a user who needs to log in to their systems you can still be tracked, even if they can't tell how much money you had on some specific wallet.
bravetraveler 2y ago
You had me until the end. They won't, incentives for everyone involved surpass their greatest dreams or capability. While we're worrying about how money keeps flowing, there are actual adversaries.
wkat4242 2y ago
> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire to actually improve privacy, they'd rather just kill the feature. For me, yes absolutely. > If killing PPA meant the internet would suddenly be advertising free, I would be 110% on board, but that's not going to happen. Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away. The alternative to privacy respecting advertising is the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists today. I'm done playing ball with the ad industry and I have lost all trust in them. They will grab what they want to grab. It will provide less data than the current solutions so the ad industry will just continue with what they have.
tim1994 2y ago
Why do we need tracking for advertising though? I wouldn't mind ads based on the page content (as much). Social media websites know their users anyways, no need IMO to track users across other websites.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
I think the economic problems of the advertising industry shouldn't be of interest to my user agent. On the contrary, technically browsers could have more anti-tracking capabilities and I think even ad fraud is fully permissible. There are problem with the attention economy and a lot of people suffer under it. Artist and journalists come to mind immediately. In the end I am now seriously looking for alternatives to Firefox because I believe that Mozilla has list it in recent times.
JohnFen 2y ago
> actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. What depth is required? PPA means that my browser is doing the spying instead of a third party directly. That's certainly a privacy improvement, but I don't consider it sufficient. "Sufficiently private" is a subjective call. I don't want to be spied on. Whether or not there are technological "privacy preserving" features baked into it doesn't alter that fundamental fact. All that said, this isn't a bad enough move to get me to stop using Firefox, as long as I can keep it disabled. It does mean that I have to view Firefox with suspicion, though. I can't consider the browser to be my "user agent" anymore.
mossTechnician 2y ago
> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private This is a pretty in-depth criticism. https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/ https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-di... Personally, though, I believe the onus is on Mozilla to convince us that PPA is worth the effort, to show us exactly what data gets sent to their servers... Not on the user to explain why something that they, as less technically experienced, might see as various degrees of black box.
tcfhgj 2y ago
I pay the ads they are watching. I am completely against the advertisement business
TwoNineFive 2y ago
> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire to actually improve privacy, they'd rather just kill the feature. PPA does not "preserve" or improve privacy; it only reduces it. Your narrative is a lie. Killing PPA directly increases privacy.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

Why would an ad company ever use this instead of tracking users? Even if it exceeded <5% of users (or whatever Firefox has these days), why not just keep tracking and add this one more data point? It's a little like how "if you aren't paying, you're the product" turned into "if you pay, you're still the product".

adjfasn47573 2y ago
This. I never read any discussion about the obvious question: Who guarantees that enabling Privacy-Preserving Ad Measurement will keep all the other tracking away from me? No one! I've never read anything at all about the thought process behind this. As you said, with current (EU) law and regulations, it's just one more data point. So it's worth nothing.
izacus 2y ago
Because it's easier and because it makes it impossible to make a case for any other kind of tracking under laws like GDPR once this exists.
- dietr1ch 2y ago
  People running ads in paper and public signs should just sue advertisers for anti-competitive tracking technologies as they have no way to compete against that.
cjpearson 2y ago
Well of course it would have to go beyond Firefox to be effective. But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance, then the business case for surveillance-based advertising goes away. This would make it easier for governments and browsers to more aggressively limit surveillance. Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors. The current ad industry can hardly be seen as worse actors than they already are. Yet it doesn't seem to deter them in any way.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance It cannot show that advertising can function without surveillance because PPA is surveillance (with privacy enhancements built in). If it succeeds, it means that surveillance will be even further baked into things.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> I'm holding out hope that Mozilla and others can succeed in developing a truly privacy protecting solution You're holding out for the feature built by former Facebook ad executives, who started the company Mozilla bought [1] to help advertisers get around Apple's ATT [2], to develop a privacy-respecting standard? What you describe can be done. But it would need to happen at a public-interest group, e.g. Wikimedia or noyb. Not an ad seller. [1] 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... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-facebook-execs-launch-startup-adding-to-efforts-to-improve-ad-measurement-cdfd6b3f https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-facebook-execs-launch-st...

cjpearson 2y ago
I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group. It's understandable that Meta's involvement is seen as a red flag, but if you want it to actually happen, part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers. In the end any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers There is a massive difference between cooperating with an advertiser and buying one. > any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors Sure. But when we're discussing hypothetical proposals, track record is all we've got.
  - NoGravitas 2y ago
    The evidence of Google's history shows that when you buy an advertiser, you're being reverse-acquired.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  > I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group It should be but it is in bed with Google and founded by dirty money. I mean, there seem to be some resistance internally, but the leadership seem to be bought.

hulitu 2y ago

> because of the 95% of users who do not use these tools and thus subsidize your browsing We had open source browsers before.

cjpearson 2y ago
They are not subsidizing the browser, but the content you consume through the browser. Firefox is free and will always be free.

raverbashing 2y ago

Honestly yes > To make matters worse, Mozilla has turned on its “privacy preserving attribution” by default. Users have not been informed about this move, nor have they been asked for their consent to be tracked by Firefox. So more privacy by default is bad? What kind of inverted logic is that? > If killing PPA meant the internet would suddenly be advertising free, I would be 110% on board, but that's not going to happen. Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away Obviously At some point, this exagerated antagonism causes more troubles than it solves This is the same logic of people who think rent controls do anything but cause more problems than it "solves"

Cpoll 2y ago
> So more privacy by default is bad? Is this necessarily the case, though? 1. Does this bypass user's cookie blocking measures (e.g. PiHole, ad blockers)? If so, it's reducing those users' privacy and opting them in by default. 2. If the user was previously interacting with GDPR-compliant websites only, is this reducing their privacy? They're not given the opportunity to consent or revoke consent to this collection of their data. 3. What are the implications of a data breach of Mozilla's servers? Would this have a greater negative impact on users' privacy than a breach of a single website?
- raverbashing 2y ago
  > Does this bypass user's cookie blocking measures (e.g. PiHole, ad blockers)? If so, it's reducing those users' privacy and opting them in by default. This is a nonsensical way to act upon this. You don't make collective choices putting the exceptions in front of the general case. 3. well it is not better than most brokers out there right?
  - Cpoll 2y ago
    > exceptions By some (possibly spurious) Google search results, there may be ~900 million ad block users, so not exactly "exceptions." That number seems possible: consider there are 3.5 billion people that use Chrome (i.e. took steps to switch from their default browser, in most cases). > 3. Good point, I admit.

bugtodiffer 2y ago

"Privacy preserving Advertising" is bullshit. Just do context based ads. Oh you're in a car subreddit? Maybe show car ads... instead of hyper personalized diet ads for my fat ass... Advertising is not hard to do without collecting tons of data, it's just a little bit more expensive if you can't target that well. I don't care. Only they care about that.

wkat4242 2y ago
PPA is about attribution. It doesn't determine ad types you're seeing like Google's Topics. What it's for is having an allegedly private way to determine if you actually bought a product based on an ad you've seen. Marketeers love having that data so they can determine if their ads are effective to trigger purchases (called "conversions") I'm not in favour of PPA by the way. I turned it off everywhere. But I just wanted to highlight this.

bigiain 2y ago

> The alternative to privacy respecting advertising is the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists today. That's just not true. TV, newspapers and magazines supported themselves just fine using zero tracking on the advertising they ran. That is still an alternative for websites today. We could shut down every single method of tracking user's actions in a browser, and WidgetCo would still pay to advertise using static ads on the widgetclub.com website with no more privacy invasive data that the webserver page views and the click throughs to their destination urls. Doing that would make _some_ of the forms of advertising polluting the web these days uneconomical, but seeing fewer Temu ads or "sponsored content" or "around the web" blocks filled with scams, conspiracy theories, and political donation begging at the bottom of every page on half the websites is a good outcome not a bad one. The idea that advertisers are owed any more data than that, or that the developers of web browsers need to bend to the will of the surveillance capitalists is insane. Sure, if you choose to run a "free" web browser developed by the DoubleClick advertising company (masquerading as a web search company), then I guess you have to expect the browser to serve that advertising companies interests more than your own. But most of us expect more than that from Mozilla. They are _supposed_ to be on our side.

rlpb 2y ago
> The idea that advertisers are owed any more data than that, or that the developers of web browsers need to bend to the will of the surveillance capitalists is insane. It's a zero sum game. If others are doing it, then their advertising is more effective, the advertising cost per sale is lower, they are more competitive, and so every company is forced to do the same. But if nobody is able to do it, then there will be no great loss for the consumer. Advertisers could argue that the inherent advertising overhead of every product is slightly higher and so consumers would have to pay higher prices. I would argue that this is a reasonable price to pay for privacy across the board, just as we all have to pay for the implementation of regulations that mandate safe products. So we can expect advertisers to push for competitive reasons, but equally if we comprehensively resist so as not to favour competition that isn't similarly restricted, then I agree with you that there is no actual threat to commerce.
- 2y ago

bugtodiffer 2y ago

> subsidize your browsing Well, I do not have the option to pay for a privacy preserving browser, so I don't.

wkat4242 2y ago
https://ladybird.org https://ladybird.org might be an option in the future

Timshel 2y ago

> Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away. Not sure it's as strong as you suggest. I read the recent fight between Youtube vs Addblocker more as a weakness and a bit of hope that it might make YT less user friendly and could help other platforms. > They deserve privacy too. I agree so helps them install blocker and stuff like Consent-O-Matic instead of sneaking in features to help advertiser on their browser ... Using PPA does not bring any privacy unless I missed a meta anouncement that they disable tracking when ppa is activated ?

cjpearson 2y ago
Blocking ads only works because just a small percentage of users block ads. It's a free-rider situation and someone has to pay. If everyone blocks ads then sites will either counter ad blockers or if that's not possible, implement a pay wall.
- Timshel 2y ago
  I'm all for pay walls. Privacy respecting service would finally have a chance.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    The problem for me with paywalls is that you have to give a lot of information in order to pay. So you still don't have privacy.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Maybe services should take Monero. I know some that do.
      - dietr1ch 2y ago
        This protects your wallet's privacy, but as a user who needs to log in to their systems you can still be tracked, even if they can't tell how much money you had on some specific wallet.

bravetraveler 2y ago

You had me until the end. They won't, incentives for everyone involved surpass their greatest dreams or capability. While we're worrying about how money keeps flowing, there are actual adversaries.

wkat4242 2y ago

> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire to actually improve privacy, they'd rather just kill the feature. For me, yes absolutely. > If killing PPA meant the internet would suddenly be advertising free, I would be 110% on board, but that's not going to happen. Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away. The alternative to privacy respecting advertising is the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists today. I'm done playing ball with the ad industry and I have lost all trust in them. They will grab what they want to grab. It will provide less data than the current solutions so the ad industry will just continue with what they have.

tim1994 2y ago

Why do we need tracking for advertising though? I wouldn't mind ads based on the page content (as much). Social media websites know their users anyways, no need IMO to track users across other websites.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

I think the economic problems of the advertising industry shouldn't be of interest to my user agent. On the contrary, technically browsers could have more anti-tracking capabilities and I think even ad fraud is fully permissible. There are problem with the attention economy and a lot of people suffer under it. Artist and journalists come to mind immediately. In the end I am now seriously looking for alternatives to Firefox because I believe that Mozilla has list it in recent times.

JohnFen 2y ago

> actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. What depth is required? PPA means that my browser is doing the spying instead of a third party directly. That's certainly a privacy improvement, but I don't consider it sufficient. "Sufficiently private" is a subjective call. I don't want to be spied on. Whether or not there are technological "privacy preserving" features baked into it doesn't alter that fundamental fact. All that said, this isn't a bad enough move to get me to stop using Firefox, as long as I can keep it disabled. It does mean that I have to view Firefox with suspicion, though. I can't consider the browser to be my "user agent" anymore.

mossTechnician 2y ago

> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private This is a pretty in-depth criticism. https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/ https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-di... Personally, though, I believe the onus is on Mozilla to convince us that PPA is worth the effort, to show us exactly what data gets sent to their servers... Not on the user to explain why something that they, as less technically experienced, might see as various degrees of black box.

tcfhgj 2y ago

I pay the ads they are watching. I am completely against the advertisement business

TwoNineFive 2y ago

> It's unfortunate that almost none of the PPA criticisms actually go into depth on why its implementation isn't sufficiently private. It seems there's no desire to actually improve privacy, they'd rather just kill the feature. PPA does not "preserve" or improve privacy; it only reduces it. Your narrative is a lie. Killing PPA directly increases privacy.