7 ms·

Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

35 points by brentjanderson 2y ago

cebert 2y ago
It’s too bad they can’t raise enough from donations to avoid this downward spiral.
- debacle 2y ago
  They can and do. Firefox the browser is a tiny part of Mozillas budget.
- Alupis 2y ago
  They most likely had plenty. Instead of leading Mozilla down a couple highly-focused paths, their leadership decided to take every single path, including social issues and more that have nothing to do with technology, web browsers, or the things that make Mozilla money. The worst part is, they half-assed almost all of those distractions too. Today, Mozilla is kind of like those Hollywood Actor memes - doesn't know when to say no and continues to dilute their brand in the process. Mozilla is a flailing, dying beast because of gross negligence. Now, Mozilla says they're going to change online advertising! Yeah, no they're not... more distractions.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- JohnFen 2y ago
  They don't even try to raise donations to support Firefox. As near as I can tell, there's no way to donate if you want to.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Nor do they look for government grants, which I think is part of how LibreOffice gets funded. I think it's irresponsible for a government to expect its citizens to use a web interface when it doesn't officially support any browser which isn't a user-tracking advertising platform.
- endgame 2y ago
  They never even tried. You can donate to the top-level Mozilla Foundation but not to Mozilla Corporation, which makes the browser. People said that this was because it was a for-profit corporation. I say "rubbish" - Thunderbird is maintained by a corporate entity and accepts donations!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
goplayoutside 2y ago
Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company. I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  What about the browser in Linux named Epiphany or sometimes Web? Was installed on a Phosh device of mine and seems ok.
  - bubblesnort 2y ago
    That uses WebKitGTK, which is probably fine. QtWebengine uses blink but that's known to be insecure since Qt can't keep up with upstream (chromium).
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      It's been around for a decade or two so should be mature, probably more than ladybird. Maybe I'll take both for a spin.
  - karel-3d 2y ago
    It's WebKit, so effectively Apple if I'm not wrong
- debacle 2y ago
  What is Ladybird?
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/
EA-3167 2y ago
It's hard to look at this as something other than a trigger for inevitable conflicts of interest, and the same enshittification spiral Google experienced.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > the same enshittification spiral Google experienced This is exactly what comes to my mind. When Google acquired DoubleClick, they positioned it as a net good for everybody in terms of privacy. DoubleClick was notoriously awful in those terms. Google said (and people, including myself, believed) that by owning them, Google can make them into something better. Instead, DoubleClick made Google into something much, much worse. I would love to hear from Mozilla what they're doing to avoid a similar fate.
JohnFen 2y ago
That's all flowery happy-talk, but lurking in the background is the reality that Firefox's main revenue source (Google) is clearly going away and they need to replace it. It seems they've decided to replace it with advertising and everything else is them trying to justify that decision in noble terms. > we do this fully acknowledging our expanded focus on online advertising won’t be embraced by everyone in our community I'm glad that they acknowledge this! And deciding to to something that is unpopular isn't a sin or anything. They can do whatever they like. I'm just a bit saddened that this direction means that my trust level with Mozilla and Firefox has to be greatly reduced. But times change, and often for the worse. Such is life.
- techjamie 2y ago
  I'll acknowledge they're in a tough spot when the CEO isn't taking home a 7 figure salary. What I think is going to end up happening instead is that they're going to run off their base of power users once a good not-Chromium alternative appears, and by then it'll be too late for them to recover.
  - anonymousab 2y ago
    > once a good not-Chromium alternative appears Betting on this not happening is probably a better decision than most of the ones Mozilla has made over the past decade. It could happen but it's really unlikely for anything to be compliant, compatible, and make enough of a dent to last.
lovethevoid 2y ago
Interesting the Mozilla board interpreted "ease off the Google reliance money" to mean "become Google" The core of the problem is really in this very paragraph: > Right now, the tradeoffs people are asked to make online are too significant. Yes, advertising enables free access to most of what the internet provides, but the lack of practical control we all have over how our data is collected and shared is unacceptable. And solutions to this problem that simply rely on handing more of our data to a few gigantic private companies are not really solutions that help the people who use the internet, at all. There is no solution to this. You can't advertise effectively and profitably without personal information. No matter how much you try to chop up and anonymize data, it's still personal and even in the absence of information you can wind up collecting a lot of data about someone (as browser fingerprinting does often times). The more information you have, the more is paid. Not even Apple avoids this, despite their privacy claims, and they too see there's far more money to be made as an ad network than letting Google gobble up the space. But as much as I personally dislike this, my guess will be that this is the most successful (financially) change Mozilla enacts.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I worry that this accepts the premise/the marketing spiel big advertisement is selling. We can't really test the alternatives effectively, without getting an adequate mass of ad buyers and ad sellers to be willing to try un-/less- targeted.
- wmwragg 2y ago
  It used to be completely normal, and profitable, to effectively advertise without personal information. The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such
  - Alupis 2y ago
    > The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...
alexey-salmin 2y ago
I wonder which of the existing nonprofits can have enough weight and trust to pull off a Firefox fork, would be happy to fund it. I donated to Mozilla Foundation for many years but no more.
kstenerud 2y ago
Great... So build an incompatible advertising technology solution on a minority platform (Firefox) that's inferior for advertisers (less juicy data) and not in-line with Google's strategy, and then for some bizarre reason the advertisers will come flocking to it and help the magical fairies at Mozilla "build a better internet"? Just how stupid do they think we are?
WCSTombs 2y ago
Who is Firefox's target user, anyway? Because it seems a lot of what they've been doing mainly drives people away. > We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market. Oh, really? Come on. Nobody is applauding this. I get it, Firefox users aren't customers, so they are the product. But repeatedly sabotaging their product with these constant blunders doesn't seem like a good strategy.
deafpolygon 2y ago
The milk has run dry at the Mozilla teat, so now they need to wring blood from stone.

cebert 2y ago

It’s too bad they can’t raise enough from donations to avoid this downward spiral.

debacle 2y ago
They can and do. Firefox the browser is a tiny part of Mozillas budget.
Alupis 2y ago
They most likely had plenty. Instead of leading Mozilla down a couple highly-focused paths, their leadership decided to take every single path, including social issues and more that have nothing to do with technology, web browsers, or the things that make Mozilla money. The worst part is, they half-assed almost all of those distractions too. Today, Mozilla is kind of like those Hollywood Actor memes - doesn't know when to say no and continues to dilute their brand in the process. Mozilla is a flailing, dying beast because of gross negligence. Now, Mozilla says they're going to change online advertising! Yeah, no they're not... more distractions.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
JohnFen 2y ago
They don't even try to raise donations to support Firefox. As near as I can tell, there's no way to donate if you want to.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Nor do they look for government grants, which I think is part of how LibreOffice gets funded. I think it's irresponsible for a government to expect its citizens to use a web interface when it doesn't officially support any browser which isn't a user-tracking advertising platform.
endgame 2y ago
They never even tried. You can donate to the top-level Mozilla Foundation but not to Mozilla Corporation, which makes the browser. People said that this was because it was a for-profit corporation. I say "rubbish" - Thunderbird is maintained by a corporate entity and accepts donations!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

goplayoutside 2y ago

Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company. I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

mixmastamyk 2y ago
What about the browser in Linux named Epiphany or sometimes Web? Was installed on a Phosh device of mine and seems ok.
- bubblesnort 2y ago
  That uses WebKitGTK, which is probably fine. QtWebengine uses blink but that's known to be insecure since Qt can't keep up with upstream (chromium).
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    It's been around for a decade or two so should be mature, probably more than ladybird. Maybe I'll take both for a spin.
- karel-3d 2y ago
  It's WebKit, so effectively Apple if I'm not wrong
debacle 2y ago
What is Ladybird?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/

EA-3167 2y ago

It's hard to look at this as something other than a trigger for inevitable conflicts of interest, and the same enshittification spiral Google experienced.

JohnFen 2y ago
> the same enshittification spiral Google experienced This is exactly what comes to my mind. When Google acquired DoubleClick, they positioned it as a net good for everybody in terms of privacy. DoubleClick was notoriously awful in those terms. Google said (and people, including myself, believed) that by owning them, Google can make them into something better. Instead, DoubleClick made Google into something much, much worse. I would love to hear from Mozilla what they're doing to avoid a similar fate.

JohnFen 2y ago

That's all flowery happy-talk, but lurking in the background is the reality that Firefox's main revenue source (Google) is clearly going away and they need to replace it. It seems they've decided to replace it with advertising and everything else is them trying to justify that decision in noble terms. > we do this fully acknowledging our expanded focus on online advertising won’t be embraced by everyone in our community I'm glad that they acknowledge this! And deciding to to something that is unpopular isn't a sin or anything. They can do whatever they like. I'm just a bit saddened that this direction means that my trust level with Mozilla and Firefox has to be greatly reduced. But times change, and often for the worse. Such is life.

techjamie 2y ago
I'll acknowledge they're in a tough spot when the CEO isn't taking home a 7 figure salary. What I think is going to end up happening instead is that they're going to run off their base of power users once a good not-Chromium alternative appears, and by then it'll be too late for them to recover.
- anonymousab 2y ago
  > once a good not-Chromium alternative appears Betting on this not happening is probably a better decision than most of the ones Mozilla has made over the past decade. It could happen but it's really unlikely for anything to be compliant, compatible, and make enough of a dent to last.

lovethevoid 2y ago

Interesting the Mozilla board interpreted "ease off the Google reliance money" to mean "become Google" The core of the problem is really in this very paragraph: > Right now, the tradeoffs people are asked to make online are too significant. Yes, advertising enables free access to most of what the internet provides, but the lack of practical control we all have over how our data is collected and shared is unacceptable. And solutions to this problem that simply rely on handing more of our data to a few gigantic private companies are not really solutions that help the people who use the internet, at all. There is no solution to this. You can't advertise effectively and profitably without personal information. No matter how much you try to chop up and anonymize data, it's still personal and even in the absence of information you can wind up collecting a lot of data about someone (as browser fingerprinting does often times). The more information you have, the more is paid. Not even Apple avoids this, despite their privacy claims, and they too see there's far more money to be made as an ad network than letting Google gobble up the space. But as much as I personally dislike this, my guess will be that this is the most successful (financially) change Mozilla enacts.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I worry that this accepts the premise/the marketing spiel big advertisement is selling. We can't really test the alternatives effectively, without getting an adequate mass of ad buyers and ad sellers to be willing to try un-/less- targeted.
wmwragg 2y ago
It used to be completely normal, and profitable, to effectively advertise without personal information. The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such
- Alupis 2y ago
  > The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...

alexey-salmin 2y ago

I wonder which of the existing nonprofits can have enough weight and trust to pull off a Firefox fork, would be happy to fund it. I donated to Mozilla Foundation for many years but no more.

kstenerud 2y ago

Great... So build an incompatible advertising technology solution on a minority platform (Firefox) that's inferior for advertisers (less juicy data) and not in-line with Google's strategy, and then for some bizarre reason the advertisers will come flocking to it and help the magical fairies at Mozilla "build a better internet"? Just how stupid do they think we are?

WCSTombs 2y ago

Who is Firefox's target user, anyway? Because it seems a lot of what they've been doing mainly drives people away. > We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market. Oh, really? Come on. Nobody is applauding this. I get it, Firefox users aren't customers, so they are the product. But repeatedly sabotaging their product with these constant blunders doesn't seem like a good strategy.

deafpolygon 2y ago

The milk has run dry at the Mozilla teat, so now they need to wring blood from stone.