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From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater tr

by ama729 11y ago

From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.

vdaniuk 11y ago
>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?
- ama729 11y ago
  Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. I don't think putting ads in Firefox will reduce ads on websites.
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    >I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. As I have demonstrated with a simple example, this statement is false. >Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. Your attempt at moving the goalposts is irrelevant. Therefore, your accusation of Mozilla being dishonest with their goals is not supported by your arguments.
    - pgsandstrom 11y ago
      You are interpreting him too literally. What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising.
      - vdaniuk 11y ago
        >What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising Yes. I do not agree with this statement. Mozilla as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as a steward of interests of hundreds of millions of Mozilla products users has diverse and complex interests in the direction of evolution of digital advertising. These interests are not limited to the immediate profits.
      - lmorchard 11y ago
        Mozilla cares about funding itself, yes. But digital advertising is also how most of the web is funded - and Mozilla cares about that, too, because it directly impacts everything else under the Mozilla mission. As a user, you might prefer no ads when asked - but an enormous majority of people have endorsed the ad-supported free-of-charge model on the web through their daily actions. So, practically speaking, we have to find a way to deal with it and make it better.
  - lmorchard 11y ago
    There's no such thing as a free lunch. The way to reduce ads on websites is to pay for websites. But, so far, that's proven less practical and acceptable to users than just putting up with the ads. But, ads are getting annoying and intrusive. So, if we're stuck with ads because folks won't pay, maybe it makes sense to try to make that situation better?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
sayhello 11y ago
Hi, I'm an engineer on the team working on Tiles at Mozilla. It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change the ad industry. The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change. We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is what they need to do to achieve their goals. We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay. That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech. Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built. Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same way they are now. They don't need to be creepy. And you know what? They may not even be ads as you know them today. We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being honest?
- cpeterso 11y ago
  > We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay. How are ads in the browser relevant to websites that depend on ads for their revenue?
  - rfk 11y ago
    It's not hard to imagine how this concept could expand to the web at large. Rather than deciding what ad to display by consulting a user profile built on cross-site history tracking, a site could simply ask the browser for advice on what to show, without the site having to learn anything in particular about the user. Good for the site because they get better advice; good for the user because they get more privacy and control. (I've nothing to do with the team behind this at Mozilla, and have no idea what their roadmap actually is. But it's pretty clear that this is just a first step in a broader version of re-inventing advertising on the web, not a stand-alone attempt to generate a bit more revenue).
lmorchard 11y ago
Unless you personally are paying for everything you're using on the web, you should care about the state of digital advertising.

by ama729 11y ago

vdaniuk 11y ago

>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?

ama729 11y ago
Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. I don't think putting ads in Firefox will reduce ads on websites.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  >I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. As I have demonstrated with a simple example, this statement is false. >Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. Your attempt at moving the goalposts is irrelevant. Therefore, your accusation of Mozilla being dishonest with their goals is not supported by your arguments.
  - pgsandstrom 11y ago
    You are interpreting him too literally. What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising.
    - vdaniuk 11y ago
      >What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising Yes. I do not agree with this statement. Mozilla as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as a steward of interests of hundreds of millions of Mozilla products users has diverse and complex interests in the direction of evolution of digital advertising. These interests are not limited to the immediate profits.
    - lmorchard 11y ago
      Mozilla cares about funding itself, yes. But digital advertising is also how most of the web is funded - and Mozilla cares about that, too, because it directly impacts everything else under the Mozilla mission. As a user, you might prefer no ads when asked - but an enormous majority of people have endorsed the ad-supported free-of-charge model on the web through their daily actions. So, practically speaking, we have to find a way to deal with it and make it better.
- lmorchard 11y ago
  There's no such thing as a free lunch. The way to reduce ads on websites is to pay for websites. But, so far, that's proven less practical and acceptable to users than just putting up with the ads. But, ads are getting annoying and intrusive. So, if we're stuck with ads because folks won't pay, maybe it makes sense to try to make that situation better?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

sayhello 11y ago

Hi, I'm an engineer on the team working on Tiles at Mozilla. It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change the ad industry. The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change. We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is what they need to do to achieve their goals. We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay. That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech. Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built. Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same way they are now. They don't need to be creepy. And you know what? They may not even be ads as you know them today. We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being honest?

cpeterso 11y ago
> We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay. How are ads in the browser relevant to websites that depend on ads for their revenue?
- rfk 11y ago
  It's not hard to imagine how this concept could expand to the web at large. Rather than deciding what ad to display by consulting a user profile built on cross-site history tracking, a site could simply ask the browser for advice on what to show, without the site having to learn anything in particular about the user. Good for the site because they get better advice; good for the user because they get more privacy and control. (I've nothing to do with the team behind this at Mozilla, and have no idea what their roadmap actually is. But it's pretty clear that this is just a first step in a broader version of re-inventing advertising on the web, not a stand-alone attempt to generate a bit more revenue).

lmorchard 11y ago

Unless you personally are paying for everything you're using on the web, you should care about the state of digital advertising.