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Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Testing for a New Era of Privacy in Digital Advertising (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 3 months ago by Vincent@feddit.nl to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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An update on Mozilla's PPA experiment and how it protects user privacy while testing cutting edge technologies to improve the open web.

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[–] LWD@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Mozilla is really going for a "third time's the charm" approach on collecting extra data, aren't they.

First they silently started sucking up extra user data without consent and without warning, something not even Google attempted.

Then, they got caught, and took to Reddit to paternalistically explain why they knew better than the user, and why a consent dialog would be confusing.

And now, over a month after the initial reports come out, Mozilla triples down. What a stupid, stupid, stupid decision.

Advertisement is a business. It's not charity and it's not a publicly owned resource. It doesn't keep the Internet free, because it makes a boat load of money doing what it does. It doesn't take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you.

Either advertisement works, and you pay for your content by being psychologically manipulated into paying more than you otherwise would on things you don't need, or it doesn't, and businesses pay for ineffective advertisement, leading to increased prices.

Advertisement is not free. It's a trick that looks free if you ignore the entire way it functions.

- commodoreboxer

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 4 points 3 months ago

It's just more communication about the same thing. Started out with just a mention in the release notes and a checkbox in the settings, which clearly wasn't enough (hence your calling it "silently"), then a more elaborate response on Reddit, and now this more detailed blog post outside of Reddit's walled garden. And I'm sure it's not the last we'll hear of it. (I'd be curious about the experiment's results too, for example.)

[–] unskilled5117@feddit.org -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Advertisement is not free. It's a trick that looks free if you ignore the entire way it functions.

It doesn't take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you.

I think thats kind of obvious that the money has to be coming from somewhere. The ads are what funds large parts of the internet. Someone is paying for it, either the people buying stuff because of the ads or the businesses buying the ads.

Whichever way it is, maybe both, it has the side effect of distributing the cost of the Internet. The alternative without ads would be everyone paying for every little thing on the internet, does anyone think, that that scenario is realistic? That would also mean the cost is solely on the people and nothing coming from corporations.