this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024

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EFF Says Mozilla's PPA is better than Google's Solution (www.fastcompany.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by astro_ray@lemdro.id to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @FastCompany@flipboard.com. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.”

https://mastodon.social/@eff/112922761259324925

Privacy experts say the new toggle is mostly harmless, but Firefox users saw it as a betrayal.

“They made this technology for advertisers, specifically,” says Jonah Aragon, founder of the Privacy Guides website. “There’s no direct benefit to the user in creating this. It’s software that only serves a party other than the user.”

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[–] Melody@lemmy.one 1 points 3 months ago

The problem with PPA wasn't anything to do with the method it uses. Given enough announcement, discourse and investigation by the community; it's entirely possible that users in general would have accepted it.

However; Mozilla did something very wrong by deploying this without asking the greater community. Point blank. That's not good faith; and that did not allow for the community to go over the code and suggest fixes and express their concerns with how it works.

Instead Mozilla took the lead and decided it will exist; quietly. Without consulting the community. Given that this is how most companies turn selfish, that alarms MANY people who are knowledgeable about how Mozilla typically operates, and it undermines public trust in Mozilla.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Your title has your title has a grammatical error

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago (5 children)

The biggest issue I have with this is that it is opt out

[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Other big issue is they didn't consult the Open source community. They could've been just straight with us and told us that donations aren't cutting it and then community as a whole could've come up with something to monetize. And even if it ends up being advertising they could've worked with community to implement in such a way that it would respect the try reason why most people switch to Firefox to escape Google's surveillance. And maybe I can stop daydreaming about an utopia

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[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.

Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.

[–] MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 months ago

Typical. You post a reasonable response and get a bunch of ad-pilled shit takes:

"But will you eat shit if I put a little chocolate on it?"

"If you don't eat shit, you don't deserve to ~~interact with the internet~~ eat."

"Maybe if you pay them a little money, they'll stop trying to serve you shit?"

Advertisers contribute nothing of value to our society and contribute little of value to even the companies they serve. Let them burn. Every action they take to "serve" me ads will be met with an equal counteraction.

We deserve to live a life without being constantly bombarded with messages telling us to buy, buy, buy! This significantly decreases our quality of life and is endemic within our entire society. What the hell are all of you who defend advertisers thinking?

Give them an inch and they will take a mile. It definitely won't be the first time.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I mean, go ahead, rethink our digital economics. While we wait for that, what do we do in the meantime?

(And of note: Mozilla itself has launched several initiatives there as well (example), but none have panned out so far.)

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah it couldn’t happen overnight. I feel like ad blocking is a better solution to invest in up until that point however. We don’t need to enable advertisers.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I would support something like this. Or something like what brave does. Or something like GNU Taler.

Pretty much anything but sending extra tracking data out.

I feel a little worried that I'm not even sure how Mozilla could monetize this. At least when Brave does its ads, people know how Brave makes their cut.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mozilla doesn't monetise this; the whole point is to change the ecosystem to enable more privacy. It's not a moneygrab.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago (18 children)

Okay, so the end result is a privacy drain for users, extra data that Mozilla slurps up but somehow does not benefit from, no benefit to legitimate advertisers (versus a/b url testing), and no draw for privacy invasive ones.

Then WTF

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[–] brb@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I still don't understand what's so bad about this. Isn't it a good thing for people not using adblocker and changes nothing for adblock users?

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The problem is that they auto-opted all users into it, without giving notice or warning about what it is. They've done this before too with other "experiments". The problem is that Mozilla becoming an ad oriented business is bad for user privacy. No different to Apple's shift from hardware to services. The fox is infiltrating the hen house. Line must go up, and the users always pay the price for that with their data.

Turns out a user base who hates ad tech and surveillance capitalism doesn't want ad-tech or surveillance embedded in their browser. Who would've thought?

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