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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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[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 0 points 3 months ago (7 children)

This entire thing is just idealism vs pragmatism for the trillionth time. The idealists are mad because they think all ads are bad and we shouldn't try to work with advertisers in any capacity. They do not believe reducing the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach, because that would be an acknowledgement of ads. Common talking points there are about how this is technically working with advertisers and how the internet shouldn't have ads in the first place.

The pragmatics also think ads are bad, but believe that an Internet without ads is very unlikely to happen, so they believe attempting to reduce the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach. Common talking points there are about how this isn't giving advertisers anything they don't already have and about how this doesn't matter if you're using an adblocker.

Like all other debates of this type, this probably isn't ever going to be resolved to anyone's satisfaction and we've really just been seeing the same talking points over and over again since the beginning. So I hope y'all have fun duking it out, I don't think I'm gonna bother looking at these pointless PPA threads anymore.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As a privacy enthusiast and pragmatist, I see Firefox as providing no additional benefit to users or advertisers. Considering the laughably small market share of Firefox, I'm not sure how it is expected to woo advertisers over either.

Which of these options look more robust: Google Topics, Mozilla PPA, or advertisers doing AB testing on their own by simply using different links for different audiences?

Method:	PPA	Topics	Using different links
Corporate creator	Facebook	Google	-
Needs users to trust 3rd party?	Yes (Mozilla)	Yes (Google)	No
~% browsers it works on	<3%	>60%	100%
Guaranteed privacy increase?	No	No	No

If you trust the advertiser, they can do it on their own. If you don't trust the advertiser, then the additional third party does nothing.

[–] heftig@beehaw.org -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

This is a nonsense comparison as these features serve completely different purposes, while only having in common that advertisers currently use user tracking to achieve the same.

Topics data-mines your browsing history for information about your interests and reveals this information to advertisers in order to improve ad selection. It's meant to replace ad networks tracking each individual user's visits to connected websites and building that profile themselves. Since this is, in a way, much more powerful than tracking cookies, Chrome has a scary dialog asking for it to be enabled, and I don't think we'll be seeing it in Firefox. "Using different links" cannot replace user profiling at all.

PPA doesn't provide any new capabilities to advertisers. It's a privacy-preserving way of measuring ad campaign success that is currently done by ad networks tracking individual users from ad impressions to conversions. "Using different links" is also defective, as advertisers need to connect ad impressions to conversions even if they are not immediately connected through a click on the ad.

If these features become generally available, this reduces the leverage advertisers have on legislators to prevent tracking from being outlawed. Mozilla will be hoping Chrome picks up PPA.

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[–] ArbiterXero@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Everyone’s up in arms about a literal anonymous counter, but the other option is the current “spy on everything you do”

How is Mozilla getting flak for this outside of a few hardcore nerds that are welcome to use chrome if they so desire…

And I say that as a huge privacy advocate. In the local tin foil hat “privacy matters” nerd and I honestly don’t see the problem.

And quite frankly anyone that’s said it’s a problem has only been able to come up with “it shouldn’t help them count your views “ which is ridiculous, because it’s very anonymous.

Sooo …. Help me out here, what’s the issue?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It isn't anonymous, it's slightly obscured.

They use ohttp ( a proxy ) run buy a "partner" they control to do the obscuring.

That should be part of people's informed threat modeling. Having a tattle tale in the browser reporting web activity to a third party is a big deal.

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

From what I've seen PPA doesn't depend on OHTTP to do the obscuring. This page mentioned Distributed Aggregation Protocol and differential privacy, that are meant to ensure that it is literally impossible for any one party to see your data. Not just "obscured", but impossible to access.

But be sure to let us know what data about us a partner could theoretically view, and how, if you disagree.

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[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al -1 points 3 months ago (10 children)

There's a lot of people that trust the privacy guides website and yet the founder is just spewing emotional bullshit that's not even grounded in facts. A bunch of smart people can see the benefit to the average end user and then Jonah is putting out bullshit. I'm disappointed in him and privacy guides.

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