- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
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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Getting shot in the feet is technically better than getting shot in the stomach, but is still a bad option.
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.
Please argue how removing all (non-voluntary) advertising from society right now would do anything other than vastly improve society, and keep calling people like me idealists.
All ad supported services would need to move to a paid only model, locking out those who couldn't afford to pay.
Or profit margins could just go down. I don't know why you treat those two concepts as mutually exclusive; it's been shown that even with expensive products companies will still mine massive amounts of user data and advertise to you endlessly. These parasites aren't going to turn down extra profit at any avenue, no matter how legally, morally, or ethically questionable.
Wrong.
Not an idealist, I'm not even mad, just calling out the hypocrisy because Mozilla did this quietly, not telling us at all.
"I'm doing this for your benefit, but I'm not telling you about it", where have we heard that before?
Save me from people "doing things for my benefit".
Just so funny how you blatantly mis-charaterize this, even using pejoratives to label people who dislike Mozilla's arguably adversarial approach.
And frankly, they had a chance to develop a fair balance over 20 years ago, and chose to say "fuck all the users" instead. And the website owners keep repeating this. Ok, fine, I will never stop blocking ads - they chose this battleground, not me.
To take your approach to making arguments: how's the taste of boot today?
Many of the non-pragmatists also see this as somehow leaking information about you to advertisers though, rather than only working together with advertisers in the first place. But nobody has been able to mention what an advertiser would be able to know about me.
(Yes, yes, there are also people for whom it is only about working together with advertisers - I'm not talking about you, so no need to let us know.)
It's not that the ad issue isn't going to be solved, it's that ads are here now and we have to deal with them.
They are going to be replaced by direct micro-payments eventually but the puzzle pieces have been slow to get into place (also Google and the whole ad industry haven't been cooperating for obvious reasons).
One of the major hurdles was the [in]ability to make online payments of a fraction of a cent but the digital Euro aims to make that possible (among other things).
With that and support for direct micropayments implemented in the browser we'll be able to give a web page owner that fraction of a cent they get from ads now but only IF we want to, and when we do that we cut out all the ad industry as middlemen.
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.
