Technology

We’ve been collaborating with Meta on this, because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers, and designing something that Mozilla and Meta are simultaneously happy with is a good indicator we’ve hit the mark.

Oh, truly? Facebook happy with something that somehow respects people's privacy and integrity? Perhaps instead it just shows that Mozilla is slipping. Because they have been, and at this rate it seems like they won't stop. Sad to see.

There is a toggle to turn it off because some people object to advertising irrespective of the privacy properties, and we support people configuring their browser however they choose.

That's not good enough. If this thing needs to be present, the option should be there to toggle on, not off. I don't opt-in to privacy in my bathroom or bedroom, the privacy is mine by default. I don't have to announce to the world that I don't want it peeking in.

it's hilarious that they basically accused their entire user base of being too dumb to understand, so that's why they didn't say anything about it, while simultaneously thinking this wouldn't explode in their faces. which was S-tier fucking dumb.

anyway, as others have said: librewolf ftw

because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers

No.

It's, by the way, one thing every child should be taught to say, and traditionally an important part of one's upbringing, and one strongly eroded in the last 20 years.

Simultaneously to that various people with strength are putting before us sets of false choices all leading to the same result, and we pick "the lesser evil" only to avoid saying "no".

We don't owe advertisers shit. They can go fuck themselves with a dry aspen stick. We don't owe Facebook shit. They can go swim in sewers. We don't owe Mozilla shit. They can go milk bulls.

Just no and nothing in exchange for something we don't owe them.

1. Rather than fighting against ad-tech , they're caving. If someone comes into your house to punch you and rob you everyday, do you say "let's find a solution that we're both happy with, how about you rob me and don't punch me?"

2. We could have argued about how privacy-protecting this is, and whether it will actually prevent further intrusive tracking. Perhaps I might be persuaded to keep it. But the fact that I wasn't informed about being opted in when upgrading, and the fact that the CTO is doubling down on "users are too stupid to understand this", means they've lost any trust and/or willingness for me to listen to them. Turning this off for good.

in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win

Fuck off with that defeatist shit Mozilla, don't decide for us.

Digital advertising is not going away, but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get it right. A truly private attribution mechanism would make it viable for businesses to stop tracking people, and enable browsers and regulators to clamp down much more aggressively on those that continue to do so.

Dear CTO,

What makes you think that advertisers would drop any existing privacy intrusion software just because you just gave them another, less useful data set on top of what they already collect? For them, more data means better targetting which in turn means more profit. Do you expect those people to suddenly stop profiling everyone and make less profit out of the goodness of their heart? Well, then you are probably heading for a big surprise.

librewolf ftw

I'm impressed this person was able to type all of that with Meta's giant dick in their mouth.

Ugh, you were supposed to be the chosen one!

Much has been said about this already, but I'm really annoyed how they repeatedly try to twist this into a technical question like:

"This is better for privacy than how it used to be. Here are 20 reasons why, and we have good scientists who say it offers good privacy. Do you have any technical arguments against these privacy claims? We welcome a discussion about possible flaws in the reasoning of the scientists/engineers in terms of assuring privacy."

To me, that is a secondary question. More important:

• Don't introduce tracking features against my will, with only an opt-out (ironically, while explaining in the same post why opt-outs suck)
• Give room to a discussion about tracking-based advertisements, whether we want to have that in the internet (IMHO no) and support it in firefox of all browsers (IMHO no)
• If they go this way, who is supposed to continue using their shit browser after this? The only reason left is that it's "the reliable other/good browser". People who don't care about these questions are using Chrome anyway.

This is such a self-destructive move, it's painful to watch.

Wow, I have been a firefox user for years. I wasn't even considering switching, even after the changes, until I saw this.

Hope the check was fucking worth it, you're dead to me firefox.