threeganzi

So you browse the web without css? Now that’s old school!

I’m far from an expert on the topic but from the discussion that I’ve heard it’s also a matter of yield and cost.

What is that supposed to mean?

I find it kind of funny that your shared link url contain tracking parameters.

Yeah, you argument about pragmatism resonates with me. If all tracking was turned off over night that will break a lot of streams of revenue that many businesses/sites online rely on. Those businesses has grown because it has been possible and profitable to track you every step online. That does not mean that system needs to be preserved, or replaced with something similar. Markets adapt, we don’t have to help this business find new ways to make money.

And also, cross-site tracking is not necessary to do advertising, it just make is more cost efficient. I don’t accept the argument that they need my behavior data to have a working business.

Ads in newspapers have worked historically without the tracking. (Newspapers a hard time now though competing with the more profitable online ad business)

Also cookies have other functions aside from tracking your behavior, while this new feature only benefits ad/product analysis, with no direct benefit to the user of the browser. It’s essentially giving away information about my behavior, albeit without telling them who I am. (Indirectly users might benefit from having more ad-supported services online)

But sure, Mozilla is free to do what they want. I still like and use Firefox.

Why should we give advertisers any data at all, I don’t get it? I agree it’s better than how tracking is being done today, but why create a tool to distribute information about my behavior across different sites (yes, anonymized)?

But Mozilla is not in the ad business so why are they appeasing advertisers?

I could see Mozilla thinking advertisers will back off when they give them a more integrity-respecting tool, but my expectation is that advertisers will keep doing what they already do. Because why not?

Either way, distributing reports about my (anonymized) behavior, to advertisers, is still a slight breech of trust.

And even if it’s aggregated and mixed with others to a point of pure anonymity, it’s still a tool to manipulate your behavior on a large scale. I can see others not having a problem with it but I do.

But why appease advertisers, I don’t see the point? The current ad business only exists because it’s been possible to track people. It does not mean it’s impossible to do advertising without it. It’s not like it’s a right for advertisers to know in detail how their ads are performing.

Why wouldn’t Mozilla just disable all tracking? Why do they see any need to give anything back when minimizing another form of tracking?

But what is their incentive to make this feature to begin with? Who is it really for?

Edit: this is more of rhetorical question I guess. To rephrase it a bit to get closer to my point: who is the browser designed for? For the person using the browser? For the website owner? For advertisers?

While I’m not hating on Mozilla it still warrant a discussion.

Won’t they just use both this new feature and the classic way of tracking you, now having more data than before.

Wow, that is sad.

Isn’t this the opposite of global news?