Improving online advertising through product and infrastructure | The Mozilla Blog
blog.mozilla.org
LAURA CHAMBERS, CEO, MOZILLA CORPORATION As Mark shared in his blog, Mozilla is going to be more active in digital advertising. Our hypothesis is that we n

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/23894598

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

    • parpol@programming.dev
      824·
      3 months ago

      Also disingeneous to call it adding ads to firefox, because that’s also not what is happening. They’re trying to replace cookies with something better for our privacy, and them developing this feature will not impact any users who block ads or disable tracking cookies already.

      I think they should go ahead and make the feature so that people who don’t care about ads at least don’t get tracked.

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
        167·
        3 months ago

        They are not trying to “replace” cookies. This is effectively adding yet another way to track users. Sure, may not be as invasive as cookies, but this does nothing to remove or modify them either.

        Then there’s the fact thay they deployed this behind the scenes and did not mention it until they were called out.

        This comment alone:

        “As part of this work, we are also committing to being transparent and open about our intent and plans prior to launching tests or features.”

        … means they have no intention to be honest about shit.

        • parpol@programming.dev
          141·
          3 months ago

          It doesn’t track users. It collects anonymous statistics and assign them to a unique ID without storing any other information about the user.

          And it IS meant to replace cookies, but you can’t just replace them all at once and disable the legacy cookies. It is going to have a gradual transition.

          And they did tell us about this many months ago.

          • tiddy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            131·
            3 months ago

            I hate to say but technically collecting statistics is non-anonymous identifiable tracking, especially in this age where theres so many datasets companies can coorelate them to

          • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
            82·
            3 months ago

            Hahaha, because data can never be de-anonymised, right?

            Oh, yea, that’s repeatedly been show to not be true.

            • parpol@programming.dev
              12·
              3 months ago

              That depends entirely on what kind of data is stored and how often a new unique ID is created, and that’s something users can seize control over.

          • underisk@lemmy.ml
            1·
            3 months ago

            It tracks anonymous statistics, without my express consent, for the benefit of a third party. I do not care if it exists to replace cookies, because I’m not even convinced that cookies need to exist at all anymore. What utility do they provide to the actual person using the browser that can’t be accomplished through some other more modern API? If the only functionality left to replace is tracking people then maybe just deprecate them and move on.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
          51·
          3 months ago

          Didn’t we go through all this like a month ago?

          Why are people still excusing Mozilla for this?

          • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
            3·
            3 months ago

            Right? They’ve done some good stuff over the years, but that does not eliminate the fact that they have chosen to be part of all the enshitification going on.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        2·
        3 months ago

        disingeneous to call it adding ads

        Who called it adding

    • pipariturbiini@sopuli.xyz
      695·
      3 months ago

      I dislike ads as much as the next person, and find uBlock Origin necessary for browsing the web, but the cold fact is that the internet is run with advertising, whether you like it or not.

      If that is done without creating a profile on me, and without crippling the reading/viewing experience, I can tolerate advertisement.

      I assume this is also an action towards becoming independent from Google funding; which is a good thing.

      • mnmalst@lemmy.zip
        213·
        3 months ago

        Happy to see some sane comments here. Couldn’t have said it better. You can hate ads and still keep a foot in reality.

      • kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        91·
        3 months ago

        I absolute despise ads but they are a necessary evil, it can be implemented well if it is not done intrusive and doesn’t take up more space then the content it self. Also if it are mostly scam ads and such they might as well not have ads at all.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
        21·
        3 months ago

        Fuck ads.

        You’re lying to yourself if you think ads will ever be delivered without tracking.

        This whole “anonymization” nonsense is a lie. It’s been shown, repeatedly, that data can be de-anonymised, especially data that’s not exactly narrowly collected.

      • Yi K@lemmy.world
        15·
        3 months ago

        I installed local-network-wide DNS adblockers. After the change my mother found me and asked me why she couldn’t see the ads: she needed the ads and were enjoying them.

        • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
          9·
          3 months ago

          That is fucking epic. I had (not anymore) a similar issue with my wife and ads about shoes and coats. So I allowed all the crap on her devices only on Adguard Home.

          Then her phone died, I gave her mine with GrapheneOS on it,until she could get a new one. The first 2 weeks were a pain: “where’s the playstore?”, “what is this gayscale chrome (Vanadium)?”, “My banking app keeps crashing”, etc. After a while we started spending more time doing things together, she was spending more time with the kids, and was being way more productive in her business.

          Long story short, she kept the phone, I ended up getting a new one, and she even asked me to remove Windows from her computer and set her up with Fedora.

          It’s a habit thing, I think.

          • toastal@lemmy.ml
            31·
            3 months ago

            My partner has slowly been walking away from everything like that too. The hard part is she has done a lot in marketing & now wonders if it is all bullshit/evil, but it is still needed even for the good products & services, just not in deceptive or manipulative manner.

    • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
      7·
      3 months ago

      That’s really nuts to me when I run into it in the wild. It’s so easy and such a qol upgrade. I know a guy who self hosts a bunch of services, programming job, but does not use any ad block at all. He’s on the computer all day. Just looking at ads.

      • refalo@programming.dev
        2·
        3 months ago

        such a qol upgrade

        I don’t think you’re wrong, but I do think that if everyone thought that, they would be doing it already.

        I have routinely tried to get friends and family to use ad-blockers and they simply don’t care enough to even attempt to download one.

      • psud@aussie.zone
        1·
        3 months ago

        I occasionally accidentally open the fandom page for a game on Chrome with no ad block (which I keep around for Google apps) and it’s unusable. Go there on Firefox with ublock origin and it’s fine

        And there’s worse sites than that

        Download sites for things like Minecraft mods have several competing “download” buttons without ad block

        It’s nuts people might accept these, let alone want them

  • fireshell@lemmy.mlEnglish
    61·
    3 months ago

    I can already see a crowd of advertisers running to them for the remaining 3% of its users.

  • BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zipEnglish
    105·
    3 months ago

    Yet another Mozilla hit piece that seemingly-intentionally misrepresents the good they’re doing for users.

    It begs the question: who has the means and motivation to consistently pay “journalists” to malign the only browser that has the slightest chance of tearing any significant amount of users away from chromium-based browsers?

    EDIT: Turns out the answer to my question above might, in fact, be OP! They wrote a patently false, inflammatory title that isn’t supported by the article (or reality) at all, and I fell for it like a sucker.

    • felsiq@lemmy.zip
      9·
      3 months ago

      …did we read two different articles? The only link I see is to Mozilla’s own blog, explaining their choices in a relatively positive way. I’ve seen the effect you pointed out a lot, I just don’t see it here.

      • BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Nope; you read an article, and I just reacted to comments on Lemmy, assuming that those commenting had read the article.

        If I’d simply opened the link, I’d’ve seen it was on mozilla.org and would’ve realized it was just that the OP made a shitty clickbait title, not another Mozilla hit piece.

        Shame on you, OP! Also shame on me.

  • ozoned@lemmy.world
    4·
    3 months ago

    First off, yes, the title of the post is misleading. Mozilla is creating a privacy focused ad system. However, I legit don’t get who this is for.

    As a user, I’m not turning off my adblockers. Yes, privacy is important. I’m ok with some ads, but I’m not going to risk my privacy and security, because it’s not like I’ll have a clue who is backing said ads. So it’s not for me.

    Normal users have shown that they really don’t care, let alone have any kind of clue what’s going on. So it’s not for them.

    Advertisers have huge incentive to show you targeted ads. They don’t want to show someone an ad on the other side of the planet for something they don’t have access to. Also why would they want to show you an ad for something completely unrelated. What’s the incentive for them to give up their targeted ads?

    It’s not like Mozilla is poising themselves for any kind of government oversight. I’m in the US, and the US gov doesn’t seem to give a shit. And the EU, while they have GDPR and they’re fining companies left and right, it doesn’t seem like they’re really targeting these kinds of ads. Outside of those two I don’t know anything about other countries honestly.

    So again, I have zero clue who this is for or why Mozilla thinks this will be successful. There’s no incentive or knowledge that this is needed.

    I use Firefox. I run Linux. I’m not trying to bash Mozilla here. I’m not trying to be a naysayer. I’m just trying to understand what kind of real world use case this solves and incentivizes users and advertises to use it over the alternatives.

    • ozoned@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      Also, WHY should I trust Mozilla with this? I use Firefox because it’s the best alternative at the moment. However, Mozilla is degrading that trust by pushing their weather thing, pocket, turning on their ad network, etc.

      Like a real reason I should trust Mozilla with this. Any company is 1 executive away from becoming Google levels of anti-privacy. So why would I EVER trust this?

  • flappy@lemm.ee
    1313·
    3 months ago

    So banning ublock origin lite from the addon store was malice, after all?

    That means they will drop MV2 as soon as Chrome ends the business/legacy support, since they were the alternative.

    • disguised_doge@kbin.earth
      18·
      3 months ago

      I think the ublock origin lite thing was a legitimate mistake, though I understand Mozilla’s depleting benefit of the doubt.

      • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
        6·
        3 months ago

        THe developer also don’t want to develop uBLock Origin Lite. Mozilla is sucking all energy out of people.

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
          41·
          3 months ago

          of course they don’t want, it’s such an inferior addon that it’s almost useless for privacy. it’s little besides just visually hiding ads. but that’s the best that can be done on chrome

          • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
            3·
            3 months ago

            uh… no… The add-on was also developed for Firefox, which still have Manifest V2. Because of the headache of Mozilla, Hill decided to stop development for Mozilla and only release the latest (signed) add-on via github, without further updates. The developer just makes a statement that it’s getting so worse to develop for Firefox that he just doesn’t do it anymore.

            https://www.ghacks.net/2024/10/01/mozillas-massive-lapse-in-judgement-causes-clash-with-ublock-origin-developer/

            • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              yes, it was made for Firefox too. did I say it wasn’t? but I think there was no real reason for anyone to use it on Firefox.

              • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
                2·
                2 months ago

                Well you said:

                but that’s the best that can be done on chrome

                And I think the best use of such a plugin is actually to use it on Firefox. Since Firefox (or Firefox forks) still support Manifest v2. So actually ad-blocks on Chrome are worse, because Google created Manifest v3, which sounds newer… but it ACTUALLY worse. Manifest v3 basically disallow developer to block ads effectively. Just in the name of kugh kugh ‘privacy’ or ‘security’… Don’t get fooled by Google here!!

                SO please do not use Google Chrome, they are killing ad-blockers by the introduction of Manifest v3. More info: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-ad-blockers/

                • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
                  2·
                  2 months ago

                  I agree with you, I think there might have been a misunderstanding.

                  Well you said:

                  but that’s the best that can be done on chrome

                  that’s true. what I wanted to mean is that I don’t think gorhill really wants to develop that addon (uBO Lite), as I can imagine he’s fed up with the limitations and how little he can do there. I don’t know he’s reason for developing it, though. Maybe as an experiment on what it could still accomplish.

                  And I think the best use of such a plugin is actually to use it on Firefox. Since Firefox (or Firefox forks) still support Manifest v2.

                  I’m a little confused here. we don’t need that plugin on Firefox, because we have the full capability version.

                  SO please do not use Google Chrome

                  I totally agree. That would be a huge downgrade. Not looking back, only forward, for FF forks and whatever the future may bring us.