"No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers" proclaims the Firefox homepage, but that's no longer true in Firefox 128.
Less than a month after acquiring the AdTech company Anonym, Mozilla has added special software co-authored by Meta and built for the advertising industry directly to the latest release
So I read a bit of Mozilla’s documentation about this feature. It sounds like they’re trying to replace the current practices with something safer. Honestly, my first thought is that this is a good thing for two reasons.
If both of these are true, then it could be a net positive for the world. Please tell me if I’m wrong!
Sometimes I just get tired of having to fight against software to have it behave in a semi-decent way. The same way you technically “can” run a decent windows installation after removing/disabling/blocking a ton of stuff, I don’t really want a browser that can be trusted after you had to tinker with dozens of settings to just get back to basic non-intrusive behavior.
I said this in another thread on the same topic somewhere else, but considering user tracking as an inevitability that we have to accept means we’ve already lost on that front.
Wow. I 100% agree with you here.
There’s an element of trust when you buy a product. You trust that the product itself isn’t malicious and is intended to help you in some way. E.g. “This food is safely prepared and won’t poison me.” Harvesting user data and advertising really violate that trust.
Though it is worth noting that we don’t buy web browsers. We simply use them for “free“.
“Our hope is, that if we transfer the bank robber some of our money in advance, they’ll not come in and rob all of it.”
No! Jail the fucker!
While I appreciate your sentiment, this just isn’t realistic in the current state of the world. First, you need to make these kind of tactics illegal enough to incarcerate a person. Second, you need to expand and enforce this law globally. We definitely need this level of global cooperation, but are also soooo far away from achieving it
I mean they don’t have to literally jail advertisers (although I’d love that). I’d agree with hefty fines. Which, while not perfect, several EU laws have shown is possible unilaterally (e.g. Apple allowing third party app stores in the EU, albeit kicking and screaming).
I agree that it’s a mountain to climb, but we sure won’t reach the summit if we walk in the other direction.
The EU is a large enough governing body to have a significant global impact. And I truly appreciate the progress it makes on important subjects.
However, it’s still not effective enough. Apple doesn’t allow third party app stores in countries outside the EU.
The EU can’t “save” the rest of the world alone, true. All I’m saying is it doesn’t necessarily require the entire globe to cooperate to outlaw something just because it’s on the Internet. And that Mozilla scheme won’t save you either.
I agree.
Imagine a world where Chrome doesn’t exist and instead Firefox + privacy preserving attribution is the default for all of the people who won’t listen to your reasons why they shouldn’t use chrome or say “I don’t need privacy, I have nothing to hide”.
It seems like Mozilla is trying to do the browser equivalent of shifting the overton window and I’m for that.
However I’ll be monitoring them very very closely.
Ya this is definitely one to maintain some skepticism about. People are criticizing the API’s security in other posts.
Doesn’t work with total cookie protection anyway.
Exactly. It sounds like Mozilla is trying to protect those that aren’t willing or able to protect themselves. It’s a noble reason to do just a little bit of evil. This is roughly the source of my mixed feelings on the subject.