fastcompany.com
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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.”

  • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
    1·
    11 months ago

    Everyone’s up in arms about a literal anonymous counter, but the other option is the current “spy on everything you do”

    How is Mozilla getting flak for this outside of a few hardcore nerds that are welcome to use chrome if they so desire…

    And I say that as a huge privacy advocate. In the local tin foil hat “privacy matters” nerd and I honestly don’t see the problem.

    And quite frankly anyone that’s said it’s a problem has only been able to come up with “it shouldn’t help them count your views “ which is ridiculous, because it’s very anonymous.

    Sooo …. Help me out here, what’s the issue?

    • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
      01·
      11 months ago

      It isn’t anonymous, it’s slightly obscured.

      They use ohttp ( a proxy ) run buy a “partner” they control to do the obscuring.

      That should be part of people’s informed threat modeling. Having a tattle tale in the browser reporting web activity to a third party is a big deal.

      • Vincent@feddit.nl
        0·
        11 months ago

        From what I’ve seen PPA doesn’t depend on OHTTP to do the obscuring. This page mentioned Distributed Aggregation Protocol and differential privacy, that are meant to ensure that it is literally impossible for any one party to see your data. Not just “obscured”, but impossible to access.

        But be sure to let us know what data about us a partner could theoretically view, and how, if you disagree.

  • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

      • heftig@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        This is a nonsense comparison as these features serve completely different purposes, while only having in common that advertisers currently use user tracking to achieve the same.

        Topics data-mines your browsing history for information about your interests and reveals this information to advertisers in order to improve ad selection. It’s meant to replace ad networks tracking each individual user’s visits to connected websites and building that profile themselves. Since this is, in a way, much more powerful than tracking cookies, Chrome has a scary dialog asking for it to be enabled, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing it in Firefox. “Using different links” cannot replace user profiling at all.

        PPA doesn’t provide any new capabilities to advertisers. It’s a privacy-preserving way of measuring ad campaign success that is currently done by ad networks tracking individual users from ad impressions to conversions. “Using different links” is also defective, as advertisers need to connect ad impressions to conversions even if they are not immediately connected through a click on the ad.

        If these features become generally available, this reduces the leverage advertisers have on legislators to prevent tracking from being outlawed. Mozilla will be hoping Chrome picks up PPA.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      01·
      11 months ago

      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?

  • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.

    Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
      0·
      11 months ago

      I mean, go ahead, rethink our digital economics. While we wait for that, what do we do in the meantime?

      (And of note: Mozilla itself has launched several initiatives there as well (example), but none have panned out so far.)

        • Vincent@feddit.nl
          0·
          11 months ago

          Mozilla doesn’t monetise this; the whole point is to change the ecosystem to enable more privacy. It’s not a moneygrab.

            • Vincent@feddit.nl
              0·
              11 months ago

              Tell me, what data about you does anyone get? And why is there no benefit to legitimate advertisers who will be able to know which of their ads have resulted in sales, even if they don’t know anything about you specifically?

              The draw for privacy-invasive ones indeed needs a couple of extra steps, which requires being able to see the long-term vision: having a privacy-friendly alternative available enables both legislators to enact stricter legislation, as well as decrease the incentive to keep engaging in the cat-and-mouse game with browsers, trying to find new way to violate people’s privacy.

                • Vincent@feddit.nl
                  0·
                  11 months ago

                  Sorry, I meant: what data does anyone get through this new capability? Mozilla could always get your IP address and other connection data when e.g. Firefox checks for updates, or add-ons, or safebrowsing lists, etc. Could you name one or two things that are part of “all the advertisement telemetry” that is new?

                  Because advertisers already have better options.

                  Better in the sense that they provide the same information with privacy guarantees that are just as good?

                  Also, why do you need a guaranteed privacy increase? Why would we want to miss “opportunity to get us a future with improved privacy for everyone”?