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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

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Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#491

Post by warent »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #220
JKCalhoun wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25-33% of requests? Or is this a percentage of bytes? Because I wonder what percentage of bandwidth (in terms of bytes) trackers/banners/ads account for. Need to set up a pi-hole ... just too many other projects....

I set it up recently. It's about as much effort as buying and setting up a new laptop with ubuntu if you get a kit. I'd imagined it as a project beforehand, but in reality it's super easy and trivial (assuming you're comfortable using linux and ssh at a noob level).

Yep same. I'm a mere web developer that mostly works on Mac. Getting Pihole setup only took me like an afternoon after having an RPi sitting around doing nothing for months. They make it really easy, just follow the instructions. Also I'm lucky enough that my router has a friendly interface where it's easy to set the router DNS to pihole.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#492

Post by ogre_codes »

monopoledance wrote: post #490
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

Advertising destroys everything. If something is based on ad revenue, it goes to shit ultimately. The latest casualty was podcasts. It's revolting. Ad-based businesses need to be boycotted until this disease is in lasting remission.

> The latest casualty was podcasts. It's revolting.

Hmm?

Yes, there are adverts on all the podcasts I listen to. Many of my favorites offer members only ad-free versions. Usually I suffer through the ad supported versions because the adverts are easy enough to skip.

Some podcasts have too many adverts or annoyingly inserted advertising. Those are pretty 1 and done. No point listening to them.

IMO the (current) podcast market is a good example of how we can enjoy content and know the producers are compensated without having to deal with obtrusive marketing crap.

It is getting clear some podcasting is getting sucked into things like Spotify, but there is still enough good content I don't think it's a problem.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#493

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

adrr wrote: post #453
mola wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want adds. how do you infer that people want ads because the ad industry is profitable? It's profitable because a few people want to influence and spy on a lot of people. Most people don't want ads they just tolerate them for getting actual services. Most these people don't even know how much tracking is involved and how nefarious this industry really is.

Why do they work? Why can I go start a business and scale it to millions of paying customers by using ads?

Because you’re infecting people with mind-viruses to force them to buy your crap. Advertising is about exploiting human psychology, taking advantage of people with weak impulse control, and outright lying.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#494

Post by ogre_codes »

kmeisthax wrote: post #167
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

I'm going to be inevitable in the opposite direction: I don't think cross-domain requests were actually saving that much bandwidth. The common use case I could think of that would be JavaScript CDNs. The problem with that is that JS libraries update frequently - even something really common like jQuery has hundreds of releases, all of which get their own separately-cached URL. So the chance of two sites using the sam…

Mozilla ran the numbers and it's not a huge penalty.

It's just frustrating that it's one more optimization that is getting turned off. And makes the internet just a tiny bit worse as a result. It's like death by a thousand cuts.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#495

Post by Griffinsauce »

ogre_codes wrote: post #440
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, there is no such thing as an “ethical ad”. You are trying to steal my attention, my time. You don’t get to do that. My time on Earth is limited and you don’t get a millisecond of it if I can help it. If I want to buy something, I seek it out. Anything else is a waste of my time and a waste of the advertisers money. I long ago decided to throw out every piece of physical ad mail I receive without even glancing…

I'm pretty frustrated by advertising too, and some of it is particularly egregious, but at the moment, there is really no other way for many publishers to get paid. I'm curious, how many services do you subscribe to and pay for content? I pay for a few ad free resources, but certainly a lot of the sites I enjoy don't get my $$.

Just as an example: I read some dev newsletters, they include a block of paid-for job postings. Highly relevant with the content. Together with the occasional sponsored post link (also still relevant content) this appears to fund them just fine.

This isn't "ad free" but it's close enough in my opinion. There's a huge gulf between contextually relevant content curated by the creators and the kind of shite that ad networks push.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#496

Post by sib »

shakna wrote: post #318
daotoad wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people being so negative about this? If the terms whitelist/blacklist are hurtful to some people because of all the racial baggage we've applied to the words white and black, why not switch to allow/deny instead? Using allow/deny is more explicit and doesn't rely on the benign cultural associations with the colors black and white. The choice of colors used here is arbitrary. For example, one could just as eas…

Whitelist/blacklist have their origins in terms from the 1400s and nothing to do with race (they have to do with criminality). Twisting their etymology to fit some kind of racial bias is sort of weird. And throwing aside 600 years of clarity for "basic manners" also seems rather weird. Sort of like banning the word "engender" because a small minority might find that to be offensive. It isn't clearer to use a differen…

For a while, people were getting in trouble for using the word, "niggardly," even though it had nothing to do with the offensive term that it sounds like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#497

Post by JoshTriplett »

silentsea90 wrote: post #473
JoshTriplett wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge money, either directly for the content, or indirectly in the form of patronage or a service or other business you run.

Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads. I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting. I can see a decentralized crypto application evolving around this usecase

> Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads.

Payment from one user produces more revenue than showing ads to hundreds of users. That should be multiplied in to any analysis of friction.

> I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting.

There have been many attempts to do that, none of which have succeeded. One major problem: they tend to track all your web activity, and the kinds of people interested in services like this are very much the kinds of people who don't want to be tracked. Another problem: it's easier to convince people to pay for a specific source of content than to amorphously pay for "various content".

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#498

Post by at-fates-hands »

grishka wrote: post #204
andai wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some pages don't let you "Reject All" cookies, you have to uncheck them one by one, and there's literally hundreds of ad networks listed. It's spooky, I tell ya!

Use your browser settings to block third-party cookies altogether. And, better yet, install uBlock Origin and never see an ad again.

Unless you get the pop-up from the site that says, "We see you're using an ad blocker. You need to turn it off in order to access our site."

Along with some marketing drivel about how its important advertisers get their ad revenue.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#500

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ericholscher wrote: post #187
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

We're trying to build an ad network that doesn't track users: https://www.ethicalads.io/ We talked a little bit about how these ads still work, even without tracking you. You might be losing 10-15% of revenue, but if you never had that revenue to start with, you don't miss it: https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2018/04/ethical-advertising-w... I think the real secret is just to not become dependent on the additive revenu…

I think the big problem in adtech isn't just targeting, it's also fighting ad fraud. Do you have a good plan for when you become big enough to become a target for ad fraud?
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