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Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

blog.mozilla.org

51–60 of 201 posts

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as "we're protecting your privacy by increasing the number of people who can monitor your activity on our browser." Presumably, the users will be well-endowed and tax-advantaged institutions who could have just bought the information from data-aggregators anyway. I'm starting to see a theme of papering over their technology products with a lot of modern art and hyperbolic language. "Computer scientists, soc…

> Presumably, the users will be well-endowed and tax-advantaged institutions who could have just bought the information from data-aggregators anyway. Nope. This is an important point: the type of crowdsourced science that Rally enables is something that researchers couldn't do before. (With the exception of a very small number of teams who made massive investments in building single-purpose crowdsourcing infrastructu…

Princeton can't buy data from aggregators? Wikipedia says they have a $26.6B endowment.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odds are its funded by whomever is doing the study and is unrelated the browser at all.

If that is the case then it should be done as an extension. And why would Mozilla use its brand capital on this?

It is an extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-rally...

https://github.com/mozilla-rally/rally-core-addon/

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#54
post #16

It's not easy to understand, especially from the blog post alone, but as far as I understand it, the proposition is the following: Big companies have the ability to do research on users all the time, either by doing anonymous studies or by tracking you for their ad networks. This is a luxury many researchers that work outside of these big tech companies don't have, which creates a scientific power imbalance. Mozilla…

> This is a luxury many researchers that work outside of these big tech companies don't have, which creates a scientific power imbalance. The power imbalance goes far beyond science. Independent research is foundational for platform accountability. An example: when I was working on the Senate staff, before I started teaching at Princeton, a recurring challenge was the lack of rigorous independent research on platform…

I’m curious as to your take on independent scholarship, outside of the domain of academia?

Would appropriately rigorous independent scholarship be considered as a trustworthy source within your sphere?

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably, the users will be well-endowed and tax-advantaged institutions who could have just bought the information from data-aggregators anyway. Nope. This is an important point: the type of crowdsourced science that Rally enables is something that researchers couldn't do before. (With the exception of a very small number of teams who made massive investments in building single-purpose crowdsourcing infrastructu…

Princeton can't buy data from aggregators? Wikipedia says they have a $26.6B endowment.

[deleted]

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#56
post #42

so, only approved research partners gets the ability to post studies and access data?

> What is the criteria for becoming a partner? Currently, we are working with a small number of reputable research teams who match our commitment to your safety and trust and who also have the technical expertise to help us build Rally’s scientific capabilities.

All partners are required to sign an agreement with Mozilla. This agreement upholds the researcher’s rights to independence in their research, while mandating the safeguards they must follow in order to protect our users.

In the future, we will expand beyond our pilot partners. Please contact us if you are interested in becoming a partner!

https://rally.mozilla.org/how-rally-works/faqs/#partner-crit...

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#57
post #7

Whoever wrote this piece is way too close to... whatever it is Mozilla is doing here. There seems to be an assumption that users will be gleeful to throw their data at legitimate researchers from legitimate institutions doing legitimate work. What "data"? Browsing history? Identity? Something else? Why? What's in it for them? Since when was giving our data to third parties a good idea? There is literally no motivatio…

> privacy-preserving data collection system I hate this. Viscerally. Why, why, WHY does every “privacy first” system, platform, whatever, start with the presumption that some people should get your data and it’s just a matter of vetting the “good” groups from the “bad” groups. No. That isn’t privacy. No one should get my data. And it’s ridiculous that all of these companies try to position their data grabbing project…

Rally is entirely opt-in, so I think you're off the mark here?

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide more detail on what makes it novel?

Common research methods have significant limitations. Web crawls, for instance, usually don't realistically simulate user activity and experiences. Lab studies often involve simplified systems that don't generalize to the real world. Surveys yield self-reported data, which can be very unreliable. Rally studies, by contrast, reflect real-world user activity and experiences. In science jargon, Rally enables field studi…

> Rally studies, by contrast, reflect real-world user activity and experiences. In science jargon, Rally enables field studies and intervention experiments with excellent ecological validity.

Rally users are all opt-in. How does that impact the design of a Rally study and the conclusions you can draw from it?

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#59
post #46
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if your knowledge tree falls in the forest, and no one hears of it, then how do the data sound? Somewhere between hermit-style hoarding and totally wide open there may be a collaborative sweet spot.

Why? Seems to me I get absolutely nothing from this other than a wink from Mozilla that my data can't identify me.

> The motivation is enabling crowdsourced scientific research that benefits society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27630188

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#60
post #52

I am failing to see the motivation for anyone to use this. If you cared about privacy, you wouldn't share your data in the first place. If you didn't care about privacy, there is still no reason to opt in.

> The motivation is enabling crowdsourced scientific research that benefits society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27630188

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