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Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

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Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#461
At this point, I just feel bad. I feel like the high school coach having to sit down with my star player after they've made a bad personal choice.

I was going to say I will pay a subscription for the best browsing experience you can offer, sans ads.

But this is opt-out. And there's a donation option at https://donate.mozilla.org/. As long as it's opt-out, that's fair enough to me.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#462
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RELEVANT suggestions The fuck with this? How can they make _relevant_ suggestions without spying on my (s/browsing history/activity/), profiling it and phoning back to the mothership? (Edited, "browsing history" -> "activity")

The trick is, you can't, unfortunately. You can have relevant ads that encroach on your privacy, or you can have possibly irrelevant ads that don't. If we are considering all possibilities, they could have precomputed some magic to do it all locally, but I have doubts about that because it seems more difficult to do that than just slap an identifier on your keystrokes and consult their ad-partner API.

Based off TFA, it looks like they don't send any sort of identifier to adMarketplace. By relevant they mean relevant to whatever you typed into the search bar this time, not relevant to your browsing history or things you previously typed into the search bar.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#463

Can someone please just offer an open source browser that I can pay towards somehow? IMO adtech is the root of all that’s wrong with the modern internet. It gives companies 2 masters: advertisers and users. Guess who’s prioritized when there’s a conflict between the needs of the two? Whoever’s paying the bills, of course.

There's qutebrowser and you can donate directly to the developer but I'm not sure if you'd be comfortable using it.

The major downside is that web extensions (addons) don't work in qutebrowser.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#464
> from our trusted partners based on what you’re searching for

Wut?? You must be referring to the partners that you have, that I trust. But I don't know who your partners are, and I have no reason to trust them.

And how is it that you are privy to what I'm searching for? Is DDG among your partners? I know you're in bed with Goo, but I am migrating away from Google Search, partly because I know you are infected with Google Search addiction.

Please stop adding "features" to Firefox.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#465
And this is how a browser dies.

At this point I imagine for most people it makes more sense to download Chromium, if you're worried about privacy, or use Chrome if you're not.

Mozilla's been running out of money for a very long time though, this isn't exactly a surprise.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#466
I agree that this erodes some trust and I can understand and agree with people that are upset about this change. They did inform us though, even though the language used could use less marketing speech, instead of trying to fly it in under the radar and at least it seems to be possible to disable the "feature".

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#467
In the near future:

Option 1: FOSS community will actively participate in developing one big web-browser project to free the web from malicious corporate practices and guarantee respect of users freedom.

Option 2: A corporation will create commercial web-browser with fixed price or SaaS model without "partnerships" and data-hoarding business model.

Option 3: There will be only one way to browse the internet: The Google's way.

Option 4: Users will learn to use "text-browsers" with hardened security and move to "standard" web-browser UX only if necessary.

Option 5: P2P local networks will provide a "cached" versions of scraped websites for safety and free access.

Option 6: The Internet will be used only in embedded IOT systems, apps from closed app stores, government approved experiences with mandatory ID verification.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#468

If their CEO salary was not paid in millions dollars maybe the users would be more keen to donate money? I never saw a fundraising like the ones from Wikipedia.

If Wikimedia were managing Firefox you would see the "donation" button in the toolbar that can't be really disabled during the fundrasing season; you can press a small x button, but it will come back as soon as you think it is truly gone. You are severely understating Wikimedia's aggressive campaigns.

I donated once thinking it would make the banner go away. Not only was I wrong, but it seemed more persistent. Maybe I just noticed their money gathering efforts more after that, but it felt like it only got louder as if it gained power.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#469

It’s sucky and I particularly hate ads percolating to every part if my life, BUT how are they meant to support Firefox and other software without a revenue stream? Mozilla seems to attract criticism for how they run the whole operation, I can’t tell how correct it is, but even if they run it perfectly they still need revenue.

Somewhat suggested one day that they could become a Rust consultancy.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#470
This is what happens when an organisation deviates from its original policy and starts diverting money into social justice or causes which have no bearing on a browser.

Along with the layoffs and now this unscrupulous decision to bring in revenue to offset the haemorrhage.

Time to go back to a no thrills browser.

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