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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

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Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#201

Post by Klonoar »

closewith wrote: post #181
Klonoar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much hypothetical-borderline-conspiracy-theory packed in to this single comment that I cannot find a charitable response. I'd be fine to continue the discussion if you can find a way to engage without assuming that the people who build one of the last checks on the open internet are somehow trying to maliciously invade your privacy.

The days of Mozilla having earned the benefit of the doubt are long gone for most people. The person you replied to made a reasonable point and your response reads as defensive and dismissive. Do you have an interest in Mozilla we should know about?

Eh, I don’t think my comment is defensive. I also could’ve just ignored the comment.

I explained to them that I’m open to discussing but there’s nothing to be gained when the comment starts off in conspiracy theory. It’s an open source project, people will 100% notice if they tried to do what the parent comment is suggesting.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#202

Post by Tarq0n »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #126
albeva wrote: post #94

And there goes my trust in Firefox out the window... Safari seems to be the only decent, privacy-focused browser left on the market. Until the Ladybird arrives.

> Safari seems to be the only decent, privacy-focused browser left on the market. Safari has Private Click Measurement: https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas... And AFAICT, Mozilla's implementation is technically superior?

Safari also has attestation, as far as I know without user consent.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#203

Post by pacifika »

mort96 wrote: post #190
lopis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this line is very important: > First, in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win. It's very likely that this arms race will lead to DRM in web publications and video feeds (which Google is already experimenting with).

This move does not stop the arms race. Non-anonymous data is still better for the ad industry. Why give that up?

Because browsers can clamp down on The non-anon data streams when there’s a working alternative.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#204

Post by mightyham »

3l3ktr4 wrote: post #165
uyzstvqs wrote: post #134

What's dumb is that Firefox is not the freedom browser people think it is. Mozilla is a crappy organization. Firefox has extension signing, it's as restrictive as installing apps on iOS where only approved apps can be installed, without a setting to easily disable it. Mozilla can also remotely install extensions by default (opt out) called "experiments" or something. Their anti-tracking is purposefully weak because o…

>And Mozilla leadership is associated with radical left politics, just as an extra. Do you have proof for this? I'd be curious. I also fail to see how is that related to the collecting data by default thing. Is that a leftist thing now?

Whether you agree or disagree with what the Mozilla foundation does, it seems fairly matter of fact to say that they are pursuing liberal policies and that posts from the leadership, like the couple below, employ a good bit of leftist rhetoric.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/first-steps-toward-lasti... https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racia...

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#205

Post by beeboobaa3 »

Klonoar wrote: post #101
latexr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s clear in retrospect that we should have communicated more on this one What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. The user outcry was utterly predictable from even before the first web article was out. The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for pri…

> The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for privacy or they don’t care. Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Criticism of Mozilla in general is very warranted right now, but the way(s) in which everyone is doing so just feels very out of touch with the act…

> trying to do something in a privacy preserving way because the ad industry is not going away

they're bending for the ad industry because they want their money. they could also just keep blocking their tracking and call it a day.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#206

Post by daveoc64 »

anordal wrote: post #129
lopis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this line is very important: > First, in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win. It's very likely that this arms race will lead to DRM in web publications and video feeds (which Google is already experimenting with).

Yes, that line is important. This has happened before. Remember the critique against Encrypted Media Extensions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypted_Media_Extensions ): Oh no, DRM in the browser! But remember that web video used to require Adobe Flash for the longest time, and even after a decade of HTML5 video, sites were still clinging onto Adobe Flash (and later also Microsoft Silverlight) for what turned out…

I agree with the other commenter.

The current situation is worse.

EME requires that the browser ship with a DRM library like Widevine.

Flash used an industry standard plugin model and could work in any browser.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#207

Post by alemanek »

berkes wrote: post #173
temporarely wrote: post #162

Enough of this waiting for virtuous entities to address legitimate concerns of the public. The "ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection against this "industry". The solution is political not technical and definitely can not be left to "the market". Haven't you had enough?

How would that legal "protection" work in practice? What would it protect against? Who would it protect? What you say sounds reasonable. And I'm not trying to say "well, it's impossible because of some current status quo", because we could change that. What I'm trying to say is that we need this "industry" to work out the practicalities. Otherwise we are "protected" in a same way the GDPR protects us against 3rd part…

Full liability for secondary harms caused by the leak of data that wasn’t directly required to provide a service to those same end users. Selling of data to third parties doesn’t transfer this liability but expands it to include any leaks or misuse coming from the entities the data is sold to. No statute of limitations.

So if company X sells data to company Y and then Y sells to company Z then company X has full liability for leaks or misuse from all entities in the chain.

No more free credit monitoring. Banks, credit card companies, and end users get to directly sue these companies. May not completely solve it but you can try to make it so expensive to mine data you don’t truly need that it ends the whole industry.

I am sure there are holes in this but we can at least try to kill the data brokers and bad actors.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#209

Post by robertlagrant »

deskr wrote: post #151
eco wrote: post #17

The CTO of Mozilla just posted on /r/firefox about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...

First there's a justification based on current anti-tracking system being bypassed: > "there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures" Then: > We’ve been collaborating with Meta on this Given Meta's track record with scooping up just about any personal data they can find, it's pretty obvious that this is just going to be yet another datapoint in Meta's collection.

I imagine Meta like this because most of their tracking is done behind a Facebook login anyway, and it reduces the fidelity of Google ads.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#210

Post by beeboobaa3 »

Klonoar wrote: post #144
pdimitar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also possible to disable it, it's not like you're trapped in it. Or so they say, in order to make people be OK with it. They might play the waiting game and in a year or two will make the setting not do anything and still collect / send data, hoping that by that time people have forgotten.

There is so much hypothetical-borderline-conspiracy-theory packed in to this single comment that I cannot find a charitable response. I'd be fine to continue the discussion if you can find a way to engage without assuming that the people who build one of the last checks on the open internet are somehow trying to maliciously invade your privacy.

You're new to the internet and bigtech, huh? If not, what rock have you been living under?
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