For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by et1337 » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #149

chiefalchemist wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment or find any form of growth. Mozilla is welcome to experiment. The issue here is: - The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment - I get emails almost weekly that amount to Mozilla playing the role of internet privacy police. They *are* well aware of the rights and wrongs. Are the…

> The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment I think this is a reasonable critique, even if I personally don't find it a big deal. If it's privacy preserving, I don't necessarily give a shit if it's defaulted on - especially if there's a way to disable it. (IMO, defaulting it on and then widely announcing how to disable it is what they should have done…

We all lost our minds when Google tried to pull their privacy-preserving Federated Learning of Cohorts thing. I expect an even bigger outcry when Firefox, whose entire brand and reason for existence is privacy, quietly tries to do the same thing.

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

#332

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

TheSameOlTrick wrote: post #120

rstarast wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say this "my bad, we'll do better next time" isn't part of the playbook?

This. I've seen enough of: Step 1 - outrageous move Step 2 - apologize, progressively pull back Step 3 - people spread word they made it better Step 4 - stick to still outrageous but comparatively better "middle" move To really give it any excuse anymore. And so have you. If "Unity" tells you nothing... I'd like that rock, please, I'll need it to survive the incoming 4 years of social media.

Now you've learned how parliamentary politics function.

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

#333

Post by qwertox » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #311

remedan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was already tried with the Do Not Track header. Websites simply ignore it. They don't want an easy way to get the user's preference. Because they know that most users would set it to decline tracking. Sites would rather annoy every visitor for the chance that they click 'accept'.

Users also don't want to pay to access content. So I guess that both the user and the site can't get what they want and we should scrap the internet.

This is unrelated. Paywalling != tracking.

If it wouldn't work, then I'd see no ads in my paper-based iX subscription, yet it is full of ads even though I'm paying for that paper.

But the paper has the benefit that the ads I see there don't collect information on me. This is what I want the internet to be.

Ads OK, but no tracking of me if I don't want it (which I express via cookies when in a browser).

Also, you should note how greedy these companies are that they show you the paywall after you have consented to the cookies in order to read the article. No hint on that accepting the cookies is only useful if you also have a subscription. When you can't read the article, they don't revert the setting of the cookies, but just pretend that they gave you access to the article and keep the cookies around for days or years.

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

#334

Post by sotix » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

Can companies not see how their ads are performing by looking at their income statements? An ad campaign costs x dollars. Widget sales increase by y dollars. Companies were able to run this method for a long time. I think ads have gone way too far. It’s shocking we’ve gotten to the point of this discussion on data collection to fuel ads.

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

#335

Post by Klonoar » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:06 PM UTC

phicoh wrote: post #298

Klonoar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't. Individual promotion of Firefox worked very well when the browser(s) it was trying to displace were effectively frozen in time. Chrome (et al) and Safari are not those browsers. The average user isn't going to get a markedly different experience by switching to Firefox.

That is because Mozilla has consistently moved Firefox in the direction of a Chrome clone. When Firefox started is was not a copy of existing browsers. There is no reason it would have to be now. But they have rejected their core users. So now the only option left is a Chrome clone because that is what people are used to.

Even if it was a credible idea, how exactly do you think that Firefox - the browser that the minute anything changes, the internet blows up over - would significantly alter their product in a way to differentiate themselves from Chrome?

This isn’t even getting into base level stuff like available engineering resources, or the scenarios where the other vendors often control or have deals to give them favorable distribution on platforms.

This isn’t the IE6 era. It’s a significantly different and harder problem.

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

#336

Post by vetinari » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:06 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #153

Klonoar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. That’s the second option: they don’t care. > This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment If you you’re going to experiment with something that’s going to cause this amount of backlash (and my criticism is that they didn’t take the obvious reaction into account), you show a dialog on f…

> Mozilla in particular is frequently pulling crap like this and getting flak for it. They have to constantly apologise and back track. After a while you’d expect they learned something.

Well, they learned: they fuck up, backtrack & apologize (it is free, no real impact, so no worries), and life goes on.

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

#337

Post by account42 » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

jellykid wrote: post #200

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?

When it comes to the internet... I'd prefer it to stay like the wild west. Least amount of regulation beyond something like net neutrality. People forget that the reason we have all of these "free" services is because of ads and that's coming from someone who hates ads. Every streaming subscription I have, I pay for the ad-free service. Let the people who don't know how to install a browser extension or change a few…

> People forget that the reason we have all of these "free" services is because of ads and that's coming from someone who hates ads.

People forget that before ad-supported "free" services took over we had community-run actually free services.

The internet does not need ads.

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

#338

Post by lolinder » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #322

lolinder wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has tried experiment after experiment to try to earn money. Let's try forcing Pocket down people's throats. Let's automatically install Mr Robot. You know what people will love? Full-page ads for a VPN! No one has seen enough VPN ads! The one funding model they haven't experimented with at all is actually asking people to pay for Firefox. Donations or subscription, they haven't even tried it once. And yet peo…

At one point Mozilla was literally selling a VPN subscription. That point is now - you can go buy one today. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-vpn-and-ho... You can even donate money today: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/ From memory, Mozilla's spent years trying to get donations through asking people nicely and in relatively unobtrusive ways in-browser for years. You can even give monthly -…

> At one point Mozilla was literally selling a VPN subscription. That point is now - you can go buy one today.

I don't want a VPN. And I don't want to pay money to a Mozilla VPN of which some unspecified percentage will actually get used to pay for Firefox development (with the rest actually paying for the VPN). I honestly feel my money does more harm than good paying for the VPN because it creates a false impression of where the demand is.

I don't want a subscription to an unrelated service, I want a subscription to Firefox. I want my money to go into a stream that unambiguously shows my support for the single Mozilla project that I care about.

> You can even donate money today

That money will not (and I believe cannot) go to Firefox. As presently structured the corporation does all Firefox development, and the corporation cannot receive money from the foundation, so donations to Mozilla do nothing for Firefox.

> Not only have they tried both donations and subscriptions, but their efforts have been resoundingly ignored.

Not ignored, for the reasons stated above they haven't actually done what you say they've done.

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

#339

Post by NayamAmarshe » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:08 PM UTC

southernplaces7 wrote: post #232

One of the few things about Firefox that made me attempt to tolerate its repeatedly slow, shitty performance and tendency to slow my whole device down, was the privacy angle. With that gone, why bother? Might as well use Chrome. At least it's light and fairly quick.

https://privacytests.org

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

#340

Post by pndy » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #87

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...

> 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…

> What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson.

Please. This is never about learning and better communication. This is universal corporate English for: "you got us, but we really don't give a flying ef and we will fulfill our goals step by step - no matter what you say".