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

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

#371

Post by latexr » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:30 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #336

latexr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> no real impact

Apart from a market share that is continuously tending towards zero.

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

#372

Post by ZhongXina » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:30 PM UTC

ajdude wrote: post #351

8jef wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's why I've donated to the LadyBird project.

It's just weird that ladybird is picking ideological hills to die on, such as "no gender neutral pronouns"[1] [1] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814

It's an understandable reaction against a loud and aggressive (political) minority we've been seeing for the past four years. Thanks for the link, this finally pushed me to support the developer.

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

#373

Post by jcynix » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:31 PM UTC

_heimdall wrote: post #347

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can, but, as OP noted, the change is only temporary, while political change is harder, but also tends to last longer. I still remember when pihole worked on most things. These days it is just a part of adblocking approach for me. tldr: Some of us are tired of fiddling with things where were we shouldn't have to. If market participants can't behave ( and they clearly can't help themselves ), it is the only real ans…

> My household dropped Netflix and Prime over their silliness. We currently still have Disney until they get too greedy. And that is just streaming. Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away. Isn't that a good example of consumers exercising their right to not patronize companies they don't agree with? You didn't need a law stopping you from using Prime, and you don't have a right to use it,…

>Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away.

Hmm, there are ways: I browse with NoScript and unlock Origin installed and see almost no ads. If a website doesn't work and I really need to visit it for some reason, I selectively enable part of the JS they want me to load. Other sites simply don't get my attention.

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

#374

Post by xk_id » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #35

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).

I will begrudgingly admit he has a point here. In a few years I imagine almost all sites will refuse to serve anything without WEI, and the "open" web will be the preserve of a few hobbyists. Annoyingly you'll still need to use a compromised browser (or worse, app) to do anything with your bank, etc.

> the "open" web will be the preserve of a few hobbyists.

And maybe that will be the Web healing. If all the value extraction moves elsewhere, we might finally have a sane web of hypertext documents again.

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

#375

Post by gaoshan » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:34 PM UTC

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?

"The market" needs to be checked in so many ways. You'd think that by now we could learn to take what works and modify the rest but apparently everything has to be black and white and even a concept like "the market" ends up bound by dogma.

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

#376

Post by LunaSea » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:36 PM UTC

qwertox wrote: post #333

LunaSea wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

> This is unrelated

It's not. Tracking leads to better targeting which leads to higher conversion ratios and overall higher "Cost Per 1000 Impressions" (CPM).

If you simply do "contextual" targeting, so targeting based on the page content, your CPM will go down and and the publisher will lose money.

> 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

Depends on the company. News media publishers use the same system but are usually barely profitable if at all.

> 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.

The EU Court of Law decided that offering a subscription or mandate for cookies to be enabled is not legal as an offer. So the transactional nature you propose is currently not allowed. What is allowed is a grey area which has yet to be explored.

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

#377

Post by Workaccount2 » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #281

david_draco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. They are trying to find a funding model that makes them independent from Google. - Building a fast, privacy-oriented browser that keeps up with web standards and fixes security bugs takes people, organisation and therefore money. Yes, much more than that CEO salary. - No one wants to buy for a browser. -…

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…

>And yet people will over and over again insist that that would never work.

Because it won't. And there is mountains of data to back it up. People will not pay if they don't have to.

Some people will, for sure, but to get those some people to carry the weight of "all the people" is totally untenable.

Besides, Chrome is "free".

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

#378

Post by dfxm12 » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

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?

There's an election in a few months. Now is the time to write to the candidates and tell them to do something about it.

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

#379

Post by irq-1 » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:39 PM UTC

> Our hope is that if we develop a good attribution solution, it will offer a real alternative to more objectionable practices like tracking.

There is no negotiating with the advertising industry. No system will stop them from acting unethically to gain an edge.

--

My idea for such a system: random GUID added to each ad. Browser plugin collects GUIDs. Client protects itself with random GUIDs removed and new random GUIDs added. Client sends GUIDs to a Collector they choose. Collectors run client GUIDs against Advertisers lists (bloom filters). Advertisers pay Collectors, and Collectors give to orgs.

Edit: replace GUIDs with 6 random bytes, so the existence of an id is not proof of it's being viewed. it needs to be plausible that the client added an id randomly, and that's not the case with a GUID.

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

#380

Post by Archelaos » Tue, Jul 16, 2024, 1:39 PM UTC

Years ago I had a "Download Firefox" button on my Web-site. I have removed it because of similar incidents in the past. And I stopped recommending Firefox to friends and relatives, because I can no longer do it wholeheartedly. I am not even sure myself, whether it makes a big difference which browser you use nowadays. More out of tradition I am still using Firefox myself, but I know other technologically competent people who shifted away from it. I can only assume that this was for similar reasons: It is felt that Firefox gives no less cause for annoyance than other browsers. When Firefox gradually loses more and more dedicated supporters who become indifferent, I see a rather bleak future for it.