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Make Firefox Private Again

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Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#121

Post by ajsnigrutin »

cjpearson wrote: post #43

I really don't like advertising. I use uBlock Origin in my browser, AdGuard on my phone and pi-hole in my home. I even take a seam ripper to my clothes to make sure no logos remain. But I understand that advertising is the only viable business model for much of the internet. (Browsing HN and seeing that the top comment for every paywalled article is a pirated link confirms that.) If advertising must exist, I'd prefer…

We had safe and private advertising back in the 90s. Local computer store in Cityville would pay money to local Cityville forum, and when you'd open the "computers" subforum, the Computer store banner would be at the top.

Then advertisers and websites went beserk, covered every square centimeter with ads, including the content of the websites themselves, and started tracking everything, from location, age, gender to shoe and penis size, and the only way to browse the internet as a sane person is with an adblock.

They had the possibility to work with a few ads that didn't bother people, but that wasn't enough, so now, blocking just some of the ads isn't enough for us. They started with the shitty behaviour, and I don't care if they go bankrupt and websites switch to a new way of surviving.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #34
mrinfinitiesx wrote: post #4

wasn't aware that 'anonym' existed. I don't care if PII is stripped or not. the answer to 'helping advertisers' or anything with advertisement metrics in any fashion is always 'No.' - training things so that there's better data on how to best manipulate our psyche / give people data to psychologically manipulate us in to buying/doing things is a hard 'No.' > Asked whether Mozilla has any concerns that its user base,…

> They can find other business models other than advertisement. The awful thing is, I'm not sure they can. Lots of sites turned to shitty ads and clickbait because it makes lots of money, but I've followed some passionate writers and journalists who decided to stick to their guns and focus on quality content with a reasonable subscription price. I don't follow any of them anymore, because they all either want out of…

> focus on quality content with a reasonable subscription price

We’re a minority. See: every comment complaining about paywalls.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#124

Post by jqpabc123 »

There is a form of advertising that doesn't invade your privacy and doesn't need metrics. It is called "context sensitive" advertising.

This is what happens when you go to a web site dedicated to pets and you see advertising related to pets. It's reasonable to assume you have an interest in pets; otherwise, you probably wouldn't be there. No metrics required.

"Personalized advertising" is what happens when you go to a web site dedicated to pets and you see advertising for automobiles because you did some searching 3 weeks ago. What the "metrics" don't tell the advertiser is that he is wasting your time and his money because you already bought a car last week.

"Personalized advertising" is just plain dumb. It is a way to waste your time and advertiser's money with a false sense of confidence that this is not the case.

This explains why more than half the users on the internet are now taking active measures to block this annoying stupidity. And Google is actively trying to counter this trend.

The only question left to answer is at what point will advertisers wake up and smell the coffee and realize a different, more privacy respecting approach might be just as effective for the same or maybe even less money?

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#125

Post by raxxorraxor »

LunaSea wrote: post #110
nulbyte wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you think that the video content is going to be stored and served if not through paid infrastructure? Secondary doesn't mean nonexistent, it comes after the primary thing, content creation. When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content. Creation was the primary motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I think it resulted in more and better communities than today, wh…

> When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content. Creation was the primary motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I think it resulted in more and better communities than today, where people pull out all the stops to rake in the dough as the primary means of earning money. Yes and on this young Internet your site had 100 views, mostly from people close by. The content shared…

I would argue that the average quality was higher by a few magnitudes due to the higher entry barrier alone. The average production value is higher these days, but that doesn't correlate with quality too much. Simple truth is that hobbyists, enthusiasts and professionals are often one and the same people.

There was also always a way to accommodate a large amount of users through mirrors and other channels, which people shared frequently.

With "the web" they meant their business idea for their specific platform isn't viable without advertisers exploiting user data to the largest degree possible. That is something entirely different. On if they just paywalled the content, people would probably again use alternatives.

Of course I didn't mean to say that infrastructure costs are negligible. On the contrary, it is the largest expense for certain platforms and services. But if a platform has advertising as a business model, it is not on my browser to accommodate that. Then they need to let someone else fill the space they cannot serve without manipulating my user agent.

I do even approve of platforms enabling some creators to make a living with online content creation. But I am still not interested to accommodate advertisers. It is a toxic industry that strives on exploiting users and their privacy. There is no sensible means of cooperation possible and I want my browser have realistic perspective here.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#126

Post by kuon »

Do you know the list of domain we can block to do this at the firewall level?

I already block firefox.com and mozilla.org (developer.mozilla.org is exception for MDN).

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#128

Post by jart »

mrweasel wrote: post #113
jart wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem if you don't go to the parts of the web that have ads. I spend my time online on places like GitHub that operate as ad-free commission-free gift economies. Environments that have ads, have nothing that I want. I don't care about what happens in them any more than I care about what happens in shantytowns. Why do you care? What pulls you into those dark Internet spaces?

That's a fair point, but I care also care a great deal about society as a whole, and I feel like the ad model is damaging to those around me. I quite frankly don't get why TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Facebook and others are allow to manipulate people to spend hours doom scrolling, just to show ads. TikTok even knows this is bad, because that's not how they operate in China apparently. I see very few ads, my da…

Society is full of predators. In the beginning, people got eaten in the jungle, and today they get monitored to learn their desires and then shown pictures of things they want. How do you know you're not being manipulated? Getting you to care and be concerned about things you're powerless to change is what the system did to you. Power is focus which means people are disempowered by getting them to focus their attention on things that don't matter. Advertisers normally need to pay cash money to buy someone's attention but you gave yours up for free. If everyone else is watching ads, then you're watching them watch ads. You're not any more free than they are. The simple fact of the matter is you won't be able to save others from this system, because you haven't even saved yourself.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#129

Post by red_admiral »

takluyver wrote: post #60
bravetraveler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That offer to refresh always seemed a bit strange to me. It's like Microsoft acknowledging the crust in the registry and offering their own CCleaner. A lot of activity, dubious work actually being done. Perhaps the effect of profile lifecycles should be addressed if some hand-wavy refresh process may be required and instituted by the application. Said another way, that's a concern for the program. Not me. This should…

I think there's been some concern that people compare the speed of Firefox with a bunch of random extensions against Chrome with none. I wonder if the 'refresh' is an attempt to get away from that at the point where someone might be giving Firefox another chance. I don't remember if the refresh offer appeared back in the xul days, when there was much more scope for extensions to hurt the experience.

I would agree in general, but arguably uninstalling ublock makes the web much slower.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#130

Post by lagniappe »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120
nulbyte wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you think that the video content is going to be stored and served if not through paid infrastructure? Secondary doesn't mean nonexistent, it comes after the primary thing, content creation. When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content. Creation was the primary motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I think it resulted in more and better communities than today, wh…

> When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content This silences a large number of people and communities who can’t afford that privilege. Not saying that’s inherently bad. But it’s worth weighing in the moral calculus.

Posting video on someone else's hardware is not a human right.
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