There's some good context in the Mozilla kb article on this feature: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...
Some more technical details: https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experime...
Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
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Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#22If you're not paying for it, you are the product.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#23So they're doing their own FLoC?
Isn't this about measuring the impact of ads, while FLoC was for targeting ads to user groups?
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#24If you're not paying for it, you are the product.
And if you are paying for it you are an idiot.
See Youtube Premium for example. Or just generally giving money to Google in any shape or form.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#25So they're doing their own FLoC?
Pretty much yes though this one is far more privacy-minded, where FLoC was just a thinly-veiled attempt at business as usual. I turned it off immediately nonetheless. One thing to note though is that the switch doesn't exist in mobile Firefox. And it's not clear to me whether that means the feature doesn't exist at all or that I just can't turn it off?
Use Firefox Nightly on Android and you get access to about:config and with that this switch.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#26There's some good context in the Mozilla kb article on this feature: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...
I actually think this is a great initiative. Let's be honest, ads and ad tracking is not going anywhere, and Mozilla is trying to come up with a version of that which isn't terrible. And this sounds reasonable.
> Let's be honest, ads and ad tracking is not going anywhere
Sure they are - just install ublock origin.
Even if you're OK with the snooping and the attention hijacking and the slow pageloads and the pictures of rotting teeth, plenty of malware has been delivered by inept ad networks. Frankly, I find it strange when someone doesn't block ads.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#27This is why whenever I install firefox, I first turn off wifi. Then I go through the settings and disable the ‘studies’ and other telemetry, etc, before switching the wifi back on. That will prevent the having to wait 30 days for the data to be deleted from Mozilla servers with it’s ‘on by default’.
Did you check and see if this feature i.e. the "Website Advertising Preferences" is turned for you right now?
I have all telemetry turned off but when I went and checked this "feature" was enabled by default with no notification it had been added.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#28There's some good context in the Mozilla kb article on this feature: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...
Overall that seems decent as far as privacy is concerned, though there are 2 things I don't like about it.
1. It relies on an 'aggregation service', which you'd better hope is trustworthy because they seemingly get all info about what 'impressions' you had and what 'conversions' you caused.
2. This is the browser acting on behalf of advertisers. It's nice there's a way for people to help companies benchmark their ads, but this really shouldn't be something a user agent does without being explicitly told to.
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#29I was looking at this when I upgraded and that setting does not need to be there. If it was off by default, no one would feel the need to locate that check box and enable it. So just turn it off, remove it from settings and yank the code. The language is even rather vague and Mozilla seems to good a long way to avoid explaining that this is the alternative Google has designed for Chrome to replace tracking via third…
This is not the same as Protected Audience API which Mozilla have been very critical about [0], this is something they have worked on with Meta over the past couple of years. If you press the read more button there you go to this page [1] that explains it more.
0: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/googles-protect...
1: https://support.mozilla.org/da/kb/privacy-preserving-attribu...
Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default
#30The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad.
The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Opinions differ, but all major browser vendors are in the latter category.