Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 58 posts

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#21

Post by mossTechnician »

Alupis wrote: post #19
wmwragg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be completely normal, and profitable, to effectively advertise without personal information. The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such

> The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...

> Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby.

The opposite is worse.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#22

Post by bubblesnort »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #17
goplayoutside wrote: post #7

Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company. I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

What about the browser in Linux named Epiphany or sometimes Web? Was installed on a Phosh device of mine and seems ok.

That uses WebKitGTK, which is probably fine. QtWebengine uses blink but that's known to be insecure since Qt can't keep up with upstream (chromium).

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#23

Post by Alupis »

mossTechnician wrote: post #21
Alupis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...

> Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. The opposite is worse. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

I don't see how your cited article is "worse" in any way. They used intuition to deduce what items a customer might be interested in based on their other purchases.

> One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August.

A cashier at the corner store can deduce as much by paying attention to their customers. When you check out at the grocery store with pizza dough, pepperoni and cheese in your basket - the cashier might deduce you're making pizza and even suggest trying a particular brand of sauce or whatever.

Relevant, targeted ads are actually a lot less annoying to most people because they're relevant.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#24

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Alupis wrote: post #19
wmwragg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be completely normal, and profitable, to effectively advertise without personal information. The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such

> The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...

You can use context from the site, just not from stalking the user. Showing diaper ads on a site about babies is fine. Showing ads for AWS on a tech site is fine. Showing diaper ads on a tech site because you've been spying on the user and decided that they might have a baby is a problem even if it does happen to be true.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#25

Post by Alupis »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24
Alupis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that this is now required for advertising is just wrong, and shouldn't be accepted as such Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. Some extremist will come along and assert that just means we shouldn't allow advertising at all...

You can use context from the site, just not from stalking the user. Showing diaper ads on a site about babies is fine. Showing ads for AWS on a tech site is fine. Showing diaper ads on a tech site because you've been spying on the user and decided that they might have a baby is a problem even if it does happen to be true.

Why is it a problem if the user searches/shops for diapers, and then advertisers show diaper ads? The person is interested in diapers after all, and you don't just buy diapers once.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#26

Post by WCSTombs »

Who is Firefox's target user, anyway? Because it seems a lot of what they've been doing mainly drives people away.

> We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market.

Oh, really? Come on. Nobody is applauding this.

I get it, Firefox users aren't customers, so they are the product. But repeatedly sabotaging their product with these constant blunders doesn't seem like a good strategy.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#27

Post by mossTechnician »

Alupis wrote: post #23
mossTechnician wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then people complain about seeing diaper ads when they don't even have a baby. The opposite is worse. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

I don't see how your cited article is "worse" in any way. They used intuition to deduce what items a customer might be interested in based on their other purchases. > One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium sup…

I personally don't buy into the notion that advertisement is inherently good or necessary. Especially when the "best" ads effectively manipulate emotions and remain in people's subconscious.

A corner store cashier does not have the raw processing power and money of an ad network. If they tracked one customer with as much of vigilance as the average ad network, they should probably get slapped with a restraining order.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#28

Post by debacle »

goplayoutside wrote: post #7

Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company. I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

What is Ladybird?

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#29

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

debacle wrote: post #28
goplayoutside wrote: post #7

Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company. I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

What is Ladybird?

https://ladybird.org/

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#30

Post by Alupis »

mossTechnician wrote: post #27
Alupis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how your cited article is "worse" in any way. They used intuition to deduce what items a customer might be interested in based on their other purchases. > One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium sup…

I personally don't buy into the notion that advertisement is inherently good or necessary. Especially when the "best" ads effectively manipulate emotions and remain in people's subconscious. A corner store cashier does not have the raw processing power and money of an ad network. If they tracked one customer with as much of vigilance as the average ad network, they should probably get slapped with a restraining order…

The article you linked to, regarding Target, is exactly what your corner store cashier is doing. There is literally no difference.

You are conflating two different things - stores retargeting existing customers and recommending products they think are relevant vs. ad networks like Google that track you across channels so that they may serve the most relevant ads to you based on your interests.

Neither are bad, and both are necessary. Tampon advertisements, for example, have no effect on men - men would find it annoying to see tampon adverts constantly because they are not part of the market.

Why would an advertiser want to advertise to people who will never make a purchase or care about their products? If you're a hiker though, it's really fitting to get advertisements for hiking gear and equipment.

Post reply on HN