Live data from Hacker News

Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com

201–210 of 304 posts

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#201
In desktop browsers (and some mobile browsers), you can use filters.

On a mobile OS level, however, you cannot: There is probably not a single mobile app that does not connect to at least one ad, tracking etc. server. I hope that at least Apple will offer solutions on an OS level.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but people whine when they see ads that are not to their interests either. there is no way to win.

advertise me computer shit cuz I'm on HN. don't store all my data and track me and store it in insecure databases which you handover to despots.

Ad networks only store about 30-60 days of data. Beyond that it's not relevant and sometimes cookies have already been lost so it wont match up anyway. Either way, you're just a randomized ID number with some interest categories attached.

If you're worried about your entire history being used, I'd point to social networks like Facebook/Twitter/Google that have far more info, including personal details, and keep it permanently. If you are worried about privacy, read the ToS of those services very careful and either opt-out or delete your information because that's a whole different level to what most ad networks have.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#203
post #38

It's interesting to think of this as a nuclear option for Firefox. The only incentive they have not to turn it on immediately is that it could poison relationships with site owners such that they stop testing their sites on Firefox or outright block Firefox users, but if Firefox market share ever diminished to the point where site owners were already neglecting Firefox then I see no reason why Mozilla wouldn't damn t…

Mozilla could also implement shims, to make sites continue to work. So if a site breaks because it makes a call to a tracking library but that's now throwing an error, just provide that same tracking library's functions, but obviously they won't do anything. This would at least fix sites that aren't going out of their way to break things.

That's a cat-and-mouse game, and the Firefox release cycle is bound to be much slower than any website interested in tracking users. The owners of the site can tweak the JS slightly, the FF devs have to get notified that the website stop working, go back to see what changed, and stage the necessary changes for the next update. And then wait for users to update, of course.

It's very impractical.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but people whine when they see ads that are not to their interests either. there is no way to win.

That's quite the false dichotomy you have set yourself up there, i bet it provides all the justification you need to track people without their knowledge or consent.

That's quite a big inference you made from just a few words. Where am I proposing tracking without knowledge or consent?

The dichotomy is either you have generalized ads or they're targeted closely to you. What is false about this?

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its definitely true ads are highly effective and one must admit highly effective on oneself as well. Look at Microsofts recent resurgence, their marketing budget has begun to rival that of Samsung and anecdotally I see their ads everywhere. However ads are not the end all. There are many deciding factors why someone buys a product outside of purely ads, but again ads are a very strong driving force. I don't think int…

In my world, Microsoft started to turn hate into, "I will take a second look at what you are offering--maybe--if I'm in a good mood." Their advertising is still just noise, and a huge waste of money in my world. I started to turn when they offerd some products for free.(I still don't use the products they offered, but it was a nice gesture.) The best Ad I heard was on here. A guy commented, 'I like my Surface. I use…

You have barely used their hardware, but you believe it to be good hardware. Seems like effective ads to me. Have you actually used the device? Its kb is terrible and its touchpad is a joke. MS natives ads have dominated news feeds for the last few months. A/ws these points are meaningless. Just observing trends.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite the false dichotomy you have set yourself up there, i bet it provides all the justification you need to track people without their knowledge or consent.

That's quite a big inference you made from just a few words. Where am I proposing tracking without knowledge or consent? The dichotomy is either you have generalized ads or they're targeted closely to you. What is false about this?

no, your false dichotomy was "either we track people or they complain about irrelevant ads".

Note the juxtaposition of imagined agency on part of the user, they supposedly complain a lot about it and want it changed right? So the solution is tracking!

Also some vauge language burried 40 pages into a EULA isn't knowledge or consent.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#207
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poor people aren't robots. They can and do see adverts for things that they don't then buy. Ah, the grand delusion of advertisers put out again. Sure, people aren't robots, but if ads couldn't influence their behaviour no one would pay for them and there wouldn't be any.

It pretty amusing to see pro advertisement people argue that ads aren't predatory because they're not ACTUALLY effective you see..

That would truly be a foolish argument to make. However the argument I am making is, is ad supported content is one of the few monetary schemes which allows you to produce a product that allows for poorer people to part of the audience.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#208
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

advertising hosted on the same domain as the website might not track you beyond the domain itself. But since most websites share common ad networks those ad networks can effectively track you while showing their ads.

How would they do that without the ability to use the same cookie? The only way I can think of is to track you by ip address.

by IP address may be good enough per session and each session could be tied to per more persistent IDs in cooperation with the sites embedding the ads, e.g. via the javascript loading some parts of the ads. So even if you block cookies to the ad network's domain they could still store cookies on any site that embeds their JS directly.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#209

I would love for Mozilla to find other means of funding online content besides advertising. In either case I'd love to see them take a hard stance on privacy and against tracking. They should block trackers that have no effect on website features and restrict and monitor the ones that do effect features. ...and this is another reason Mozilla needs to have their own search engine. They could have much greater influenc…

There is already a privacy respecting search engine, DuckDuckGo

What does that have to do with my post? (Other than the phrase "search engine")

Unless, DuckDuckGo plans on punishing websites that heavily use tracking cookies and/or they're a nonprofit that aims to advance the web they aren't actually relevant to what I was saying.

Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%

#210

Man, ads are great. They allow content to be targeted towards people that could potentially not afford the content and towards people that might not necessarily use the product normally. The world is already significantly divided by wealth. Assuming someone poor even has access to a service like Google, imagine if it was behind a paywall. Could they afford it? If not imagine how much of a life advantage someone wealt…

You're trying too hard. Before Google the Internet was more useful. Smaller and more content focused. I'd gladly go back to hotbot or whatever to get away from Google and their ilk. A combination of disconnect, Adblock pro, and self destructing cookies gets me there.

"Before Google the Internet was more useful" Wow, could not disagree more. It's order of magnitudes easier for me to find a good answer for virtually any question. Not to mention how much better gmail is than mail clients of old. Or google maps, my lord how it has simplified my life.

Google isn't solely responsible for this, but them and other ad-financed companies played a crucial part in building the web as we know it to day. And for me, and everyone I've ever met, the web is a lot more useful today than 15 year ago.

Post reply on HN