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Make Firefox Private Again

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Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#261

Post by godshatter »

bjord wrote: post #119
kelnos wrote: post #15

This is absolutely disgusting. Despite Mozilla's general decline, I always want to believe they're going to do the right thing by their users. But this is really hard to swallow. Advertising is unethical psychological manipulation, full stop. I don't care if the delivery or targeting mechanism is supposedly "privacy-preserving" (yeah, right). Ads themselves, even completely untargeted ads, need to go.

I just did a quick search of your comments on HN and I see that you're regularly sharing/using links to archive.is in an effort to bypass paywalls. So, given that you're unwilling to pay and that you believe advertising is unethical, how do you expect people to fund the content you consume? Don't you think it's unethical to expect they do it for free? https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author%3Akelnos%20archive&type...

Not the person you are replying to, but it's not up to me to determine what the best business model is for a company. My "job" with respect to info providers here is to consume what I like on an open protocol. If I find a website that interests me enough, by itself, to subscribe to it then maybe I would. But none of them have, not even any of the big ones. If someone provided a system where I could tip a website for an article or other piece of media I like, I'd do that. But nobody seems to know how to make micro-transactions work that I can see.

So if advertising is unwanted, and subscriptions to individual websites on the internet isn't working either, then maybe they should get more creative.

I had a lot of fun on old forums before this mess started, so if we revert to that so be it.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#262

Post by gspencley »

benmanns wrote: post #240
commodoreboxer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the rub. You do pay for it. By the intention and definition of the business, advertisement eventually extracts money from you. It wouldn't be profitable otherwise. The fact that it happens more subtly and enables them to extract money from you in ways that you don't notice doesn't change the fact that it's still paid for. An advertisement funded Internet is still you paying for your content, it's just built so…

I think there are legitimate cases where a business has a product available at a price that is net positive to both the business (profitable) and customer (consumer surplus) but is having trouble connecting with consumers. What % of advertising this is versus pushing low quality trash, branding, status symbols, and scams, I have no idea.

I've thought a lot about this because I owned and operated a business for 18 years, for 15 of those years it was my primary source of income, and it was entirely ad-based even though my "users" often complimented me on having an ad-free product. It was all affiliate promotion, they were there for the free content and it wasn't obvious that the free content was promo for subscription services, plus the affiliate links weren't being shoved in peoples' faces. They were there if people wanted more and were willing to pay, and the click-through rates were decent and it was profitable, so this type of "non-intrusive" advertising does work.

But ... I happen to be someone who REALLY DESPISES ADS ALWAYS

I'm not as "black pilled" as the comments that started this. My issue is not that ads try and psychologically manipulate people. I don't think that there is anything intrinsically wrong with trying to persuade someone to buy something.

My problem with ads is that they are annoying and distracting, most are this way by design, and they come at you completely unsolicited.

If there was a way that I could opt in or out of being shown ads in all areas of life, so that if I were interested in learning about new products I can, but if I'm not interested the ads can kindly fuck off and leave me alone ... that would be grand.

And that kind of exists. I mean, if I attend a ComicCon I'm going to a big trade show. I'm hoping that the show floor will have tons of wares and demos and such. I'm looking to buy. If I go on Amazon and start searching for products, by all means spam me with results related to what I'm looking for.

But if I'm trying to watch tv, or I'm on social media or in a context where I'm not actively looking to discover products that I might be interested in purchasing, I get downright offended and triggered when suddenly some dipshit character in a commercial is like: "look how ridiculous and annoying I am while using this product I want you to buy. If you buy it you can be just as moronic, obnoxious and annoying as me." In those situations I wish that advertising would just cease to exist in all forms all together.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#263

Post by lxgr »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #201
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The thing is, if your community is small costs are probably in the couple dollars a month range. An order of magnitude lower than the costs of hardware like your computer. If communities are large where an individual cannot trivially bear the costs, donation models have worked where the community itself funds its hosting.

Not nearly everybody on the Internet has ever bought their own computer. There's schools, public libraries etc., to say nothing of the billions of people that have only a smartphone and no desktop or laptop at all.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#264

Post by lxgr »

autoexec wrote: post #244
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Honestly, when the internet was younger the costs to host content were basically zero. Anyone could run a web server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs. Many ISPs offered shell accounts and provided basic webhosting at no additional cost. These could be scaled up as needed, but everybody with a modem and an ISP had the opportunity to take part in sharing content on the internet.

> Anyone could run a web server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs.

On dialup?

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#265

Post by 93po »

red_admiral wrote: post #58

From the CEO's comments on reddit ( https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo... ): > we support people configuring their browser however they choose I rate this one as half true. If you leave firefox for a while and come back, it displays a bar with text like "Would you like to refresh your experience?" The first time I clicked that, it uninstalled my adblock extension. Not making that mistake aga…

that's a really disappointing dark pattern from mozilla

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#266

Post by autoexec »

lxgr wrote: post #264
autoexec wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, when the internet was younger the costs to host content were basically zero. Anyone could run a web server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs. Many ISPs offered shell accounts and provided basic webhosting at no additional cost. These could be scaled up as needed, but everybody with a modem and an ISP had the opportunity to take part in sharing content on the internet.

> Anyone could run a web server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs. On dialup?

Yes. Websites back then didn't have hundreds of MBs of javascript bloat though so it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The internet over 56k was surprisingly usable.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#267

Post by 93po »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #219
freediver wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use macOS/iOS, there is Orion. Webkit based, zero telemetry, lifetime license $150 USD, no other source of funding. https://kagi.com/orion

With a price like that I’m assuming this product has a shelf life. It would make way more sense to ask a dollar a month. In 13 years they will have made more than that $150, and this model also incentivizes them to keep up development for years and years.

for a fledgling project, $150 today is worth 10,000x $150 in 13 years.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#268

Post by lxgr »

autoexec wrote: post #266
lxgr wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone could run a web server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs. On dialup?

Yes. Websites back then didn't have hundreds of MBs of javascript bloat though so it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The internet over 56k was surprisingly usable.

Maybe in terms of bandwidth, but unless you were fine with never being able to make or receive any more phone calls, how would hosting a website have worked without a second dedicated phone line?

In addition to that, dialup was paid per minute where I grew up, so either option would have been prohibitively expensive.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#269

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#270

Post by marcinzm »

staplers wrote: post #209
marcinzm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the alternative. The alternative is the death of most sites other than walled gardens like Meta and Amazon that own their own advertising end-to-end. Do you want the internet to be even more Meta controlled?

The internet and humanity would exist fine without advertisers. History has proven this to be true.

History doesn't move backward and the internet users of the mid 90s are not the internet users of now. Give the vast majority of internet users a choice between the internet of mid 90s (after that ads powered it all) and having nothing but large tech owned sites to browse I think you're delusional if you think they'd actually pick the former.
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