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Make Firefox Private Again

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Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#271

Post by autoexec »

lxgr wrote: post #268
autoexec wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It did need a dedicated line. Same with the people who ran a BBS out of their home. I knew people who had 3-5 dedicated phone lines running into their houses to support that. Paying per minute for dial up was thankfully not something I had to deal with (unless I was calling into a PoP that was long distance). I can see how the costs of that would get insane very quickly.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#272

Post by marcinzm »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #211
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?

Who is using tracking? Its not mom and pop websites. Its big corporations. I could care less if they lost money. The internet would be a healthier place without corporations trying to shift public discourse in their favor.

Those mom and pop sites are often filled with trackers and ads. Assuming they haven't just moved to using a third party service that does it for them. It's like saying the person shooting you isn't at fault but only the gun they shoot you with.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#273

Post by cptskippy »

lolinder wrote: post #141
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,…

> advertising as a business model is what allows the internet to be free and open to everyone My favorite period in internet history was the years in which self-hosted phpBB forums dominated the social landscape. We had a diverse set of forums paid for by one or more of their participants, who made the forum available simply because they liked hanging out with the community they were hosting. Advertising-based social…

You could argue that greed is the driver. The social networks aren't displaying ads to fund maintaining their operations, they are operating in a for profit capacity and thus are incentivized to find ways to make you want to consume their product.

When someone operated a forum in the days of yore, they had the opportunity to put up ads and many did. The difference I think is that they were doing so to fund or offset the costs of operating the forum, not as a profit engine above and beyond the cost of keeping the lights on.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#274

Post by clemailacct1 »

account42 wrote: post #21

curl | sh for THIS? Riiight, let's give that website permission to execute arbitrary code on your computer just to change a single FF preference? Really????

I think this is a bit of a sensational take. The code being executed is all there without obfuscation.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#275

Post by bluGill »

inkywatcher wrote: post #246
bluGill wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fediverse gets all those centralization advantages without being centralized. However there are not (yet!) the quantity of people needed to make it work.

Nor quality, unfortunately.

Depends on what you want. some places you can find just as high quality. There is a lot of junk out there to wage through. They also have a "allergic reaction" to the thought of an algorithm to curate feeds which throws the good out with the bad.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#276

Post by lolinder »

cptskippy wrote: post #273
lolinder wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> advertising as a business model is what allows the internet to be free and open to everyone My favorite period in internet history was the years in which self-hosted phpBB forums dominated the social landscape. We had a diverse set of forums paid for by one or more of their participants, who made the forum available simply because they liked hanging out with the community they were hosting. Advertising-based social…

You could argue that greed is the driver. The social networks aren't displaying ads to fund maintaining their operations, they are operating in a for profit capacity and thus are incentivized to find ways to make you want to consume their product. When someone operated a forum in the days of yore, they had the opportunity to put up ads and many did. The difference I think is that they were doing so to fund or offset…

That's fair. I think all advertising is naturally bad for the world, but you're right that it's the combination of advertising and greed that created the extremely deleterious environment we have now.

That said, greed fed by other monetization models would not have produced the attention economy, and I don't think the evils of other models (dark patterns for subscriptions, planned obselescence, etc) could have come close to the society-wide damage that the attention economy has caused.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#277

Post by nine_k »

ghostly_s wrote: post #250
Vinnl wrote: post #40

Here's the Firefox CTO explaining the motivation behind the experiment controlled by this setting, and the measures taken to ensure that it actually is private: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...

And unsurprisingly, he just lies. Here's the crux of the bullshit: "It’s about measurement (aggregate counts of impressions and conversions) rather than targeting." No new technology is needed for measuring impressions and conversions. Your ad server can count impressions, and a simple referrer URL can track conversions. An Apache 1.0 server could handle this 30 years ago. What the advertisers want is all sorts of ot…

To be honest, Macy's a century ago of course wanted data on conversions from newspaper ads. They could ask some customers whether they had seen the ad prior to going to shop. They could print coupons that you need to physically bring in to get a deal. They could pay agencies like Gallup to run more comprehensive customer research.

Shooting in the dark is a so-so strategy, and every business strives to do things in a more cost-efficient way.

(Corollary: if you want businesses to stop building dossiers on you, you have to make it unprofitable.)

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#278

Post by inkywatcher »

bluGill wrote: post #275
inkywatcher wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor quality, unfortunately.

Depends on what you want. some places you can find just as high quality. There is a lot of junk out there to wage through. They also have a "allergic reaction" to the thought of an algorithm to curate feeds which throws the good out with the bad.

I would very sincerely ask what places and what quality?

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#279

Post by commodoreboxer »

mrinfinitiesx wrote: post #257
commodoreboxer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most importantly, advertisement is a business. It's not charity and it's not a publicly owned resource. It doesn't keep the Internet free, because it makes a boat load of money doing what it does. It doesn't take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you. Either advertisement works, a…

Right. Again, not our problem. We aren't making money off of it, they are, from exploiting us and finding new ways to psychologically enhance their ways of advertisement to make boatloads of money. That's a solid 'No.' - Everything is a giant billboard already, tailored and catered directly to an algorithm based solely on how it knows me better than I know me; I want less of that. The excuse 'it's how we pay for this…

I agree with you. I was just pointing out that the idea of advertisement funding a free Internet is already a lie in the first place.

I am 100% anti advertisement, for the record. It is disgusting and non-consensual, and nobody should tolerate it.

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