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Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

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Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#31

Post by zzzcpan »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #20
zzzcpan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely enough users who would donate money to support a fork of a browser that pursues their interests. Not enough who would support Mozilla though.

You'd find that there are enough users who'd say they'd donate but would do no such thing once you pass the wicker basket around.

Unlike most other software browsers are in a unique position here. They have regular users that use the software often and a lot and can do periodic donations campaigns that reach all of them. On top of that there are billions of potential users opening various niche possibilities. This may not be enough to develop a massive full blown browser engine, but definitely enough for forks.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#32

Post by coffekaesque »

Honestly I don't care how harsh this sounds but they should fire their entire marketing department. Or the people who are approving the bullshit we've been seeing for the past what, 2~3 years?

They're either completely clueless, don't care about damaging the brand or are just malicious. And in the process, accordingly to themselves, they aren't even making money just partners and good feels, right?

We can't afford to lose Mozilla and Firefox.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#34

Post by propogandist »

dawnerd wrote: post #27

I don’t get how people can defend Mozilla over this yet blast chrome for simply being a Google product. Yeah there’s concern over what Google tracks but I’d be using their search and services in Firefox anyways.

>"Simply being a google product"

which, like all Google products, are constantly phoning home and mining data across all your web behaviors. Recent changes are hostile towards privacy. Worse still, for mobile devices they don't allow add-ons given it will impact mobile ad-revenue, all the while the OS itself is mining user data. Disabling the data-mining is nearly impossible. Google makes tens of billions off this data also.

Firefox, on the other hand, is injecting an text ad to the default tab, but clearly it's not very targeted. It appears they're doing the equivalent of affiliate marketing, where they'll take a commission if they drive a sale. The lack of targeting will mean the effectiveness will be questionable.

Unlike Google, Firefox is also not in the data-hoarding business and this is a feature that's trival to disable. They just screwed up by not disclosing this test to their (privacy concious) users.

Firefox gets a lot of revenue by allowing Google to be the default search engine and they will need to figure out monetization strategies to get away from that model. Standing up their own infrastructure to monetize their users without selling them out to a competitor is a good starting point.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#35

Post by tapoxi »

boramalper wrote: post #33

I can see how upsetting this is but let’s go on a hyperbole and compare it with Chrome. The fact that we have a say about the future of Firefox is a feature that no other (proprietary) browser has. Beware of your negativity bias.

Lets compare. Chrome has never showed me ads. Most developers target Chrome and you're less likely to experience issues. Chrome is also open-source (BSD) as Chromium, and I can use a fork (such as Vivaldi, MS Edge, Opera, Brave, or Ungoogled Chromium) if I have an issue with upstream.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#36

Post by plorg »

I've never been a big fan of start pages, even (or especially?) those with supposedly personalized content. Bookmarks are fine, but tiles showing most frequently visited sites seems like a pushy way of forcing the user use bookmarks, and I'm not really into that kind of user manipulation. Like this case, these personalized start pages always seem like they're designed to give the browser creator access to the user's attention (impeding the use of the browser as the metaphorical dumb pipe). It always seemed that, as in this case, these pages would be the first place for the browser maker to sell access to the user's attention.

On new Firefox setups I'll specifically turn off all the splash page widgets and/or set the homepage to about:blank. The search bar in the middle of the front page is just a shortcut for the super bar anyways.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#37

Post by chrischen »

anonymousab wrote: post #28
samfisher83 wrote: post #11

Someone has to pay their programmers. It's through ads via partnership with Google or other ads.

There are ways to go about this that are much cleaner and less suspect. By simply shoehorning this into the existing Snippets functionality and deploying it without warning they're continuing a dark interaction pattern with their users. Their response to the issue - a weird way of maybe saying they weren't paid for this and that it is purely to help users - is either a weasel words lie or a ridiculously out of touch…

What are those ways? Develop a separate search engine product where their primary revenue would be from ads there so they can release a web browser to track you more to increasse the reveneu from such ads that do not appear in your browser, but are aided by your browser?

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#38

Post by pseudalopex »

xg15 wrote: post #24

What I don't get is how they keep doing those "it might look like an ad except we don't even get paid" stunts. Honestly, to me this seems even worse than actually inserting genuine ads. That would be horrible as well, but at least I knew they are a way to support Mozilla. Those "partnerships" on the other hand seem all about showing that Mozilla is willing to sacrifice any kind of UI integrity or user control in orde…

Mozilla representatives stressed that Mozilla didn't receive any money for integrating Pocket. They conveniently left out that Mozilla did receive money for referrals. The statement that the Booking.com ad "was not a paid placement" may be intentionally misleading.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#39

Post by yorwba »

Tharkun wrote: post #18

The more they pull stunts like these, the more i realize it's time to fork FF and get rid of all their garbage. Make Pocket optional, remove the (paid?) list of URLs that's apparently preloaded, remove all of the phone home shit.

> it's time to fork FF and get rid of all their garbage.

The nice thing about Firefox is that you don't even need to fork for that.

> Make Pocket optional

Go to about:config and set extensions.pocket.enabled to false.

> remove the (paid?) list of URLs that's apparently preloaded

If you mean the stuff that's displayed on new tab pages (like the snippet in TFA), you can get rid of it by changing "Firefox Home Content" at about:preferences#home .

> remove all of the phone home shit

I've deliberately enabled all telemetry, because I think it's data that Mozilla should have (check about:telemetry to see what they're measuring) but you can disable it under "Firefox Data Collection and Use" at about:preferences#privacy .

I agree it'd be better if Firefox came with a sane configuration by default, but the fact that you can change it at all makes Firefox a good enough browser for me.

Re: Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page

#40

Post by dawnerd »

propogandist wrote: post #34
dawnerd wrote: post #27

I don’t get how people can defend Mozilla over this yet blast chrome for simply being a Google product. Yeah there’s concern over what Google tracks but I’d be using their search and services in Firefox anyways.

>"Simply being a google product" which, like all Google products, are constantly phoning home and mining data across all your web behaviors. Recent changes are hostile towards privacy. Worse still, for mobile devices they don't allow add-ons given it will impact mobile ad-revenue, all the while the OS itself is mining user data. Disabling the data-mining is nearly impossible. Google makes tens of billions off this da…

I think you missed my point. I would be using google regardless so the data mining in the browser is kind of a moot point. So my choice becomes a browser with ads or a browser without.
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