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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

#81

Post by samfisher83 »

dependenttypes wrote: post #73
samfisher83 wrote: post #11

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

Someone has to overpay their manager, marketing, and executive personnel with money that they receive from donations supposedly for improving Firefox.

If you look at their financial statement they received 6 million in donations. They paid 250 million dollars for software development. So donations cover just 2.4% of their software development expenses. That doesn't include sga expenses or any of their other expenses.

If you really want you can just build the browser your self and change the startup page.

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

#82

Post by darkpuma »

pseudalopex wrote: post #54
chrischen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At this point just admitting the ads are ads would be a good start.

Marketing types lie compulsively. They can't help themselves.

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

#83

Post by wtmt »

mindcrash wrote: post #64

Response from Mozilla: "This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner. It was not a paid placement or advertisement. We are continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox. In a similar vein, earlier this month we offered Firefox users a free opportunity to enjoy a live concert from Phosphorescent." Well, maybe it's just me but it seems ev…

Your thoughts about Brave haven't considered its model of collecting payments for people without their consent. See this recent discussion [1] and contemplate whether Brave is really significantly better than Firefox for the points you mention. I'm not condoning this experiment by Firefox, but just stating that Brave is not run by great thinkers either.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

yorwba wrote: post #39
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"…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by kiriakasis »

gpm wrote: post #5
kiriakasis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not a paid placement or advertisement. I would like that people were more explicit in why they despise ads. For me it is because they are unsecure, often outside the control of the site owner and heavily rely on tracking. For a long time my impression of Mozilla is that they are trying to "sanitize" ads on the web by experimenting on advertisements that are non-tracking by design. (this does not cover cliqz,…

Reasons to despise ads? > they are unsecure, often outside the control of the site owner and heavily rely on tracking. - They attempt to influence me into buying things I do not want or need. - They take up some of my attention, a resource that I consider very valuable. - They create perverse incentives to create content that advertising buyers appreciate (particularly worrisome when we are talking about a browser, t…

My point is that ads are essentially the only way to gain visibility for a lot of products.

The fact that internet ads are in such an harrowing situation is a consequence of perverse incentives on ads delivery and reliance on clickbait titles.

wouldn't it be nice if there was a culture of treating your own site or page as a place for "editor choices"? If there was a model of trust between page owners (or admin on social media) to choose quality advertisements in a model similar to television? (I do not live in the US, here television ads are mostly reasonable)

My point is that ads are not just a way to monetize your own page, they are also a way to allow easy product discovery. In may opinion, before you can call them purely evil it is right to also point out the beneficial effects they do have.

Also many of you point also apply to most modern journalism and articles online. They are strong negative point but they do not imply that a whole practice is irredeemably evil.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

kiriakasis wrote: post #85
gpm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasons to despise ads? > they are unsecure, often outside the control of the site owner and heavily rely on tracking. - They attempt to influence me into buying things I do not want or need. - They take up some of my attention, a resource that I consider very valuable. - They create perverse incentives to create content that advertising buyers appreciate (particularly worrisome when we are talking about a browser, t…

My point is that ads are essentially the only way to gain visibility for a lot of products. The fact that internet ads are in such an harrowing situation is a consequence of perverse incentives on ads delivery and reliance on clickbait titles. wouldn't it be nice if there was a culture of treating your own site or page as a place for "editor choices"? If there was a model of trust between page owners (or admin on soc…

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by kiriakasis »

xg15 wrote: post #23
kiriakasis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not a paid placement or advertisement. I would like that people were more explicit in why they despise ads. For me it is because they are unsecure, often outside the control of the site owner and heavily rely on tracking. For a long time my impression of Mozilla is that they are trying to "sanitize" ads on the web by experimenting on advertisements that are non-tracking by design. (this does not cover cliqz,…

> I would like that people were more explicit in why they despise ads. Sorry, but no. Ads are not a good way to monetize software. Period. This has been discussed enough in countless articles during the last two years. The reasons are well-known by now. If you still managed to miss all that has been written about ads, I recommend Pinboard's talk about website obesity as a starting point.

Obviously a software should not be just a giant chum-box, there are no kind of upsides to that.

Still I do not understand why everyone should keep a mile away from them and be shamed for trying to ameliorate the bad sides of internet advertisements.

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

#88

Post by kiriakasis »

asginio wrote: post #30
kiriakasis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not a paid placement or advertisement. I would like that people were more explicit in why they despise ads. For me it is because they are unsecure, often outside the control of the site owner and heavily rely on tracking. For a long time my impression of Mozilla is that they are trying to "sanitize" ads on the web by experimenting on advertisements that are non-tracking by design. (this does not cover cliqz,…

1. They're ugly. 2. They're insecure. 3. They spy on users. 4. They lie. 5. They are a form of psychological manipulation. 6. They encourage consumerism and wasteful spending. 7. They waste economic resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Customers are the ones who pay for a company's marketing budget. 8. They lead to centralization of power in large firms.

I completely agree, but I also believe that it could be relevant to keep in mind the difference between what ads are right now and what they could be.

If Mozilla can grow a small but reliable advertisement space and impose significant restrictions on the style and taste of the ads this could actually improve the whole industry.

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

#89

Post by Tharkun »

yorwba wrote: post #39
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"…

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

That doesn't remove Pocket, it merely disables it. It's a stupid feature and a stupid default. It should be an extension that users can choose to install (or not).

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

This might be an android thing only, but when I type, for instance "sea", the URL bar autocomplete will suggest "sears.com", even though I have search disabled and have never visited sears.com. There are a bunch of these which seem to have come out of nowhere.

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

#90

Post by yorwba »

Tharkun wrote: post #89
yorwba wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

> Go to about:config and set extensions.pocket.enabled to false. That doesn't remove Pocket, it merely disables it. It's a stupid feature and a stupid default. It should be an extension that users can choose to install (or not). > remove the (paid?) list of URLs that's apparently preloaded This might be an android thing only, but when I type, for instance "sea", the URL bar autocomplete will suggest "sears.com", even…

> This might be an android thing only, but when I type, for instance "sea", the URL bar autocomplete will suggest "sears.com", even though I have search disabled and have never visited sears.com. There are a bunch of these which seem to have come out of nowhere.

I honestly never noticed this, because I look at the keyboard when I type a URL on Android.

Doing a bit of research in Bugzilla, it appears that there are two different systems in Firefox to "seed" the browser with autocomplete results. The first was implemented in Fennec (Firefox Android) [1] and acts as a fallback to the Alexa top 500 sites if no other autocomplete result was found [2]. The second was implemented separately in all of Firefox [3]. Ironically, someone was worried whether this might appear to users as a paid advertisement, but proposed using engagement as a metric to measure the impact [4]. That implementation uses browser.urlbar.usepreloadedtopurls.enabled and .expire_days to stop using the preloaded list after two weeks (when the user probably has generated enough history of their own). But the earlier Fennec version doesn't respect those settings. Someone already complained about that [5], but it doesn't appear like they filed the report in the right place for someone on the Fennec team to see it.

I'm going to file a new report to hopefully get that fixed. In the meantime you can toggle browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled to completely disable autocomplete, but I guess you might not want that if the suggestions are otherwise useful.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=858829

[2] https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/mobile/andro...

[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1211726

[4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1211726#c10

[5] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1211726#c70

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