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Make Firefox Private Again

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Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#81

Post by roca »

perchlorate wrote: post #48
cjpearson wrote: post #43

I really don't like advertising. I use uBlock Origin in my browser, AdGuard on my phone and pi-hole in my home. I even take a seam ripper to my clothes to make sure no logos remain. But I understand that advertising is the only viable business model for much of the internet. (Browsing HN and seeing that the top comment for every paywalled article is a pirated link confirms that.) If advertising must exist, I'd prefer…

Advertisers are going to use it as just another data point, though. Why give them any more information than they already have? You know some of the best technical people we have waste their lives working for advertisers, and they _will_ find a way to extract more information from these technologies regardless of how supposedly private they are. I don't think there can be a technical solution to this problem unless ad…

> I don't think there can be a technical solution to this problem unless advertisers are forced by government regulations to behave, with very heavy fines for non-compliance.

Indeed, but such regulation is much more likely to happen if there already exist privacy-preserving solutions like PPA.

"There's a good way to do it and a bad way, and we're making it illegal to do it the bad way" vs "There only way to do it is bad, and we're making that illegal, so sucks to be you"

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#82

Post by kerkeslager »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #27
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,…

I don't wholly disagree, but it's always a tad ironic to read "money is ruining the free/open internet" discussion on a free forum powered by VC money.

I come here largely to find out what VC money (and the culture around it) is doing because it affects me (and everyone). Don't mistake that for supporting what VC money is doing.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#83

Post by roca »

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.

Then I think it's only fair for you to completely stop using ad-supported sites and services, right away.

(Which will also mean that Firefox's treatment of ads will not affect you.)

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#84

Post by lpcvoid »

cjpearson wrote: post #43

I really don't like advertising. I use uBlock Origin in my browser, AdGuard on my phone and pi-hole in my home. I even take a seam ripper to my clothes to make sure no logos remain. But I understand that advertising is the only viable business model for much of the internet. (Browsing HN and seeing that the top comment for every paywalled article is a pirated link confirms that.) If advertising must exist, I'd prefer…

I personally don't care if 90% of websites which rely on advertising disappear or replace their monetization strategy with gated, paid access. I even think this is a good thing.

As such, I will fight the ability of websites to monetize by tracking wherever I can.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#85

Post by sensanaty »

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...

The fact that the disgusting parasitic entity that is Meta is a part of this makes me sick to my stomach. The fact that the Mozilla CTO is supportive of Meta being a part of it? Just unspeakable.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#86

Post by kerkeslager »

cjpearson wrote: post #43

I really don't like advertising. I use uBlock Origin in my browser, AdGuard on my phone and pi-hole in my home. I even take a seam ripper to my clothes to make sure no logos remain. But I understand that advertising is the only viable business model for much of the internet. (Browsing HN and seeing that the top comment for every paywalled article is a pirated link confirms that.) If advertising must exist, I'd prefer…

> But I understand that advertising is the only viable business model for much of the internet.

1. Much of the internet simply doesn't need to exist. If nobody is willing to pay for something, maybe it doesn't have value.

2. For a lot of what does have value, the problem might be your idea of what a "viable business model" is. If I write a weekly blog post and it makes $2000 a month, that's a viable business model. It's more than a lot of writing jobs pay. But it doesn't scale into some sort of multinational content corp so half of the people involved in the conversation are willing to write it off.

3. A lot of sites simply don't need to be businesses. I've paid hosting costs and helped moderate to help run forums, with no expectation of financial recompense, simply because I enjoyed the community. The best forums nearly universally work this way, still.

The real value of Reddit, for example, comes from subreddit moderators who are typically volunteers. Everything I value about Reddit is provided by people who don't work for Reddit, and the hosting/software could easily be swapped out with minimal impact for most of these communities. In fact, all the problems I've had with Reddit are caused by Reddit's decisions--I've never had a problem with an AskScience or ProgrammingLanguages moderator policy change, but Reddit makes some decision that harms their users significantly probably twice a year.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#87

Post by grishka »

nox101 wrote: post #67
kelnos wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing... people would still make free content, and since there wouldn't be as many shady ways to monetize, it would cut down on low-effort (and AI-generated) garbage. The internet would be such a better place. We would probably lose some good stuff, or see it moved behind paywalls. That would be a shame, but I think it would be worth it.

I'm pretty confident that without advertising, the majority of YouTube channels people love most would not exist. maybe overall that would be a good thing as there's so much trash too

And that's fine. YouTube channels are always better when they're someone's hobby rather than a full-time job.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#88

Post by grishka »

SCdF wrote: post #30

I just want to use a robust, secure and decently fast browser that uses a different backend than Chrome to support the open web not ossifying into a single browser spec. I'll pay monthly! Please just let me pay for this in money and not my privacy :-(

There's Ladybird.

https://ladybird.org

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#89

Post by user070223 »

jmakov wrote: post #12

Can this be also disabled on Android?

Yes, beta version for sure(just go to about:config), possibly it works on the normal version with the following method (which allows you to insert a user.js)

Instructions: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/issues/240

Other option is to use another gecko based browser check this https://divestos.org/pages/browsers

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#90

Post by kerkeslager »

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,…

Yeah, being against advertising isn't fundamentally about privacy. I mean, I care about privacy too, but even an ad that collects no data about me is bad. I simply do not want products shoved in my face. If I need something from your company I'll come to you.

Yes, in the current environment, companies have to advertise to compete with competition that advertises. This is why we need to agree as a society to stop this nonsense, so that companies that don't advertise are in competition with other companies that don't advertise, competing for independent review based on the quality of their products and services.

Advertising undermines the fundamental premise that companies win in competition by providing the best products and services. An well-marketed inferior product outcompetes a poorly-marketed superior product every time, and that's a problem. Advertising should be viewed as anti-competitive, because it's not competing on the metrics that serve people's needs: which is the entire point of an economy.

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