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Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

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Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#81

Post by sayhello »

realusername wrote: post #15

I had nothing against the sponsoring in the new tab screen but this is a bit different. There is so much potential for backfire if they don't do it properly. But at the end, how is that different from Google who is also putting ads by analyzing your entire web history. The main problem is that it's quite hard to finance their business, they are trying to do new stuff in every direction to depend less on Google (new s…

Engineer on the Tiles team at Mozilla here.

We're trying to create a new way for ads to be targeted. In the classical model, the server tracks wherever you've been on the internet.

Basically, to show you relevant ads, at least one entity needs to know where you've been.

What we're trying to achieve is similar, except there is no tracking. Most of the decisioning (e.g. which sites similar to the target group have you been on before?) is made in Firefox.

The ad server will send many ads based on a user's geo (as determined by IP address) and locale (browser language, e.g. en-US). This package will include more Tiles (some are sponsored, some are not) than Firefox will decide to show.

While we do get data based on the impressions and other interactions with the Tile, we only get the strict minimum needed to compute our counts.

And on the topic of IP addresses, we consider that sensitive information. We only keep the raw data for a very short while (7 days).

The only thing that is kept for longer is the aggregate data, e.g. how many impressions tile X did on day Y.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#82

Post by fabrice_d »

mahouse wrote: post #78
epmatsw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really? http://arewefastyet.com/

Yes, really. Benchmarks are fabricated and hardly represent real use cases, such as modifying the DOM.

DOM modification performance has next to nothing to do with the performance of the JS engine.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#84

Post by AaronMT »

nodata wrote: post #23
icebraining wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is collected in the browser, same as it ever was. The history is not sent to Mozilla's servers - it's the browser that locally chooses and fetches the tiles. The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually visited. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311

Mozilla has done a disastrous job of communicating this, I hope they post something soon. Their last blog entry is from 18 May: https://blog.mozilla.org/ Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/

Agreed. It’s posted on a /privacy/ section of the blog https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#86

Post by lmorchard »

ama729 wrote: post #41
thristian wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better blog-post to link to would be https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providi... which links to an infographic describing how user privacy is protected: https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-... For people who don't like infographics, there's also a textual description: https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data...

From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except markete…

Unless you personally are paying for everything you're using on the web, you should care about the state of digital advertising.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#87

Post by lmorchard »

pgsandstrom wrote: post #75
vdaniuk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. As I have demonstrated with a simple example, this statement is false. >Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. Your attempt at moving the goalposts is irrelevant. Therefore, your accusation of Mozilla being dishonest with their goals is not supported by your arguments.

You are interpreting him too literally. What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising.

Mozilla cares about funding itself, yes. But digital advertising is also how most of the web is funded - and Mozilla cares about that, too, because it directly impacts everything else under the Mozilla mission.

As a user, you might prefer no ads when asked - but an enormous majority of people have endorsed the ad-supported free-of-charge model on the web through their daily actions. So, practically speaking, we have to find a way to deal with it and make it better.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#88

Post by soylentcola »

vdaniuk wrote: post #36
FooBarWidget wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, it's different from Google by showing ads without selling your personal information. Firefox fetches ads without sharing your history. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311

Google doesn't sell your personal information, it provides access to your eyeballs.

Yeah, I hear this a lot but I've never seen anything that suggests they sell info to any third party. If I'm wrong about this I'm definitely interested in reading about it so I can adjust my stance on it.

As far as I can tell, the idea has always been the same: more relevant ads means less ads needed to make the same revenue and cost businesses less in wasted ad budget.

The "old method" was to just make your ads more obnoxious and abundant since you could only compete through volume (both in the sense of "loudness" and "quantity"). Now if I open a shop in my city, I can advertise on Google. I tell Google that I want to pay for X ads and to show them to people in my city (potential customers) who have searched for similar items (more likely customers). This way I can minimize the amount of money I spend showing ads to people in other cities/countries or who aren't likely to be interested. Google can charge more for that space because it's more likely to result in a customer. Google makes more money from fewer/less obnoxious ads (no popups, flashy shit, etc). And as a web user, I don't see ads for diapers or restaurants in Wyoming because Google's algorithms have determined that I live in an east coast US city and have never searched for baby stuff.

Honestly the only real issue I have with their "big data" is that it might be captured by another organization (business, "hacker", or government) and used in less benign ways than tweaking the ads in my sidebar.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#89

Post by lmorchard »

ama729 wrote: post #54
vdaniuk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?

Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. I don't think putting ads in Firefox will reduce ads on websites.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. The way to reduce ads on websites is to pay for websites. But, so far, that's proven less practical and acceptable to users than just putting up with the ads. But, ads are getting annoying and intrusive. So, if we're stuck with ads because folks won't pay, maybe it makes sense to try to make that situation better?

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#90

Post by lmorchard »

gillianseed wrote: post #70
dannypgh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox isn't a business, it's an open source/free software project. Mozilla is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. This is an important distinction, no?

>Mozilla is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. Mozilla now consists of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and the for-profit Mozilla corporation subsidiary.

The Corporation isn't really for-profit, either, as it dumps any money it makes back into the Foundation.
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