this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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People are criticizing Mozilla for the ads, tracking, and AI stuff. The stuff Google does. Criticizing Mozilla is not an endorsement of Google, in fact quite the opposite.
Their ad metrics thing is 100% private. Nobody, not even Mozilla, can tie the data back to you. Each data point is packaged separately (so that you can't get all of it and easily work out who it is). Mozilla created an effective way to have genuinely privacy-respecting and metrics and they're hated for it.
I don't like ads, I use an adblock, but the internet runs on ads. Ads unfortunately have to exist if we still want all this online content, and if they do exist, they should be private.
With any hope, the likes of the EU will push for this over the kinds of ad systems that Google and Meta push.
As for the AI integration in Firefox - it runs locally and does stuff like offline translation (i.e not sending the contents of the page to Google translate), as well as enhanced screen reader functionality for blind people. Stop trying to equate it to the likes of ChatGPT.
the internet doesn't run on ads. we were all fine before the megacorporations came in and started pushing ads down our throats for delivering the exact same services that already existed for free. it just so happens ads are more profitable, and with more profit, you have more ways to achieve exposure, which gives you more profit, ad infinitum.
point is, we'd be fine without ads.
What services were free and not ad supported that survived unlimited VC funds from the 90s?
Do you use any Firefox or chromium web browser, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, or WASM because I'm 90% most of the development for all of that comes from Ad companies or companies funded by ads.
these techs existed long before web based ad companies. but, ad companies exist, so obviously they will contribute to the technologies they need to continue to exist. to do otherwise would be corporate suicide and it's a stupid argument to pretend like we wouldn't be fine without them just because they are putting their fingers in the cake. nothing was wrong with the older browsers; modern browsers are essentially just a war of proprietary rendering to try and kill competition bringing us back to the era of fucking internet explorer; which no one sane would want.
heck, firefox came to exist from netscape, so its basically ancient history at this point, and chromium (blink) is a fork off webkit which in turn is a fork of khtml from KDE (linux) konqueror browser - and as a matter of fact, khtml was discontinued just last year. i don't see the relevance of ad companies when things have been fine and still are; without them.
but as we continue to abandon the practice of IT and todays kids grow up thinking google created the internet and all they know is how to touch the rainbow icon on their screens, the future is fucked.
I don't disagree that there is a ton of development from volunteers and non profit (ngos, Universitys and governments) but the majority seems to be from big tech at the moment.
Just saying they are contributing a lot and in those ways the Internet is better for it.
The exact same services? Did YouTube exist in the 1980s?
there were tons of video streaming sites around before youtube came around. i even ran one at the time.
And did you pay those people? How much money were they able to make off their artistic efforts?
The entitlement is real.
are you 12? it seems you have no experience or memory of a world before 2012. everything which is currently being controlled by a handful of companies like Meta or Google today existed in huge volumes before these snakes paid their way into global dominance. i.e. there were hundreds of big community websites long before facebook. there were several great search engines before google. there were several streaming sites before youtube. there were tons of chat applications before Messenger/WhatsApp. there were thousands of email services before gmail, hotmail, and yahoo created their "whitelist", etc etc. Heck, Messenger (and google talk, etc) - all used XMPP originally, but isolated their network when it grew big enough to kill competition and force users onto their platform. we all USED to be able to use whatever client we wanted and still keep in touch with family and friends. we all USED to be able to run our own mail servers. we all USED to...
fuck it. why am I putting effort into this lol.
Which search engine was running without ads? Were any of those streaming sites paying content creators? Was your streaming site handing traffic for more than 10 users? What was your outgoing bandwidth bill from your ISP?
People see AI and immediately think of ChatGPT. This is despite the fact that AI has been around far longer and does way more things including OCR and data mining. It's never been AI that's the problem, but rather certain uses of AI.
I DON'T want all this online content. I'm not on instagram/facebook/tiktok/whatever two-word website/app the next generation will worship. I don't tweet. I don't follow influencers. The media I consume is mostly youtube, and even that's been recently decreasing. The internet can die tomorrow and I won't miss anything that ran on ads, the biggest impact would be that now I can't buy things online so I'd need to physically purchase some items.
Fuck this version of the internet. If there's ever a moment that adblockers stop fighting the good fight, I'm cutting costs and just not paying for internet anymore. It's not worth it.
Ok. But that is just you personally, and the internet carers to far more than just you.
Which is ad-based, even if you and I likely use ublock.
You won't miss any YouTube content? Really? There's not a single YouTube channel you like? You won't miss hundreds of news websites? Game mod websites? Sites with Old game archives? Etc etc.
Ok whatever, let's assume that's right. It still doesn't change anything. You feeling that way doesn't mean ads will no longer exist.
Ads will exist regardless of your feelings on the matter, because so much of the internet is reliant on it. With that in mind, surely you'd rather ads not be the privacy nightmare they are right now, no?
I feel like people are shitting on a real improvement to the way things currently are in order to fawn over a completely unrealistic change. In other words, letting perfect be the enemy of good.