Privacy

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Mozilla doubling down on ads in Firefox (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/23894598

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla's earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

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[–] ozoned 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

First off, yes, the title of the post is misleading. Mozilla is creating a privacy focused ad system. However, I legit don't get who this is for.

As a user, I'm not turning off my adblockers. Yes, privacy is important. I'm ok with some ads, but I'm not going to risk my privacy and security, because it's not like I'll have a clue who is backing said ads. So it's not for me.

Normal users have shown that they really don't care, let alone have any kind of clue what's going on. So it's not for them.

Advertisers have huge incentive to show you targeted ads. They don't want to show someone an ad on the other side of the planet for something they don't have access to. Also why would they want to show you an ad for something completely unrelated. What's the incentive for them to give up their targeted ads?

It's not like Mozilla is poising themselves for any kind of government oversight. I'm in the US, and the US gov doesn't seem to give a shit. And the EU, while they have GDPR and they're fining companies left and right, it doesn't seem like they're really targeting these kinds of ads. Outside of those two I don't know anything about other countries honestly.

So again, I have zero clue who this is for or why Mozilla thinks this will be successful. There's no incentive or knowledge that this is needed.

I use Firefox. I run Linux. I'm not trying to bash Mozilla here. I'm not trying to be a naysayer. I'm just trying to understand what kind of real world use case this solves and incentivizes users and advertises to use it over the alternatives.

[–] ozoned 1 points 2 months ago

Also, WHY should I trust Mozilla with this? I use Firefox because it's the best alternative at the moment. However, Mozilla is degrading that trust by pushing their weather thing, pocket, turning on their ad network, etc.

Like a real reason I should trust Mozilla with this. Any company is 1 executive away from becoming Google levels of anti-privacy. So why would I EVER trust this?