this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you (mastodon.social)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] dohpaz42 47 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Has anybody actually looked up Privacy-Preserving Advertising?

This is Firefox’s attempt at removing PII from advertising. This is the opposite of what all ad networks do. The browser keeps track of what ads you’re shown, and whether you’ve visited the advertiser, and encrypts the data and sends it to an aggregation service that will then generate a report for the advertiser.

This is a trial service that they are currently testing with a small number of advertisers. This is probably why it’s opt-out. They need data to determine its effectiveness. Could they have been more upfront about it? Sure. Are they evil for doing it? Not a by a long shot.

Put your pitchforks and torches down. This is a nothing burger right now.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The point is that this is not something that users want, it's something that advertisers want. Why is Firefox pandering to advertisers and corporate interests? No user wants this, and Firefox is supposed to be a non-commercial browser built with the interests of its users in mind.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Because you dont pay them and Google isn’t gonna forever. Money’s gotta come from somewhere.

I’d rather they create something better than what we have now because if you think you will ever live in a world without advertising, you’re unfortunately completely wrong.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I won't mind some advertising if it wasn't so invasive or potentially dangerous as vectors for viruses. The harder advertisers push, the harder the blocking is pushed, as seen on twitch.tv over the years. So, having Firefox handle the data, protecting its users' identifiable data, if possible, would be a welcome compromise.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You’re not wrong on the surface, but there’s unfortunately other issues with trusting any company to be the middleman for your info. As the (numerous, massive, and repeated) data breaches have shown, it only takes one incompetent employee to turn “this one company acts as a middleman for all my ads, and ensures sites still get paid while I don’t get infected or tracked” into “this is the single largest and most invasive data breach I have ever been affected by, because all of my eggs were in a single basket.”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That is a very good point. I say the same about steam with PC games.

[–] dohpaz42 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Nobody likes being tracked by advertisers, and of course nobody likes advertising. It’s invasive, deceptive, and diminishes the user experience in every way imaginable. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that we can all agree to this stance.

Now, where I will disagree with you (and others that feel like you) is that Firefox is not pandering to advertisers. If anything, I feel they are compromising with them, with the user’s best interest at heart. Bear with me for a moment…

There is no arguing that Firefox made a huge misstep in how they’re executing this feature. They should have been talking about it long before the feature was released. That is a huge missed opportunity, and I for one can understand why people would have this knee-jerk “Firefox bad” reaction. It feels shady. It’s a bad look for an otherwise stellar product. Hopefully we can agree here too.

But I believe that if we all take a deep breath, and a step back, for a moment, then we can all see that in the long run this helps the user. No longer will advertisers need to rely on fingerprinting and tracking users. No longer will PII need to be sent to track conversion rates. It’s completely anonymous, and encrypted. And, it’s transparent to the user.

Will it work? Who knows.

But everybody running around screaming about how horrible of an idea this feature is and that everyone needs to disable this feature for no other reason than Firefox made a bad decision to not be more upfront about it, certainly won’t help.

And who would benefit from that? Advertisers.

Advertisers right now thrive on being deceptive, collecting PII, and fingerprinting mine and your behavior. They have invested billions on their infrastructure and networks. If this is successful, it will suck for them. But if it’s successful, it’ll rock for us.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Firefox is not pandering to advertisers. If anything, I feel they are compromising with them

I don't want to compromise with advertisers. I want to block them and not be tracked by them.

So where is my choice as the user of the browser that is running on my machine and using my internet connection and tracking my data?

But if it’s successful, it’ll rock for us.

If you think this will make one iota of difference in advertiser behavior then you must have been born yesterday.

[–] dohpaz42 7 points 5 months ago

I want to block them and not be tracked by them.

Nothing about this change inhibits your ability to block ads.

So where is my choice as the user of the browser that is running on my machine and using my internet connection and tracking my data?

That’s the thing: it’s NOT tracking YOUR data. Nothing about this ties data to you. It’s in the name: Privacy-Preserving Advertising.

If you think this will make one iota of difference in advertiser behavior then you must have been born yesterday.

And yet you’ve forgotten to wish me a happy birthday. How rude! 😤

[–] Feathercrown 2 points 5 months ago

So where is my choice as the user of the browser that is running on my machine and using my internet connection and tracking my data?

You can opt out.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You are free as a user to touch grass, and to run an Adblock that enforces your preferences.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They did it behind the scenes, not announcing it.

If it's such a good thing, why didn't they come out and say so?

Oh, because it's not.

[–] RedditWanderer 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Because they don't want to scare advertisers.

Instead of the traditional model of serving ads using identifiable data gathered by your browser, it takes the data and aggregates it to make profile type reports that advertisers can use instead of tracking you personally. It basically makes you anonymous while still serving general data to advertisers. This is a pro consumer experiment they did not need to work on.

Sure it's not ad-blocking, but it's better than feeding your personal info indiscriminately like some other browsers I could name..

They did mention it in the change logs, but they didn't make it opt-out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because they don’t want to scare advertisers.

This tells you everything you need to know. If Firefox was acting in the interests of users then they wouldn't give a fuck what advertisers think.

[–] dohpaz42 4 points 5 months ago

No it doesn’t. But if they are to be successful, they do need advertisers to be on board.

I get it, we are currently in a polarized “all-or-nothing” cultural revolution. Compromise is the new four-letter word. But look around at other polarized ideologies and tell me they are all working out like people want.

What Firefox is trying to do is a good thing. And yes that means finding a middle ground where nobody gets everything they want, but also gets some things that they want.

[–] DxK 36 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I just checked and they did mention it in the change log but fuuuuck them for making this shit opt out without any sort of pop up notification. As that person on Mastodon pointed out, even Chrome managed to inform all users via popup when they did it.

[–] SuckMyWang 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

RIP Firefox the decline is in full swing. Great time for a company who actually cares about privacy to devour it. I’m looking at you proton.

[–] teft 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Kind of lame they made it opt out. This is the setting you want to disable. It is about halfway down the Privacy and Security portion of the settings page.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Personal fan favorite:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Same. Librewolf and Mullvad browsers FTW. Librewolf comes with Ublock Origin and turns off a lot of privacy invasive configuration flags by default.

Combine this with awesome extensions like NoScript (ublock can also block JS, but I like NoScript's interface better), and Chameleon (spoof your user agent string) and you're good. Add on LibRedirect to redirect you to alternative front ends like Invidious, Libreddit, Nitter, Scribe, and also paste in a Bypass Paywalls script into Ublock’s filter list, and yeah...there's a LOT of options to give the middle finger to advertisers, I mean, just look into using yt-dlp with YouTube sponsor block, and you can go far with this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I wouldn't use any other extensions, especially something like Chamaleon for Mullvad browser though.
Extensions, specifically the ones that change how a website behaves or how a website sees the user (such as an adblocker or a user agent string switcher) can be detected. Mullvad only comes with NoScript and uBlock Origin which is enough most of the time, and installing other extensions can be used to fingerprint you, especially since Mullvad tries to have every user seem like the same user to websites (which is why things such as letterboxing are enabled).

[–] CatZoomies 8 points 5 months ago

Dang. Firefox, you were the chosen one! You were supposed to bring balance to the browser wars.

I’ll still keep using Firefox as i have for 20 years or whatever, but certainly will begin considering switching to a Firefox fork if this behavior continues.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

Just planting seeds.

https://odysee.com/Bill-Hicks-on-Marketing:9