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EFF Says Mozilla's PPA is better than Google's Solution (www.fastcompany.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @[email protected]. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.”

https://mastodon.social/@eff/112922761259324925

Privacy experts say the new toggle is mostly harmless, but Firefox users saw it as a betrayal.

“They made this technology for advertisers, specifically,” says Jonah Aragon, founder of the Privacy Guides website. “There’s no direct benefit to the user in creating this. It’s software that only serves a party other than the user.”

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[–] possiblylinux127 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The biggest issue I have with this is that it is opt out

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wouldn't be a very useful metric if no one had it on lol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

At least they could have popped up a dialogue saying it existed, like Google Chrome does.

Insult to injury, Mozilla posted an excuse to Reddit that said that they didn't want to confuse users with too many pop-ups. This is the same company that would pop up messages reminding you that they were blocking trackers, or saying you should change your browser...

[–] possiblylinux127 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

That is a very anticonsumer and antiuser freedom mentality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Sure but it's the reason why

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Other big issue is they didn't consult the Open source community. They could've been just straight with us and told us that donations aren't cutting it and then community as a whole could've come up with something to monetize. And even if it ends up being advertising they could've worked with community to implement in such a way that it would respect the try reason why most people switch to Firefox to escape Google's surveillance. And maybe I can stop daydreaming about an utopia

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

It was never about money. This feature isn't and was never going to make Mozilla one cent.

It's about reducing the leverage advertisers have on legislators when it comes to the measurements necessary to operate effective ad campaigns. The hope is that with privacy-preserving methods available, privacy-violating measurement can be more easily outlawed.

I think we would have arrived at the very same feature.