You must log in or register to comment.
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 2.97K Posts
- 74.6K Comments
- Modlog
I look at it as a pragmatic attempt to work within the system we have to shift the internet away from its current nightmare dystopia of user tracking and information selling, and toward a system where all parties can be reasonably happy, with companies being able to receive aggregate anonymous data that helps them operate efficiently, without compromising even a tiny bit on user privacy.
Editing to actually respond to your question about who Firefox is built for: Definitely the user. But users don’t exist in a vacuum. Mozilla can and does consider the entire ecosystem their products and users exist within, and can take steps to make that ecosystem, the internet, a better place for users. The best part is that their actions often make the internet better for everyone - not just Firefox users.
But why appease advertisers, I don’t see the point? The current ad business only exists because it’s been possible to track people. It does not mean it’s impossible to do advertising without it. It’s not like it’s a right for advertisers to know in detail how their ads are performing.
Why wouldn’t Mozilla just disable all tracking? Why do they see any need to give anything back when minimizing another form of tracking?
You can be the enemy of the advertisers and they will do everything in their power to destroy you. Or you can not entirely piss them off and actually continue to exist and try to do as much good as you can.
But Mozilla is not in the ad business so why are they appeasing advertisers?
I could see Mozilla thinking advertisers will back off when they give them a more integrity-respecting tool, but my expectation is that advertisers will keep doing what they already do. Because why not?
Either way, distributing reports about my (anonymized) behavior, to advertisers, is still a slight breech of trust.
And even if it’s aggregated and mixed with others to a point of pure anonymity, it’s still a tool to manipulate your behavior on a large scale. I can see others not having a problem with it but I do.
By default they do block quite a bit. The “Standard” tracking protection option in their Settings page says it blocks Social media trackers, Cross-site cookies in all windows, tracking content in private windows, cryptominers, and fingerprinters. They have a strict option with a disclaimer that it may break some sites or content that does a bit more.
So they’re already blocking as much as they reasonably can without affecting legitimate functionality, and they have an option to block even more.
As for “Why offer them anything?”, my guess is pragmatism. They’re a lot more likely to succeed if they propose a system where the users give up nothing but companies can thrive anyways, vs. a system where the users give up nothing and the companies in charge of everything just burn to the ground and die.
I notably don’t have a strong opinion on whether or not I think they’ll succeed with this feature. I think their intentions are pure, though, and that it legitimately offers no privacy risk to users at all. I think the best chance it has is something like government mandates. Maybe there’s also a future where they somehow get Google on board for PR reasons or something. I wish them the best of luck.
Yeah, you argument about pragmatism resonates with me. If all tracking was turned off over night that will break a lot of streams of revenue that many businesses/sites online rely on. Those businesses has grown because it has been possible and profitable to track you every step online. That does not mean that system needs to be preserved, or replaced with something similar. Markets adapt, we don’t have to help this business find new ways to make money.
And also, cross-site tracking is not necessary to do advertising, it just make is more cost efficient. I don’t accept the argument that they need my behavior data to have a working business.
Ads in newspapers have worked historically without the tracking. (Newspapers a hard time now though competing with the more profitable online ad business)
Also cookies have other functions aside from tracking your behavior, while this new feature only benefits ad/product analysis, with no direct benefit to the user of the browser. It’s essentially giving away information about my behavior, albeit without telling them who I am. (Indirectly users might benefit from having more ad-supported services online)
But sure, Mozilla is free to do what they want. I still like and use Firefox.