An update on Mozilla’s PPA experiment and how it protects user privacy while testing cutting edge technologies to improve the open web.
Here’s the complete list of ads I find acceptable:
That is for any and all media.
Genuine question, would you be willing to pay for all the content you consume using a “token” system where each page, video or other piece of media has a price to it, usually about a cent per article or 5c per video, is automatically debited from either an account loaded with real money or some sort of blockchain, at the discretion of the user? A token could be one cent.
There’d be an open API, and multiple brokers could handle that transaction for you, so there is no vendor lock-in. You could even be your own broker if you set up your own server that talks to the servers hosting any media you’d like to consume. It would get rid of online advertising, but you have to pay out of pocket for server costs and content creation costs.
Sounds like BAT token from Brave
Top up by buying it or watching ads somewhere else, and then spend on sites you see as important or flat to everyone who you visit and is connected to BAT ecosystem.
Mozilla had the opportunity to do this. Or to do something like this. GNU Taler is a thing.
Mozilla pulled a sneaky trick on his community: convincing us that context sensitive advertisement needs to be collected by the browser. It’s on the back of another trick: convincing people that they can only make money through ads.
A few months ago, Mozilla officially became an ad company, so any claim they make about privacy has a clear conflict of interest with their own monetary gain. By selling advertisements as a necessary evil, they can sell you the cure.
Yes.
There used to be a service where you set an amount you paid each month and you could then mark pages/services for donation. At the end of the month your money would be split between all the pages/services you marked.
It was called flattr.
The elegance of this system is that you can set aside an amount of money you’re comfortable spending on art, or whatever you wanna categorise it as. So you’re fully in control of your spending. If videos/songs/articles/things cost a flat amount it’s easy to lose track of the total.
They sure do “improve” the “open” web by developing new tech that benefits advertisers.
I would be more okay with this if Firefox did more to block the tracking techniques that advertisers are currently using. They block third party cookies and compartmentalize social media cookies which is fine but they do almost nothing to stop the more insidious tracking techniques like device fingerprinting.
Mozilla really wants to push me to Brave
What more do you think should be done to stop fingerprinting, and does that involve sacrificing usability?
(Also, “almost nothing” feels like a gross exaggeration? Just the Tor Uplift project brought in lots of measures, quite a few of which could even be enabled by default.)
Brave randomizes the output of fingerprinting techniques like canvas rendering, system fonts, installed devices, etc in a way that makes you look like a real, consistent user providing real data that still allows the site to work, while still changing the output from one session to the next enough that sites can’t tell you’re the same person.
Firefox claims to block all this but if you check their site they explain how it actually works:
Firefox protects users against fingerprinting by blocking all third-party requests to companies that are known to participate in fingerprinting
We’ve partnered with Disconnect to provide this protection. Disconnect maintains a list of companies that participate in cross-site tracking, as well a list as those that fingerprint users.
This does nothing to actually disguise you. It’s the equivalent of putting a paper bag over your head when you think there’s a security camera. You stand out because of the bag and you don’t know where all the cameras are so you’re still being tracked when you don’t know it.
I hate the idea of Brave because Chromium’s dominance will ruin the web but Firefox does not protect us.
That is a bit confusing, but the feature called “Fingerprint Protection” (i.e. blocking known fingerprinters) isn’t the only protection built in. I’m not motivated enough to find a full list right now, but it also includes e.g. limiting the information in the User Agent header. I did at least find a list of things that were worked on at some point by searching for “Tor uplift”, which is a good starting point if you’d like to find more: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting
I’d also add that actually blocking requests to known fingerprinters does help. It’s more like camera’s getting disabled when you’re around: sure, from the point of view of the camera, it’s suspicious that it stopped working, but it can’t see you, so it doesn’t know who is standing out.
I will say it again: The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work, without a profile about you being created. I am fine with that.
Just imagine what a boon it would be for the “normal“ less tech savvy, if advertisers switched to a more privacy respecting technology like this.
If more privacy focused people don’t like it, they can simply disable it by ticking one box, without negative consequences (unlike content blockers and similar techniques where a website can penalize you, turned off PPA is not detectable).
It has no downsides as far as I am concerned. It doesn’t give advertisers additional data that they wouldn’t already be able to get, it just creates the option of measuring their ads in a privacy respecting way.
Companies get extra data through Firefox, which now acts on behalf of the ad corporations.
But advertisers have better options, both for reach, or for privacy. They can simply do A/B testing on their own, without involving a third party…
| Method: | PPA | Topics | Using different links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate creator | - | ||
| Needs users to trust 3rd party? | Yes (Mozilla) | Yes (Google) | No |
| ~% browsers it works on | <3% | >60% | 100% |
| Guaranteed privacy increase? | No | No | No* |
*If you trust the advertiser, they can do it on their own. If you don’t trust the advertiser, then the additional third party does nothing.
Do you want to see Mozilla and Firefox die a hero, or do you want to see it live long enough to become the villain?
With the US ruling of Google being a monopoly, Mozilla is bound to lose a lot of their income if that’s the decision that comes to pass. I’m happy with the courts ruling Google as a monopoly (because they are), but it does mean Mozilla needs to try to make money some other way.
Companies get extra data through Firefox
You mean extra data compared to them using any other advertising model, like google advertising? Do you have a source for that?
Because that is what PPA has to be compared to, and not to no ad measurement at all. It‘s meant to be replacing other advertising measurement techniques.
The comparison chart looks like it‘s copied from somewhere, would you mind sharing? I wouldn‘t mind a deeper dive into the topic.
That is correct: why would any corporation choose to sideline their current advertisement model by creating an extra solution that doesn’t even tap 3% of the market, while abandoning the data collection they already have?
If you trust the advertisement company to provide private ads, they can do it without the browser working on their behalf.
And if you don’t trust the advertisement company, there’s nothing the browser can do to make their ads list privacy invasive… Besides blocking it.
The source to the table is me, but I can provide the article that inspired it.
In particular, these claims never get accompanied by examples of what extra data these companies get through PPA. Presumably, because there is none.
Mozilla is really going for a “third time’s the charm” approach on collecting extra data, aren’t they.
First they silently started sucking up extra user data without consent and without warning, something not even Google attempted.
Then, they got caught, and took to Reddit to paternalistically explain why they knew better than the user, and why a consent dialog would be confusing.
And now, over a month after the initial reports come out, Mozilla triples down. What a stupid, stupid, stupid decision.
Advertisement is a business. It’s not charity and it’s not a publicly owned resource. It doesn’t keep the Internet free, because it makes a boat load of money doing what it does. It doesn’t take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you.
Either advertisement works, and you pay for your content by being psychologically manipulated into paying more than you otherwise would on things you don’t need, or it doesn’t, and businesses pay for ineffective advertisement, leading to increased prices.
Advertisement is not free. It’s a trick that looks free if you ignore the entire way it functions.
Advertisement is not free. It’s a trick that looks free if you ignore the entire way it functions.
It doesn’t take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you.
I think thats kind of obvious that the money has to be coming from somewhere. The ads are what funds large parts of the internet. Someone is paying for it, either the people buying stuff because of the ads or the businesses buying the ads.
Whichever way it is, maybe both, it has the side effect of distributing the cost of the Internet. The alternative without ads would be everyone paying for every little thing on the internet, does anyone think, that that scenario is realistic? That would also mean the cost is solely on the people and nothing coming from corporations.
It’s just more communication about the same thing. Started out with just a mention in the release notes and a checkbox in the settings, which clearly wasn’t enough (hence your calling it “silently”), then a more elaborate response on Reddit, and now this more detailed blog post outside of Reddit’s walled garden. And I’m sure it’s not the last we’ll hear of it. (I’d be curious about the experiment’s results too, for example.)
