Mozilla wants you to love Firefox again
www.fastcompany.com
Mozilla is reinvesting in Firefox after letting it languish for years. But some of those investments may upset their community of die-hards.

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 @FastCompany@flipboard.com. “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.”

  • Vincent@feddit.nl
    1·
    10 months ago

    Of course whoever make my browser had the capability to siphon it all off. But nothing in the PPA news has given me reason to believe that is happening: nobody has pointed out the source code that does it, or intercepted network requests in which they see it happening, or even just been able to name a single piece of personal data that is apparently being sold to advertising companies. You have not done so either.

    I also think that if Mozilla was trying to be sneaky, they could have done a better job than literally mentioning it in the release notes.

      • Vincent@feddit.nl
        1·
        10 months ago

        The main difference between Mozilla and Google is that Google is actually sucking up your data. For example, I can specifically mention that they’ve got stored where you log in often, what age they think you are, what gender, how rich you likely are, etc. Even if they’re completely honest about it, that’s not good. You can’t make such a list about Mozilla, and Mozilla doesn’t actively try to hide what they are doing (non-invasive measurement of ad performance).

        Of course, the average user doesn’t read the release notes. (I’d go even further: the average user doesn’t read anything.) But the only reason you know about PPA, is because Mozilla explicitly called it out in the release notes, after which some bloggers decided to make a stink.

        You’ve accused Mozilla of two separate things:

        1. Collecting personal data (but can’t say what data)
        2. Being sneaky about it (but they could just as well not have mentioned it in the release notes and you wouldn’t have known)
          • Vincent@feddit.nl
            1·
            10 months ago

            So you agree with #1 but are upset I have not provided specifics…

            No; I have claimed that it doesn’t collect personal data. You’re disputing that claim, but if you can’t mention a single piece of data, then I’m not inclined to believe you. (Fakespot and Anonym are completely unrelated to PPA. I’m not necessarily interested in branching out to discussing those as well, though I expect that we’re more aligned on them anyway.)

            Regarding the claim that Mozilla is good and Google is bad, that’s based on a presumption.

            No, I’m claiming that Google’s actions in the past have been worse than Mozilla’s, and I have named concrete actions that Google has done that Mozilla has not.

              • Vincent@feddit.nl
                1·
                10 months ago

                Again, bringing Fakespot and Anonym is just moving the goalposts. You were complaining about PPA, and have failed to mention concrete data points that shares about you. It’s really not interesting to move on to another subject only to have the goalposts moved again.

                  • Vincent@feddit.nl
                    1·
                    10 months ago

                    OK, fair enough, that was me allowing myself getting sidetracked. You still haven’t answered the earlier question about what extra data PPA provides anyone, though. I’ll leave it at that unless you can name one concrete piece of data.