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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 @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.”

  • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    468·
    1 month ago

    There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.

    Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.

    • doodledup@lemmy.world
      354·
      1 month ago

      If privacy preserving ad features become good enough, we won’t have as much privacy inversive ad tracking and a better internet overall. For the long game, this might not be such a bad thing as ads won’t go away anytime soon.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        74·
        1 month ago

        Exactly. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for content (I’m paying a bit for Nebula, for example), and my hope is that transitioning advertising to a privacy-friendly system run by clients will encourage more options to pay for content in lieu of ads.

        I’d pay a few dollars a month to avoid ads on most sites, and I’m guessing that’s about what advertisers are making from me, but instead the options are:

        • pay 10x what they’d make from ads
        • see ads and get my privacy absolutely violated
        • don’t interact with the thing

        So the more we move toward privacy-respecting ads, the more likely we are to see more options than the above. At least that’s my take.

        • dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          1 month ago

          exactly. If the price was as much as ads pay it would cost users fractions of pennies per view. They just charge paid users so much more then that for the same thing. Since google ads is one of the biggest ads supplier we could technically have a wallet that substracts the ad value to not see it directly with google.

        • dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          1 month ago

          I just sent feedback to google from the “my ad center” page describing the wallet idea to pay the ad price instead of watching the ad. Last time i sent youtube feedback they didn’t come back to me but they did apply the change i was asking for. So we never know.

    • astro_ray@lemdro.idOPEnglish
      21·
      1 month ago

      Personally, I don’t have a problem with ads. And if those ads can support further development on an open source product I get to use for free then that’s even better. What I have problem with is privacy intrusive targeted ads. Even before the internet, newspaper, radio had ads. They sure were annoying, but not as bad of a situation as it is now.