fastcompany.com
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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.”

  • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
    306·
    3 months ago

    This entire thing is just idealism vs pragmatism for the trillionth time. The idealists are mad because they think all ads are bad and we shouldn’t try to work with advertisers in any capacity. They do not believe reducing the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach, because that would be an acknowledgement of ads. Common talking points there are about how this is technically working with advertisers and how the internet shouldn’t have ads in the first place.

    The pragmatics also think ads are bad, but believe that an Internet without ads is very unlikely to happen, so they believe attempting to reduce the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach. Common talking points there are about how this isn’t giving advertisers anything they don’t already have and about how this doesn’t matter if you’re using an adblocker.

    Like all other debates of this type, this probably isn’t ever going to be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction and we’ve really just been seeing the same talking points over and over again since the beginning. So I hope y’all have fun duking it out, I don’t think I’m gonna bother looking at these pointless PPA threads anymore.

    • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
      101·
      3 months ago

      Please argue how removing all (non-voluntary) advertising from society right now would do anything other than vastly improve society, and keep calling people like me idealists.

      • Devorlon@lemmy.zipEnglish
        41·
        3 months ago

        All ad supported services would need to move to a paid only model, locking out those who couldn’t afford to pay.

        • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
          42·
          3 months ago

          Or profit margins could just go down. I don’t know why you treat those two concepts as mutually exclusive; it’s been shown that even with expensive products companies will still mine massive amounts of user data and advertise to you endlessly. These parasites aren’t going to turn down extra profit at any avenue, no matter how legally, morally, or ethically questionable.

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      91·
      3 months ago

      As a privacy enthusiast and pragmatist, I see Firefox as providing no additional benefit to users or advertisers. Considering the laughably small market share of Firefox, I’m not sure how it is expected to woo advertisers over either.

      Which of these options look more robust: Google Topics, Mozilla PPA, or advertisers doing AB testing on their own by simply using different links for different audiences?

      Method: PPA Topics Using different links
      Corporate creator Facebook Google -
      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.

      • heftig@beehaw.orgEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        This is a nonsense comparison as these features serve completely different purposes, while only having in common that advertisers currently use user tracking to achieve the same.

        Topics data-mines your browsing history for information about your interests and reveals this information to advertisers in order to improve ad selection. It’s meant to replace ad networks tracking each individual user’s visits to connected websites and building that profile themselves. Since this is, in a way, much more powerful than tracking cookies, Chrome has a scary dialog asking for it to be enabled, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing it in Firefox. “Using different links” cannot replace user profiling at all.

        PPA doesn’t provide any new capabilities to advertisers. It’s a privacy-preserving way of measuring ad campaign success that is currently done by ad networks tracking individual users from ad impressions to conversions. “Using different links” is also defective, as advertisers need to connect ad impressions to conversions even if they are not immediately connected through a click on the ad.

        If these features become generally available, this reduces the leverage advertisers have on legislators to prevent tracking from being outlawed. Mozilla will be hoping Chrome picks up PPA.

        • LWD@lemm.ee
          2·
          3 months ago

          You want to legislate telling companies which servers they are allowed to gather data from, making it into a de jure oligopoly rather than a de facto one?!