A free and open internet shouldn't come at the expense of privacy

Mozilla&#x27;s title, <i>&quot;A free and open internet shouldn&#x27;t come at the expense of privacy&quot;</i>, is very misleading about the content of the article. In plain speech, the article&#x27;s about Mozilla looking for new ways to deliver ads in web browsers. Maybe this is a suitable place for mods to override the original title and write a non-deceptive one.<p>edit: Here&#x27;s a few other threads on the same topic (of Mozilla&#x27;s advocacy of a &quot;privacy-preserving attribution&quot;, or &quot;interoperable private attribution&quot;, of browser ads):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41643991">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41643991</a> (<i>&quot;Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature (noyb.eu)&quot;</i>; 14 days ago, 130 comments)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40971247">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40971247</a> (<i>&quot;A word about private attribution in Firefox (reddit.com)&quot;</i>; 85 days ago, 102 comments)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40954535">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40954535</a> (<i>&quot;&quot;Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you&quot; (mastodon.social)&quot;</i>; 87 days ago, 187 comments)

I&#x27;ve changed the term &quot;advertising&quot; for &quot;being racist&quot; in one of their paragraphs to better highlight how the disconnections in this article makes me feel:<p>&quot;We started [being racist] because the way the industry works today is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t put people first, it’s not privacy-respecting, and it’s increasingly anti-competitive. There have to be better options. Mozilla can play a key role in creating these better options not just by advocating for them, but also by actually building them. We can’t just ignore [being racist] — it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded. We need to stare it straight in the eyes and try to fix it. For those reasons, Mozilla has become more active in [being racist] over the past few years.&quot;<p>You don&#x27;t fix a problem by becoming part of it. &quot;Those who fight monsters should see to it that in the process they do not become monsters&quot;.

Through all the discussions of privacy and online advertising, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve ever actually seen the focus put specifically on the fact that targeted advertising online is really the problem.<p>Websites could ship with advertising that mimics print ads - the same ad is shown to everyone and the ads are targeted based only on the overall content of the site and the general market that is likely to browse it.<p>Advertising can absolutely still exist online, targeting should simply not be possible. That would mean losing a ton of functionality online as well, but it can be done.<p>Get rid of cookies entirely and get rid of or at least minimize the number of headers that identify a browser and OS. Authentication would need to be handled differently for many sites, but that&#x27;s a solvable problem.

Reading the comment section, I am really happy and uplifted that people expose Mozilla&#x27;s wrongdoing by trying to look for ways to add &lt;&lt;ads&gt;&gt; into the browser. And I am curious, is anybody aware of a good alternative browser or even just an alternative way to what Mozilla should be doing instead? I use brave mostly but I am not sure if their ad blocking is any good under the hood or not... Seeing a company like Mozilla behaving like this, I honestly don&#x27;t know who or what to trust anymore...

«“…a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical … “ to creating an open, healthy internet.»<p>Just nah. Public benefit and openness should come first. Commercial profit should be made around that. They should not balance each other.

Then maybe Firefox can start shipping with defaults that don’t phone home to Mozilla several times when launching and closing? Mozilla harps on this privacy angle but I see it as purely marketing.

Mozilla&#x27;s level of cognitive dissonance is off the charts, and their ongoing demise is an actual tragedy.<p><i>You&#x27;re still tracking people</i>, you just do it in a roundabout way that may preserve privacy on a technicality, and even that much is questionable. Even if this goal was achieved, it would only alleviate a small part of what is a fundamentally broken industry.<p>Claiming to promote a healthy web is just preposterous. Commercialization of the web through ads combined with the force multiplier that are garbage-generating LLMs, is thrashing the web and destroying its legacy at an unprecedented rate.

&gt; We can’t just ignore online advertising - it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded<p>Sorry no, that thinking is patently false right there. So everything that follows is compromised.<p>Advertising has been <i>made</i> a major driver, actually the only driver. It does not <i>need</i> to be a major driver and certainly not the only driver. And, spoiler alert, it <i>cannot continue</i> being a major driver.<p>Yes, advertising is a big and varied business with at least one century of storied successes (and how exactly it is done can range from the outright immoral to various shades of ethical). But society and the economy is much, much bigger than advertising. They can easily fund (and do so continuously in a vast range of domains) the infrastructures they need to function properly.<p>The internet is not a platform for ads. Its the digital canvas on which pretty much all of current life unfolds and will do so even more in the future.<p>Some sort of digital advertising business will be happening in the market driven &#x2F; consumerist societies that are the current form of socioeconomic organization. But it is parochial, backward looking and eventually a dead-end to continue ignoring the much more fundamental role of internet infrastructure.<p>If Mozilla wants to continue being relevant (as I currently write this on a firefox browser, I surely hope they do) they need to escape the adtech black hole and its reality distortion field.

The free and open internet is damn close to being on the very last leg of its stay at the ICU and there is little reason to expect a recovery.<p>It us all hugely centralized, stuffed with ad inside ads, and propaganda inside propaganda like a matryoshka doll. With monetization as the main driving force. Perhaps the ever-present dream of becoming famous. (and rich)<p>Those giants abuse their position to kill off what little remains.<p>For many the web is &quot;YouTube,Tiktok,Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Telegram etc&quot;

- there are many web-browsers<p>- none of them matters, if your browser does not support features, like DRM, because firefox ships with these features<p>- it is hard to browse the web without a niche browser, as some sites do not work<p>- most popular Linux OS&#x27;es ship with firefox. I think this will not change any time soon. For the situation to change something more ground breaking should happen. Until then we are barking at the moon<p>- I use more RSS reader nowadays, so browsers important (but not as much, for surfing). My reader shows YT videos in iframe, etc, etc

&gt; However, I can imagine a world where advertising online happens in a way that respects all of us, and where commercial and public interests are in balance. That’s a world I want to help build.<p>How? Anything commercial is designed to make money and a business doesn&#x27;t solely exist for the person. You can&#x27;t wholly align public interests with commercial, it&#x27;s just not possible.<p>Keep dreaming there Mark, there is no respect in advertising. With advertising your always forcibly exploiting someone to force something.

Says the organization which doesn&#x27;t accept personal donations to fund Mozilla, and which doesn&#x27;t seek government grants, like &#x27;digital sovereignty&#x27; grants the EU might give to keep its citizens out of Sauron&#x27;s dark eye.<p>You should be able to connect to your government&#x27;s websites without being required to use a browser which is deliberately built to engage in advertising and which tracks you without real and effective informed consent.<p>Mozilla is saying that user-tracking is the only viable advertising model for any future web, and that even laws mandating only contextual advertising, with actual informed consent for anything else, is not something to consider.<p>I wanted to be able to tell my local schools to install Firefox instead of Chrome, because otherwise you are teaching the kids to depend and trust in Google. I cannot do that now, because I don&#x27;t now trust in Firefox, which means placing my trust in one of the Firefox forks - and there&#x27;s no way I can convince the schools to do that.<p>&gt; And we’ll continue to explore ways to add advertiser value while respecting user privacy<p>That&#x27;s exactly the chicanery I&#x27;ve come to expect from Firefox. I&#x27;m okay with advertisers which don&#x27;t build up a tracking profile. For the ones that do - fuck them and drain their bank accounts.

Advertising and a free &amp; open internet are antithetical. Look at how much social media, YouTube, ADL etc. are all collaborating on how to curtail free speech because of and on behalf of advertisers.

Related articles: From Laura Chambers, CEO: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;improving-online-advertising&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;improving-online-adverti...</a><p>From Brad Smallwood of anonym: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;products&#x2F;anonym-technology-overview&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;products&#x2F;anonym-technology-overv...</a>

Yeah, fuck off, Mozilla. I don&#x27;t want ads and will not see ads. I don&#x27;t care if all the content that requires money goes away. In fact, I would prefer it.<p>You fucked up big time when you opted me into your &quot;virginity preserving sex&quot; without my consent. You should have written missives like this before pushing that option and EXPLAINED how it&#x27;s preserving privacy.

lol, that’s rich coming from Mozilla. In fact, every Big Tech currently marketing “privacy” (including Apple) means something else. It’s just a buzzword now, like crypto used to be about encryption.

Mozilla, put the consumers <i>first</i>. Ad performance tracking must only involve the websites and the ad providers. The users, respectively the user agent must be left out of it.

And ethical ads shouldn&#x27;t come at the expense of a private browser. Incentives are easily comprimised.

Ladybird cannot come soon enough.

Rich, coming from a company about to get in bed with advertising companies.

Advertising is a virus that will eventually infect all ecosystems.

Gotta pay the CEO.

do we still do car analogies?<p>&quot;thieves are breaking car windows to steal. so we at Mozilla car company, who believe in drivers taking back the road, will move the glove box to be accessible from the outside, because we believe our cars can coexist in roads filled with thieves, who used to pay our bills until last month btw.&quot;

Thief says stealing is bad.