"B... but Mozilla fights for privacy and the free internet!!!11!!11!!"
Well deserved
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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All the naysayers in these comments read like shills and if they aren't, they really should read how the tracking in question works. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct
While it was kinda lame for Mozilla to add it with it already opted-in the way they did, they were still completely open about how it works from the start with a link right next to the feature in settings (the same link pasted above) and it's far less invasive than the other mainstream browsers.
It can be turned off too, easily. It requires unchecking a checkbox. No jumping through 10 different menus trying to figure out how to turn it off, like a certain other browser does with its monstrous tracking and data collection machine.
With ublock origin it's also moot, since ublock origin blocks all the ads anyways.
Call me a fanboy if you want, I wont care. Firefox is still the superior browser in my opinion.
I find it kind of funny that your shared link url contain tracking parameters.
This is just the beginnings of the enshittification of FF. There are others out there, Ladybird for example, deserves our attention being built completely from scratch engine and all. Though it's not slated to become fully usable until 2026 because, they're building the engine from scratch lol
Pest vs Cholera situation here...
Firefox should do an opt-in and they usually open new page with major updates with a pretty whats new changelog.
Just make it a headline topic ffs.
Regarding it's just clicking this one textbox:
Remember: Businesses also use Firefox. If you want to protect even a shred of your co-workers or clients you need to set up a fuck-load of tools to mass-disable this one little checkbox.
Oh, but when you say you can easily turn off all the crypto crap from Brave, the bitches start crying. And second, for some bitches, it seems like firing an employee who has cancer is better somehow than donating against same-sex marriage. There are levels of evil, and I know who’s the lesser evil between the two.
I think a big part of the problem is that they didn't show anyone a notification or an onboarding dialog or whatever about this feature, when it got introduced.
Firefox is still the superior browser in my opinion.
or the least bad, as I have been thinking about it lately
I think a big part of the problem is that they didn't show anyone a notification or an onboarding dialog or whatever about this feature, when it got introduced.
Right. Not only didn't they notify anybody, but they took to Reddit to defend the decision not to notify anybody:
we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here.
Which is strange, because Mozilla has no problem with popups in general.
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Nah. Turning that feature on by default already set in stone for me their willingness to test the waters. If you don't think auto-enabling anti-privacy features is a problem I don't know what to tell you. It may be "small" right now, but just wait and see what else they will try to sneak in.
Use Librewolf and Mull instead.
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While it was kinda lame for Mozilla to add it with it already opted-in the way they did
That's really the rub here. Reading the technical explainer on the project, it's a pretty good idea. The problem is that they came down on the side of "more data" versus respecting their users:
Having this enabled for more people ensures that there are more people contributing to aggregates, which in turn improves utility. Having this on by default both demands stronger privacy protections — primarily smaller epsilon values and more noise — but it also enables those stronger protections, because there are more people participating. In effect, people are hiding in a larger crowd.
In short, they pulled a "trust us, bro" and turned an experimental tracking system on by default. They fully deserve to be taken to task over this.
is this something I need to do every single update?
The answer will always from now on be 'yes', for every annoying privacy invading toggle you have to change, it is in the best interest of the software creators to force you to do it in the way that benefits them most.
Our opinions are no longer as important as their ability to harvest our data.
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Hope this results in Firefox changing it to be opt in and not result in Firefox going the way of the dodo - We can't have Chromium be the only option, and without somebody developing base Firefox, the forks are going to die off
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It isn't about indvidual privacy. It's about not further empowering the wealthy and the entities that serve them. I'm disappointed with Mozilla, but this seems to have become par for the course
As a user, 'privacy preserving attribution' is unappealing for a few reasons.
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It seems it would overwhelmingly benefit a type of website that I think is toxic for the internet as a whole - AI generated pages SEO'd to the gills that are designed exclusively as advertisement delivery instruments.
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It's a tool that quantitatively aids in the refinement of clickbait, which I believe is an unethical abuse of human psychology.
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Those issues notwithstanding, it's unrealistic to assume that PPA will make the kind of difference that Mozilla thinks it might. I believe it's naive to imagine that any advertiser would prefer PPA to the more invasive industry standard methods of tracking. It would be nice if that wasn't the case, but, I don't see how PPA would be preferable for advertisers, who want more data, not less.
As a user, having more of my online activity available and distributed doesn't help or benefit me in any way.
Kudos for putting together good reasons that you don't like PPA, while also acknowledging that Mozilla is trying to solve a problem.
Yours is one of the very few reasonable objections I've read IMO - when the PPA outrage first erupted, I read through how it worked. Unique ID + website unaware of interaction, but browser recognizing, then feeding it to an intermediate aggregator that anonymizes data by aggregating from multiple users without sharing their IDs, with the aim of trying to find a middle ground seems fair to me. Especially with the opt-out being so easy.
However, your points about classes clickbait encouragement, SEO feeding, and the uncertainty that this will solve the web spamminess as it is are valid concerns.
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Please stop taking the dark path, firefox...
There are no ethical companies, only ones that are currently more profitable to operate as if they were.
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