- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.
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fuck it
just going to print out the man pages for wget and study it like a religious text
Mozilla sold out a long time ago, they are nothing like they used to be. Everyone should be ditching Firefox for forks if possible. Yes, Firefox is still miles ahead of anything Chromium-based but we can’t trust Mozilla to not screw over their users anymore (and it’s been apparent for YEARS…Pocket, “Sponsored” shortcuts and links, Mozilla VPN popup ads, this behavior is hardly new). What can we trust? Firefox forks with the bullshit stripped out, mostly. I’ve been using LibreWolf for several years on my Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems now. I originally switched because of the Mozilla VPN popups but at the time, complaining about those popups was met with a bunch of Mozilla apologists going “it’s not that bad” “they’re a big company and they need their precious monies”…no. That was ADVERTISING front and center, and it was in Firefox years ago. So was Pocket. So was having Amazon links auto-filled on the new tab shortcuts. Go to something that isn’t run by money. Go to a community-maintained and sanitized fork.
You do understand those forks do 1% of the work required to keep the Firefox codebase performant, standards compliant and technically sound?
If Mozilla disappears those forks will too.
Hopefully Mozilla employees will kick out their money sink CEO with double legs before the browser disappears for good.
I don’t know if it’s the CEO, the board or the wider leadership team but I agree they haven’t been laser focused on building a better browser and that isn’t good enough.
It’s crazy how for me the worst thing about Firefox is how much people complain about it online, never had a single issue with it
It’d be cool if Mozilla could just stick with one thing for more than a couple months. Even if that thing is terrible. Right now it’s like some physical embodiment of ADHD is running the company.
I’m not interested in my computer striking a balance between my needs and the needs of people seeking to manipulate me into buying things.
I paid for my computer, it serves my needs. Yes I do run Linux, how did you guess?
But that isn’t the balance that’s being struck. Mozilla is trying to balance between useful services being available for free and people’s right to privacy. If you’re using any websites that has staff employed, they’re more likely than not being paid for by advertising.
The model for most the content on the internet doesn’t work without advertising. The people who are “zero tolerance” on ads are going to prevent possible compromises from being made and just encourage an arms race. I don’t think we win that arms race, we get more insidious forms of tracking and brazen advertising.
Whatever compromise anyone tries to come up with will be ignored and exploited as hard as advertisers possibly can.
A compromise that actually works would depend on advertisers actually complying. The advertisers that do will be vastly outnumbered by the advertisers that don’t.
So we’re getting the arms race either way.
Honestly, despite the crypto, good on Brave browser for trying to subvert the advertising model by providing an actual monetization alternative
What does this even mean? Brave didnt find something to “subvert the advertising model”, they have a subscription lol. Mozilla is trying to keep its browser free and safe, especially now that it’s losing its billion dollar google funding.
Chromium shill
I need to send an email to Mozilla soon. The fact that I’m highly convinced that these three Linux youtubers would do a better job than the current management should tell you a lot about what’s happening at Mozilla (yes, it’s that bad).
Please do, that email will totally change everything
I hope everybody criticizing the move either do not use products from Mozilla or, if they do, contribute however they can up to their own capabilities. If you don’t, if you ONLY criticize, yet use Firefox (or a derivative, e.g. LibreWolf) or arguably worst use something fueled by ads (e.g. Chromium based browsers) then you are unfortunately contributing precisely to the model you are rejecting.
Mozilla could have focused on being user-supported through fundraising like Wikipedia. Instead they chose the comfortable path of being funded by their biggest competitor, who is an evil monopoly spyware ad business, which has been compelling Mozilla to kill Firefox and become the badies on the way down.
You can donate to Mozilla.
Perhaps they should’ve put that more front and center. But if they add a prominent donate button the people on here would probably lose their shit too.
I will never ever accept any ad technology except maybe
<a href="company_url"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>Would you look at that, privacy preserving advertisement!
Let’s take it one step further and go really crazy with a/b testing
<a href="company_url/campaign1"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a> <a href="company_url/campaign2"><img src="different_picture.gif"></a>
I’ve been sticking with FF proper since it has the sync stuff that’s easily used. But it sounds like it’s about time to set up a sync server and run a FF fork.
we maintain the same goal – to build digital advertising solutions that respect individuals’ rights
Does it include the right to be able to choose not to be advertised to?
Yes, advertising enables free access to most of what the internet provides
What does this even mean?
I don’t read their blog posts but seems like they have fully embraced startup lingo.
At the end of the day web sites cost money. There needs to be a way to fund them.
People 100% aren’t going to pay to access every random website they want to visit. So what you’d end up with in a world without ads is only the big corporations being able to run a website.
Back in my day (lol) ads were based on the website not the user. When you set up ads you selected keywords for your website and those were used to select ads.
Like you’d visit a programming blog and get ads for computer games and porn. Made total sense. You’re still targeting your target audience just not the individual.
Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it’s not the only way.
The alternative is to set up some system where you pay a monthly fee and it’s divided amongst the websites you use. But that seems like an equally bad privacy nightmare.
Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it’s not the only way.
I’m not so sure this has turned out to be all that true
We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market. But taking on controversial topics because we believe they make the internet better for all of us is a key feature of Mozilla’s history. And that willingness to take on the hard things, even when not universally accepted, is exactly what the internet needs today.
Out of touch with reality…
