this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (2 children)

My question is why Mozilla is trying to help advertisers at all instead of telling them to fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Telling advertisers to fuck off works if your goal is to create a niche product tailored to people who care deeply about privacy already. But Mozilla is very much all about trying to make things better for everyone on the internet, regardless about their opinions (or lack thereof) on privacy and ads.

Mozilla has recognised that advertising isn't going anywhere, so there's two options:

  1. Reject ads wholesale and become irrelevant.
  2. Push for a better alternative that can improve privacy while still keeping the engine that drives the internet intact.

What other major player would ever push for privacy preserving attribution? Hint: no one. While I get that many people here want 0 ads (myself included), PPA is a great step in the right direction, and could have a huge positive impact if it's shown to work and other companies start adopting it.

And guess what? You can still turn it off, or use adblockers. Unlike Chrome, Firefox won't restrict you in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

They are one of them. June 2024: Mozilla has acquired Anonym, [...]. This strategic acquisition enables Mozilla [...] deliver effective advertising solutions.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/