Man alive, I thought that Mozilla had been doing their own Personal Package Archives so that we didn't have to deal with Ubuntu packaging it as a Snap anymore. And this is doubly disappointing.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
2 points (75.0% liked)
Firefox
19389 readers
115 users here now
A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Completely facile argument, right there in the last sentence.
We can keep fighting for something better while still accepting this as an improvement over what we have now.
YOU BUILT THE FUCKING THING. Just turn it off and go away. Tada, we now have something better: no privacy-violating data at all.
Who's forcing you to make advertisers happy? Don't answer that, because I don't care. You can't pretend to be about privacy and then build things that help advertisers violate it.
This one's also pretty funny btw:
If at some point they discover theyβre doing insufficient aggregation or anonymization, then they can fix that all in one place.
Advertisers don't give a shit. They have zero motivation to fix anonymization. They're not going to HELP us get rid of privacy violations.
I have defended Mozilla for years, because we can't let Chrome become the only browser engine available.
But goddam, it's getting hard to be enthusiastic about it. This is starting to get like voting for the genocidial dementia patient because at least he isn't the megalomaniac pedophile.
Just turn it off and go away. Tada, we now have something better: no privacy-violating data at all.
Well, yes. Except for the fact that advertisers now have an excuse to try more invasive things to get to their data
Advertisers don't give a shit. They have zero motivation to fix anonymization. They're not going to HELP us get rid of privacy violations.
That's why a trusted third party is handling this. They care a lot, because of they fumble it they are now an untrusted third party and someone else will take care of the anonymization part
Well, yes. Except for the fact that advertisers now have an excuse to try more invasive things to get to their data
They're going to do this anyway. As far as Firefox is concerned, it's the browser's job to stop them. That's what Firefox is selling: privacy
because of they fumble it they are now an untrusted third party
Assuming I take this for granted, they have already fumbled it by turning on an anti-privacy feature without consent. They can no longer be trusted. Not that you ever should have trusted them because whatever motivation they have for pure moral behavior now, that will change with the wind when more VC money gets involved, or there's been a change in management.
And firefox has ALREADY had a recent change in management, which is probably why THIS is happening NOW. They just bought an adtech firm for pete's sake. Don't trust other people with your data. At all.
Did you even read the article or are you just hating? There is a will known additional non profit that is well known and trusted by probably everyone that knows about it. This nonprofit is handling the anonymization.
Me wondering why the Firefox package archive is suddenly controversial...
does anybody think they're not trustworthy?
I didn't until I read that sentence. I actually get what they are trying to do here, but good grief...
This is the exact same story the whole internet has used and every time the 3rd party or whoever it is eventually gets corrupted and it turns out that they kept the original data. The company gets bought by Amazon or who google and repeat
This is bullshit. The total amount of advertising I want is zero. The total amount I want of tracking is zero. The total amount of experiments I want run on my data without consent is, guess, zero.
Then you keep blocking ads and nothing changes for you.
The backlash here is wild and completely uninformed. This is only good for consumers, the ads that this will affect are already tracking you in more onerous ways.
"They are already kicking you in the balls, so why not let Mozilla kick you too?"
Then keep blocking ads and opt out of it. Not that hard isn't it?
It's hard when I don't get told about it and find by chance.
Sow do you plan to pay sites for the resources you use?
It depends, but mostly no. And if that means some sites are not economically possible, so be it.
Do you donate to FOSS software you use?
Your options are ads or donations. As it costs money to develop and host a lot of FOSS, in our capitalist world, it's impossible to offer a service without somehow receiving money to continue to provide that service.
Yes, for example I donate to thunderbird since I find it useful. And I wouldn't mind donating to Firefox either provided they wouldn't do this sort of fuckery.
though in the long run we need to overturn capitalism of course, and that an economic model is viable doesn't mean we should sustain it or justify it.
The fact that mozilla does't understand what user consent is, is alarming about where they are heading.
That, and the point that ad blasters want to know the gory details of your private life in order to make their ads that one or two percent "more effective".
Does the Firefox really believe that sites will stop throwing a gazillion cookies and trackers just because they now also have PPA?
I, for my part, opt to block both the cookies and trackers as much as I can and the PPA, too.
If they didn't understand user consent, would they really have the ability to opt out? I get that you're on your soap box and seething with anger, but let's not devolve into ludicrous nonsensical reframing.
When Chrome asks the user to activate a similar feature while Firefox doesn't - welp, no. They don't understand user consent.
Imagine finding a Mozilla microphone under your dining table. "Oh, but you can remove it and toss it. That's understanding user consent!"
If you have to add "noise" to the data to prevent deanonymization, then that just means the data can be deanonymized. Noise is irrelevant.
This is just straight up wrong. Additive noise is an extremely common - fundamental, even - part of data anonymisation.
https://sdcpractice.readthedocs.io/en/latest/anon_methods.html
It's like saying "if you have to use randomisation to encrypt data, then it means the data can be decrypted. randomisation is irrelevant"
Nope
I measure noise several times a week and quantify it in an effort to locate its sources. Noise is a very effective way to hide information, and becomes more effective when the number of domains increases.
To give you an idea of how this comes into play, I use many different tools and methods of analysis to locate sources of noise in two domains, time and frequency. Weβve been formally studying noise in those two domains for like 150 years, so thereβs a lot of information, equipment and techniques out there.
Itβs still very hard.
The type of data used in PPA has (based on my limited understanding) at least five domains, each of which contain data with a βbit depthβ thatβs an order of magnitude more than the signals I usually work with.
I think noising would be an excellent method to anonymize PPA data.
And what is the advertising industry doing to earn back the trust that they've eroded with their incessant, relentless abuse over the entire life of the Internet?
Creating ads that are even more targeted to you so you can forget about everything and buy that electric kitchen knife you just saw scrolling reddit
I don't know, I am on the fence about the XYT FULLFORGE lithium powered, rechargable electronic kitchen knife I saw on reddit. I just don't know if I can trust the comments which say it stays sharp forever, and I am very skeptical that it truly has the fastest cutting speed of any knife on the market. Perhaps I will go read the Amazon reviews again to get more information about the patented digital motor design.
I want the old internet back. God it was so wonderful before the dotcom bubble.
They're not supposed to have trust. That's why they're only allowed fully anonymised data under this scheme. They do pay the bills, though, so they can't be completely banished until there's an alternative source of money.
There is no such thing as "fully anonymised data". Data can be de-anonymised by anyone who aggregates it. It's been demonstrated over and over and over again.
They keep saying many words waving hands frantically and people still donβt like it. I bet if they explain 10th time with colourful diagrams and 3 minute whiteboard explainer video people still wonβt like it. Such an ungrateful crowd
You need hands on workshops, we will organise them with foundation budget. That will surely explain things sufficiently. We will also give out informational flyers in small communities to foster local enlightenment.
They are definitely in a weird position. On one hand, the current state of internet advertising is horrifying. This has nothing to do with anything Firefox has done. On the other hand, trying to explain to privacy absolutists why these innovations in targeted advertising is actually a revolutionary leap in user privacy, is obviously never going to take.
I'm not even buying the premise. Any business can look at its bottomline to see if their advertising works. If they can't, then its not working.
Yeah, but this lets them know WHAT ads are or arent working
You're in trouble already as a business, wasting a lot of money, if you don't know where your target audience is. What you argue is that this is used for a business to probe where an advertisement would work. I'd argue that that is a very expensive way of finding your target audience, because you still have to pay for all the ads that didn't work. There are much better ways of figuring out where your target audience is.
I think most people believe that this obsessive data collection is neccessary, only because Google has repeatedly painted that narrative. This better advertising is just coincidentally the form of advertising that Google is in the best position to supply.
If you carefully pick the places you advertise and do statistics on how it affect your business while a campaign runs I'm willing to bet you get a much better return. As a bonus to saving money you didn't have to shit on an important principle in democracy, the autonomy of the people, protected by something called privacy.
Mozilla: We want to offer anonymised data so advertiser stop trying to track you with shady means. You can opt ou tho.
Privacy ultras: WHY YOU WANT DATA?!
Mozilla: ...
The problem for me is not that they implemented this. The problem is that they TURNED IT ON without my consent!
Why would they stop?
Money is the answer
Why is Firefox getting involved in ads? π΅? To reduce their dependence on Google's payment for keeping Google as the default search engine?
"You have become the very thing you swore to destroy"