So is it safe to assume that alternate builds of Firefox (Pale Moon et al) will be probably removing that “feature” ?
Probably in your best interest to read their release notes
Mozilla pays its CEOs millions and millions of dollars. They exist to get funding from Chrome to look like there is competition in the industry.
Oh wow, that needs to be off by default like yesterday. 💀
It’s all on Ladybird now.
Default Firefox is becoming more and more unusable. I hope distros will start switching to something like Librewolf as the default browser in the future or heavily (and visibly) change the default Firefox config themselves.
Explaination from the article:
The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser’s server. The “advertising network” only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers!
Sad to see Mozilla being managed into the ground, betraying their principles and selling their users.
I had my doubts reading that Ladybird browser announcement, but more and more I’m thinking that Mozilla is desperately chasing the gravy train that has long departed with their sugar daddy (google) laughing all the way to the horizon.
Mozilla has added special software co-authored by Meta and built for the advertising industry
No thanks, I’ll pass
Meta bad!!! Wait until you realise that React is built by Meta. Are you gonna stop using websites that is built on React?
Programming languages isn’t adware made by a company that has horrible track records for respecting privacy. If you love Facebook so much, stay there and take your sealioning with you.
Super welcoming community here. Disagree with them they immediately want you out. Anyways, React is not a programming language, it’s a framework built on Javascript. My point was that hating on anything Meta built is stupid because they can build ok things
“Hating on anything the Nazis did is stupid because they can build ok cars”
Doing one ok thing doesn’t negate the fact that Meta is one of the most evil, unethical hellholes of a company. Anything they touch is absolutely rotten.
I’d rather not use products made by companies that influence voters and led to a genocide. Sorry I have moral standard.
This is not sealioning lmao
You’re falling into the trap where anyone who disagrees with you has some sort of ulterior motive or grand scheme. I don’t need to remind you why that is not a good thing.
Enjoy Facebook.
Blocked
I wish I could. Every time I hear about a React app, it’s some godforsaken ad choked nightmare of a “web 2.0” site that just makes the internet painful to use. I understand it may be possible to write a performant and usable GUI with it, but you never hear of such things
I mean it might not be the most performant. But I’ve build with React and it made it easier to build projects quickly. Regardless, my point wasn’t about React and if it’s good or bad. My point was that Meta can build a framework that’s not about collecting data. Sometimes they have other motives.
Here I think the reason they are co-authoring this is to try to paralyze Google’s hold on personalized ads and user data. And probably reduce scrutiny of their data collecting actions in the sense that their new data collecting will be based on PPA if it goes mainstream.
You’re literally using a website based on react technology right now. Lemmy is built on Inferno which is just an older version of React.
No ads but horrible performance. How is it that a iPhone 15 Pro is too slow to run this web site reliably? Why can it not remember that I’m logged in, or worse, why does it sometimes remember I’m logged in, after deciding I’m not? Why does it use so much storage on my phone? Why does it sometimes get stuck trying to draw the Home Screen?
I mean, it’s much better than Reddit was, and I try not to complain for the price, but it really seems like one of those things where it’s too ambitious and just doesn’t work as well for users. Maybe something simpler would be better
why does it sometimes remember I’m logged in, after deciding I’m not
I had that problem when Lemmy was under constant DDoS attacks, almost a year ago.
iPhone 15 Pro is too slow to run this web site reliably
You have both upvotes and downvotes so I will assume you are not the only one with these problems. In my experience Reddit website either glitches itself or glitches Safari every now and then.
Why does it sometimes get stuck trying to draw the Home Screen
Sounds like iOS issue, not Lemmy.
I have none of these issues
Web 2.0 was the mid-2000s idea that every website and service would be accessible via an http api and that it would allow easy integration. It was ads that killed Web 2.0, as users accessing a site via its api rather than its ad-filled website wouldn’t see any of those ads.
God I miss Web 2.0. The Fediverse is trying to bring that concept back, luckily.
Well shit. Firefox is still better because it doesn’t have the backdoor Google uses to catch and then block people using adblock on YouTube. For now.
WTH, Mozilla 🤦🏼♀️
Also, fuck you, dude:
One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default.
i read that as more like “nobody would opt in if it was opt-in”.
One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging
It’s not that difficult to explain. “When you visit the website of a participating advertiser whose ads you’ve seen, do you want us to tell them that someone saw their ads and visited their site, without telling them it was you? Y/N”
But if they asked such a question almost all of the small fraction of users who bother to read the whole sentence would still see no good reason to want to participate. Coming up with one is that hard part. It requires some pretty fancy rationalizations. Firefox keeping track of which ads I’ve seen? No, thanks.
If there was an option to make sure that advertisers whose ads I’ve blocked know that they got blocked, I might go for that.
The writer apparently thinks that the previous Mozilla misstep into advertising land was the Mr. Robot thing six years ago, which seems to confirm my impression that this one is getting a bigger reaction than their other recent moves in this direction. We’ll see if the rest of the tech press picks it up. Maybe one day when the cumulative loss of users shows up more clearly in the telemetry they’ll reconsider.
Let’s not forget when they shipped a full page ad for a Disney movie into a browser update
Lol what? I gotta find this
If you can’t explain a difficult concept in a simple way, then you don’t truly understand it.
Bah, that’s such a lame hot take.
Tonnes of things are really complicated to explain because they’re complicated.
It’s a paraphrased quote from Richard Feynman
I know. But it’s wrong.
“You’re too dumb to understand so we make decisions for you”
Fuck that condescending prick with a pineapple.
Chill; he’s probably not talking about you. He is talking about “your mom”. If you want her to use Firefox, it’s got to be simple.
But this PPA stuff doesn’t need to be enabled by default. They are opting-in all Firefox users to something they don’t understand.
Opt-in IS simple. Mom just won’t opt in.
I think explaining a system like PPA would be a difficult task.
IMO that just means they barely understand it themselves. Anyone that understands something with an amount of proficiency can explain it to child and it’ll make sense, given they don’t use technical nomenclature.
To disable:
user_pref("dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled", false);Alternatively you can do the same through Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Website Advertising Preferences and uncheck “Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement”
Yup, but that’s already mentioned in the article. Thought I’d give people the exact userpref, so they can modify their custom
user.jsif they have one.
Done. Thanks!
So all browsers except some forks of Firefox are cooked now/soon?
I mean people freaking out about this don’t actually understand what’s happening and why Mozilla is doing it. Mozilla is trying to build a new privacy-based advertising. The feature needs to be opt-in by default in order to have a chance to become mainstream. Forget about the technical details and whether the user understands what it is. Most people don’t change default settings. So they can never get websites to try this better technology if their own users aren’t adopting it.
I also hate the attitude of this community they think Firefox is built for them(ultra tech savy, extremely privacy concious) when 99% of their users are not these things. If you want ultra privacy, go use Libreawolf or whatever. Those solutions are for that type of person. Firefox and Mozilla builds for the average person, which is why they correctly say that the user won’t understand the feature. (Anyone says otherwise is in a tech bubble and haven’t seen normal people interacting with their computers).
99% of their users are not these things
I don’t think so. People using Firefox are freaking evangelists trying to spread privacy. And if Firefox should lose those people, it will truly be the end
FF users include both normal people and freaking evangelists trying to spread privacy.
99% was referring to them not being both tech savy and extremely privacy conscious. I don’t disagree that the appeal of Firefox is better privacy. I just don’t think the average user is looking to absolutely remove every drop of data collected. I mean just look at the default Firefox homepage it comes with. It has sponsored shortcuts and sponsored stories. They put them there because the average user actually clicks on them. If everyone was privacy conscious like you say, they would turn off the feature and Firefox wouldn’t keep it because they don’t make money from it. But that’s obviously not the case.
And these days, privacy is basically the only appeal of Firefox. It’s slower than chrome or webkit based browsers, hangs out with Safari in terms of standards support, and can’t hold a candle to either other browser when it comes to battery life. Why mozilla seems determined to throw that all away is beyond me
The last time I looked at performance and energy benchmarks Firefox was winning.
It’s slower than chrome or webkit based browsers, hangs out with Safari in terms of standards support, and can’t hold a candle to either other browser when it comes to battery life.
Sources?
Privacy based advertizing:
-
Develop ad
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Think about what websites your target demographic will probably frequent. (Be creative, dear marketing person! You can do it! This is the essence of what you’re getting paid for!)
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Pay those sites to display your ad
Done.
Forget about the technical details and whether the user understands what it is.
No. Why? It’s simple. They are collecting data I don’t want the ad networks to have instead of the ad networks and give it to the ad networks. That’s only more private than the status quo if I’m okay with them to have this data and trust them to handle it responsibly. Which I have no reason to.
which is why they correctly say that the user won’t understand the Feature.
See explanation above. That’s not too complicated to explain to a person that managed to turn on the computer. It only gets complicated when you try to follow the mental gymnastics you need to think this feature adds privacy for anybody.
This exactly. We don’t need some in-between “compromise”.
-
From the article, quoting a Firefox dev explaining the decision:
@McCovican @jonny @mathew @RenewedRebecca Opt-in is only meaningful if users can make an informed decision. I think explaining a system like PPA would be a difficult task. And most users complain a lot about these types of interruption.
In my opinion an easily discoverable opt-out option + blog posts and such were the right decision.
puts on They Live glasses
@McCovican @jonny @mathew @RenewedRebecca If we had made it opt in, then not a single human being on the planet would have enabled it, and we didn’t want that
