Every time firefox pulls shit like this they piss off and alienate their users. What do they think is going to happen? If I were a Mozilla employee and my goal was to destroy firefox, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd be pushing for. I have no idea what firefox thinks it's doing, or if it's thinking about anything other than how to get more money from advertisers, but it shouldn't be hard see what exploiting users will lead to. Maybe they've already given up and their plan is to sell their users until they don't have any left.
Personally, I'll be exploring alternatives and forks and I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can.
They're literally tracking the ads you see and the websites you go to and sending that data to at least one third party. That's the opposite of privacy. I could not care less if the third party collecting my data is Google, Mozilla, or the ISRG, none of them have any business collecting my personal browsing history just so that they can send reports back to advertisers.
> That said, as much as I hate advertising, I also understand that it is fundamental in providing funding for services (such as YouTube, or most news organizations) that enables the free flow of information online. For democracy to function, for humanity to keep getting better, information must be accessible to all, not just to those who have the means to pay for it.
The internet was here before ads came in. The lie here is that for "democracy" and "humanity" we must accept ads and being tracked. It just isn't true. You could make the same argument for putting ads/tracking in linux (operating systems must be accessible, not just for those with the means to pay for them!) but it would still be a terrible argument.
> You have to remember that the alternative is NOT the absence of tracking, but invasive personalized tracking done by ad networks
This is another lie. Firstly because currently my browser isn't sending reports of what websites I visit to third parties so that ad companies can collect more data and that's still an option, but also because this will do nothing to stop personalized advertising.
Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.
I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise.
If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.
with this acquisition https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... Mozilla is now an ads company
it's downhill only from here folks
but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)
Also, to which tweaks were you referring?
To disable it on macOS: Safari > Preferences/Settings > Advanced > Uncheck "Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness"
To disable it on iOS: Settings > Safari > Advanced (scroll all the way down) > Turn off "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement"
On the other hand: there is a ticket [1] asking for container-based-extensions, so something like Grammarly (aka the keylogger) could work only inside a container. It's been there for years, nothing changes. Seems like people are not interested in this kind of privacy stuff.
The good news: the CEO salary is really nice...
"Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - Jul 2024 (164 comments)
Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - Jul 2024 (185 comments)
I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily...
The tldr that says it all:
One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default.
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!This has much better utility than applying DP client-side but still has similar privacy guarantees
2. Firefox is vastly more configurable and extensible than Chrome/Chromium. For example, Tree Style Tab and Sidebery are far better for managing hundreds of open tabs than Tabs Outliner, the closest alternative for Chrome/Chromium. This difference, like the one above, is mostly relevant to power users.
Given that 20 years have passed since Firefox was first released, and 99.99% of web users nowadays are casuals who never have more than a couple tabs open and would sooner kill themselves than learn about the many useful ways Firefox can be configured via about:config, user.js, userChrome.css, userContent.css, etc., the answer to your question is probably no.
This ad stuff is very concerning, though :(
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330
In particular saying you’re sending your activity to Mozilla is not accurate: you’re sending the output of a postcomputation step that makes it cryptographically infeasible for Mozilla to see your activity.