I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The ad may then of course not 'phone home'.
They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at the new tab screen.
Still, I don't really like this development.
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-...
For people who don't like infographics, there's also a textual description: https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data...
> This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users.
At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.
It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change the ad industry.
The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change.
We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is what they need to do to achieve their goals.
We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay.
That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech.
Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built.
Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same way they are now. They don't need to be creepy. And you know what? They may not even be ads as you know them today.
We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being honest?
So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?
We're trying to create a new way for ads to be targeted. In the classical model, the server tracks wherever you've been on the internet.
Basically, to show you relevant ads, at least one entity needs to know where you've been.
What we're trying to achieve is similar, except there is no tracking. Most of the decisioning (e.g. which sites similar to the target group have you been on before?) is made in Firefox.
The ad server will send many ads based on a user's geo (as determined by IP address) and locale (browser language, e.g. en-US). This package will include more Tiles (some are sponsored, some are not) than Firefox will decide to show.
While we do get data based on the impressions and other interactions with the Tile, we only get the strict minimum needed to compute our counts.
And on the topic of IP addresses, we consider that sensitive information. We only keep the raw data for a very short while (7 days).
The only thing that is kept for longer is the aggregate data, e.g. how many impressions tile X did on day Y.
Why would you even perceptually compromise user privacy. You have to realize there are many using your browser with expectations of privacy. If you perceptually damage this notion, you're going to loose mind share.
If this goes into firefox, I'll be looking for an alternative.
As far as I can tell, the idea has always been the same: more relevant ads means less ads needed to make the same revenue and cost businesses less in wasted ad budget.
The "old method" was to just make your ads more obnoxious and abundant since you could only compete through volume (both in the sense of "loudness" and "quantity"). Now if I open a shop in my city, I can advertise on Google. I tell Google that I want to pay for X ads and to show them to people in my city (potential customers) who have searched for similar items (more likely customers). This way I can minimize the amount of money I spend showing ads to people in other cities/countries or who aren't likely to be interested. Google can charge more for that space because it's more likely to result in a customer. Google makes more money from fewer/less obnoxious ads (no popups, flashy shit, etc). And as a web user, I don't see ads for diapers or restaurants in Wyoming because Google's algorithms have determined that I live in an east coast US city and have never searched for baby stuff.
Honestly the only real issue I have with their "big data" is that it might be captured by another organization (business, "hacker", or government) and used in less benign ways than tweaking the ads in my sidebar.
They most certainly do when there are national security letters involved.
You may argue that this was not Google's fault - it is uncertain how much choice they had with regards to providing access for PRISM, and they're welcome to the tiny compensation they received. The point is that they had the data at all, thus allowing it to be copied y others, regardless of google's intentions
As usual, I am disappointed with the HN hive-mind myopia regarding web ads, privacy and non-profits efforts to compete.
Also, Mozilla is respecting Do Not Track setting of Firefox users:
"* Note: if you set DNT=1, it is possible that you may not be receiving Suggested Tiles. You can very simply enable them on the new tab page with the cogwheel. We made the decision to opt users out of all sponsored Tiles experiences if they have DNT=1 quite early on, as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences. However, it’s important to understand that no tracking is involved in delivering Tiles."
Of course, I'll be going with the adblocked community version which will be released, with or without Mozilla's backing.
Key quote: "to summarize, Firefox makes generic encrypted cookieless requests to get enough data to decide locally in Firefox whether content should be added to the new tab page."
If any of you "goodbye firefox" have a better idea feel free to speak up. Also, you can leave firefox for google, but it collects way more data anyway.
Maybe Microsoft Edge will be good so Windows users can just use default browser.
What I think a lot of folks are missing here is that this is an attempt to change how ads are done. Whether you like it or not, ads are how most of the web gets funded right now.
Yes, funding Mozilla would be nice. Even better would be if ads on the web in general were less intrusive and better respected privacy.
One of the things this does not do is send your browsing history to remote servers. Instead, the remote server sends you a pile of ads roughly based on your location & language. The browser decides locally what to show. That's a big change, shifting the bulk of the sensitive stuff to your own computer instead of black boxes in the cloud.
This isn't just your usual "slap a banner on it" ad network used in all the free mobile apps. And, if the model works in the browser, it might work on the web too.
You could get personalize advertisements without collecting the data: the browser has your history, it made some kind of profiling (categorize you), and then it request advertisement for your profile.
Mozilla failed really badly here and honestly I'm not sure if they can ever win back my trust after this. Even though I've read through the tech docs released and I know it's not like they are sending your history all over, it's the way they decided to do this that undermined all their efforts so far.
For now at least it looks like being able to disable it is still possible but I cannot find any mention if disabling this also disables the whole analysing my history bit?
They could charge for services such as sync but again that is going to be difficult Chrome does it for free.
I think Mozilla need to seriously look at how they are spending their money as it seems to be pretty insane some of their outgoings.
I know they are trying to diverge from just being a browser with things like Firefox OS but we all know that isn't going to ever be a real competitor to iOS and Android. Even in developing nations I think people are more likely to go with a dirt cheap Windows Phone when Windows 10 is out over a Firefox phone. One thing Windows Phone does really well is run great on very low powered devices. I can't ever see Firefox OS getting above 0.x market share.
Perhaps Mozilla is just too big now? Do they need to scale back to save money? Can they survive on a donations alone?
Why? Anyone who would go to the bother of downloading a separate build (and worrying about whether it'll update itself properly) can surely click on the gear in the top right corner of the new tab page and uncheck a checkbox? (Or be like me and keep the new tab page blissfully blank. Far less distracting.)
I highly doubt the revenue from the ads will be significant compared to what Mozilla gets from Yahoo, at least not for a long time. This isn't about revenue; it's more like the old Firefox sync thing where it avoided sending unencrypted data anywhere. You could only decrypt client-side. Similarly, this is about trying out an ad model where the privacy-sensitive data stays client-side.
Perhaps it'll do better than old Sync did?
(full disclosure: I work for Mozilla on the JS engine. Sadly, though, I'm not one of those world-class JIT geniuses mentioned elsewhere in this thread. In fact, I'm a complete idiot. Please don't tell them.)
(And no, we can't survive on donations alone.)
But how is "Firefox with ads" going to work then? Firefox is still open source after all. Someone will remove the bit of code enabling ads, gives it a fancy new name and eventually a critical mass will switch to this browser.
"Firefox with ads" lets one turn off the ads. The control offered is the same when you're allowed to download a fork. I don't see why a fork would hurt Fx so much if it just turns a feature off by default -- a feature that Firefox lets you turn off anyway.
Now they are trying to stuff even more slowness inducing ads in the new tab - that means - exactly the moment you wan to to something ELSE.
That's the problem - when you open a tab, you don't really want to see the ads. When you search on Google, you might want to see the ads.
I love firefox and was the first few when netscape open Mozilla and I jumped on board and ditch IE5.
So far I trust Mozilla more so than Google or Microsoft on browser software.
It seems like this is necessary. If I can contribute to that, pre-existing or not, I will start today.
There are 3 billion web users: between us we must have enough altruism and skill to compete with this.
Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What else do you want for the Web?" -- https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512
Don't collect my personal data.
Oh wait...
Ok, serious mode. For years people have been complaining that Mozilla is too dependent on funding from Google. This is a way for Mozilla to fund itself without depending on Google. But that's not good either?
Maybe Mozilla should start nagging people for donations, Wikipedia-style? But that's not good either: lots of people complain about Wikipedia's yearly "begging" and say they would prefer to see ads instead.
What would you have them do?
Indeed, it's not a binary decision, there are other ways than just sell you user's data.
For starter, Google (and now Yahoo) were giving hundreds of millions every year. What did Mozilla do with that?
The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually visited.
Their last blog entry is from 18 May: https://blog.mozilla.org/
Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/
Why is it so hard to understand that leaking any bits not necessary for the retrieval and presentation of the link I clicked on is absolutely unacceptable? Anything that sends data that could not be learned form the server logs is spyware and will be treated as such.
Some companies like to claim that this spying is necessary because the data is useful. I'm sure it is, just like I'm sure a thief find the goods they stole to be useful. For similar reasons claims - like your explanation of this firefox misfeature - relating to the amount of bits leaked are not actualy a defense.
Personally I don't mind. I love Firefox and the work they've done all these years and if that's the only way to keep them afloat then so be it. I just hope the implementation won't be too intrusive.
But if the offering is from a not for profit company, a charity, or volunteers building something open source for their enjoyment and to contribute to the community, then you are not the product.
As for Mozilla, I'll leave you to make up your mind. I tend to agree with you and I love Mozilla too (but hope that Iceweasel doesn't have this :)
Let's take a look at two contrasting open source projects: Ruby and the V8 Javascript interpreter. Ruby is dog slow in comparison to V8. They both languages are extremely dynamic and present similar optimization challenges. Why? Because Google has enough cash to hire world-class experts to make V8 fing fast. One of the guys behind V8 has 20 years of experience with writing JITs for dynamic languages. The guy practically invited JITs for dynamic languages, and was also one of the main contributors of the Hotspot JVM JIT.
In contrast, Ruby does not. I met up with a panel of Ruby core developers a couple of months ago. It became extremely clear that Ruby is underfunded. Ruby has maybe 2 full time paid developers. They are skilled, but are nowhere near as skilled as the V8 guy when it comes to optimizing dynamic languages. They also lack funding for infrastructure projects.
Web browsers are one of the most complex pieces of software in human history. Mozilla literally spends millions per year on developing Firefox. Sure, a browser might exist in a completely free, lowly-funded FOSS form. But at what expense? Just look at Ruby vs V8. You can't just hand-wave away the importance of money.
I personally switched over to Pale Moon when the whole UI "update" happened, and it's looking more and more as though I made the right choice.
(I work for Mozilla, but have no special insight into this initiative.)
Mozilla now consists of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and the for-profit Mozilla corporation subsidiary.
