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1. Embed this notice
   Louis (louis@emacs.ch)'s status on Friday, 21-Jun-2024 12:14:24 JST Louis

   First, Mozilla started to collect your search data in Firefox, promised to "not sharing anything with 3rd parties". Ok.

   Mozilla, moments later, just aquired the advertising firm "Anonym"[1], which is now technically not a 3rd party anymore.

   #Mozilla is now becoming an advertising company, using your search data (no matter which search engine you use) to feed their pockets.

   Face it: Firefox, built mostly by volunteers, is now owned by an advertising company. Sure has nothing to do with their yearly CEOs salary raises?

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

   #mozilla #firefox

   • HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Kev Quirk (kev@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 00:10:09 JST Kev Quirk

     in reply to

     • Cory :prami_pride_demi:

     @louis @cory I don’t believe any of these claims are accurate. They’ve never stated (to my knowledge) that they snooping on search queries. They’re also not “becoming an ad company” or “owned by an ad company”.

     Are Mozilla perfect? God no. Are these statements true? Also no. Let’s not spread FUD, there’s enough of that out there already.

     Who knows, maybe this is a way for them to become more sustainable away from the Google $. I’d welcome that if the ads respect users.

   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 00:10:09 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • Kev Quirk
     • Cory :prami_pride_demi:

     @kev@fosstodon.org @louis@emacs.ch @cory@social.lol I don't care if Mozilla becomes "more sustainable", I just don't want them to do evil things.

   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 00:15:56 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     @louis@emacs.ch Anonym was founded with two core beliefs:
     First, that people have a fundamental right to privacy in online interactions I don't believe we have that right, but I believe that we should.
     and second, that digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free contentWhat? No?

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 00:24:21 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     @louis@emacs.ch As someone who currently works in advertising, you don't actually need any data to do effective advertising!
     
     You can just buy commercials and advertising space at places that your target audience goes to! It's that simple!
     
     And as someone who works in advertising I also know that unfortunately advertisers really want to have the effect of their advertising be measurable.
     
     Guess what? You can just make it up.
     
     You can literally just make up some unproven estimation formula and say "your billboard has been seen by 1374 people today", plot it into a graph and they will see the almighty GREEN LINE GO UP and they will be very happy advertisers.
     
     Seriously this is how this entire industry works.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 06:50:29 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • Kev Quirk
     • Cory :prami_pride_demi:

     @kev@fosstodon.org @louis@emacs.ch @cory@social.lol And? I don't work at Mozilla and I'm not a Mozilla shareholder. I don't really care actually because I'm sure the only thing that I use from them is Firefox and will get forked for sure (because there are already a ton of forks of it).

   • Embed this notice
     Kev Quirk (kev@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 06:50:30 JST Kev Quirk

     in reply to

     • SuperDicq
     • Cory :prami_pride_demi:

     @SuperDicq @louis @cory Is that not a bit shortsighted? If they’re not sustainable, they will crash and burn, then Mozilla will be no more.

   • Embed this notice
     Emanuele (emanuele@m.divita.eu)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 16:54:44 JST Emanuele

     in reply to

     @louis for everyone not aware: you can still opt-out of #Firefox's #telemetry and get a pretty good #browser.

     https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-data-mozilla-help-improve-firefox

     #privacyMatters #privacy

   • Embed this notice
     Unattributed 👤 ☑ (unatributed@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 16:58:42 JST Unattributed 👤 ☑

     in reply to

     • Emanuele

     @emanuele @louis Are you certain this includes the grabbing of search queries?

   • Embed this notice
     Emanuele (emanuele@m.divita.eu)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 16:58:42 JST Emanuele

     in reply to

     • Unattributed 👤 ☑

     @Unatributed @louis Firefox's code is public, you can have a look. Their privacy policy states that you can opt-out any telemetry function using the browser settings. Do you have any undisclosed information on this?

   • Embed this notice
     Bob Downie (geomannie@mastodon.scot)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 16:59:27 JST Bob Downie

     in reply to

     • Emanuele

     @emanuele @louis Correction, #Firefox also shown as reporting to Twitter and ComScore.

   • Embed this notice
     Bob Downie (geomannie@mastodon.scot)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 16:59:28 JST Bob Downie

     in reply to

     • Emanuele

     @emanuele @louis Also worth knowing that #Firefox makes enthusiastic use of app tracking that can't be turned off in the settings. I use the app tracking protection that #DuckDuckGo provides. Attached is a typical tracking report showing Firefox to use a tracking company called Functional Software.

     HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:49 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     • dogzilla

     @dogzilla

     I worked for a few years in a legacy media company as we tried to “invent the future of digital publishing”. The business was pretty wedded to advertising, in a similar kind of way that many of our politicians are wedded to coal and oil.

     There are alternative models, some of them work reasonably well, some of them are arguably non-capitalist (eg the Guardian, the ABC)

     In the end, this particular company opted for “sell to a bigger corporation” as their solution, which then led to doubling-down on advertising as revenue, and (imho) a further decline in the quality of news reporting.

     HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     dogzilla (dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:49 JST dogzilla

     in reply to

     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter You worked in media? That must have been rough: it’s a difficult market to succeed in.

     What’s your take on organizations like Bellingcat? Or ProPublica? Or even PBS? All three have found a way around needing to rely on advertising as media companies, although PBS seems to be coming awful close sometimes.

   • Embed this notice
     dogzilla (dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:50 JST dogzilla

     in reply to

     For the second, I agree we need to build an alternative. What is it? Subscriptions don’t work - not enough people will pay to support people, unless we dramatically reduce the overall content online. This may not be a bad thing if you don’t feel a lot of content online is worthwhile. If not that, what model do you propose to replace advertising and move the internet to a less-commercialized version of itself? (2/2)

   • Embed this notice
     Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:51 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     • stib
     • dogzilla

     @dogzilla @stib @louis

     On the first part, it seems like two embedded questions: would they and should they? Looking around at consumer capitalist culture, the “should” is a much more important question. Just because products / services exist and we take them for granted doesn’t mean they serve our fundamental needs or do so in sustainable and equitable ways (and most of advertising seems designed to discourage us from asking these critical questions).

     On the second, sure let’s do that. But more broadly, let’s build alternatives to the commercial-financial paradigm that seeks to measure everything by money alone and assumes that transaction is the only mechanism for co-creating and transferring value. The obsession with finance makes wonder what medicine would be like if doctors only cared about and worked on blood.

   • Embed this notice
     dogzilla (dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:51 JST dogzilla

     in reply to

     • stib
     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter @stib @louis I agree with the first part as a long-term goal, but I’m always wary when the word “should” gets used. But more important is the question of how you motivate a society to change from where we are now to whatever follows that “should”. I would suggest the only realistic way to accomplish that is using capitalist tools. Imposing it simply will not work on the internet, as there is no single regulatory authority. (1/2)

   • Embed this notice
     dogzilla (dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:52 JST dogzilla

     in reply to

     • stib
     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter @stib @louis But without advertising, I doubt many of the services, tools, and publications we take for granted would exist.

     So certainly vent about advertising, but more importantly, let’s come up with a viable alternative for funding web projects and let’s test it out.

   • Embed this notice
     Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Aug-2024 17:02:53 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     @louis

     JFC. Privacy is only one problem with advertising.

     The fundamental problem with it, and the source of my opposition / resistance to advertising is that it is almost 100% a tool of capitalism, almost 100% designed, refined, and intended to compel people to make bad decisions and drive increasing consumption and commercial activity.

     It’s a plague.