3mo ago

Mozilla explains their recent foray into advertising - A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy

blog.mozilla.org A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy | The Mozilla Blog

MARK SURMAN, PRESIDENT, MOZILLA Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has

MARK SURMAN, PRESIDENT, MOZILLA Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has

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Mozilla: For the foreseeable future, there's a lot of money in advertising, and we want some of it. It's all over the Internet. Why shouldn't some of the profit go to people like us, people who wish things were different even while bravely facing the harsh reality that there is no other choice but to devote ourselves to commercial advertising?
We know that everyone in our community will hate the idea, but surely this too is a sign that we are on the right path. By doing unpopular things, we demonstrate the courage that's needed to save the Internet from the kind of future where Mozilla can't get a piece of the biggest market on the Internet, the only one that matters, the market for advertising.
- Sure, you can see it like that.
  Doesn't change the reality. Sarcasm doesn't pay bills and personel costs, and hence most websites directly or indirectly rely on advertising. As does most other content like podcasts or videos.
  We can either keep being delusional and pretend we can magically revolutionize the whole internet and much of the business around it, or we can be a bit more realistic and try some reforms, like less privacy-intrusive advertising and analysis.
  Which do you think has a better chance to actually improve the actual privacy for users? Hrm?
  
  I think the fediverse has a better chance of doing more good, and Mozilla should've stuck with it.
  
  But they did stick with it, AFAIK? They just took down their mastodon instance, that's absolutely not the same thing. Unless you mean to imply that all of us here, using this but not running our own instance, are also "not sticking it up for the Fediverse" or so.
  Plus, let's not forget that by their underlying nature, Reddit and Twitter are not ad-driven via the ads shown directly. The real ads are in astroturfing, promotions and subtle pushing of products and ideas. And Lemmy, Mastodon, et al are just as susceptible to that, if not more so, lacking a usable central authority to curb such behavior if wanted.
  
  You know the fediverse doesn't make its own browser right
  
  It serves here as an example of what an Internet without ads might look like. Mozilla has the kind of resources that could've really helped its development if they'd been capable and determined enough to succeed in turning whatever crazy project they had in mind when they launched mozilla.social into something practical. If they'd built something good it could have earned them much goodwill and prestige, maybe brought in a little money somehow or other, and gone some way to ridding the Internet of the infestation of adtech that currently afflicts it.
  
  "somehow or other" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
  
  Not really. It's just an aside for the bean-counters.
  
  ... but you know, it's not difficult to think of possibilities. They could have a shiny new line of business providing hosting, spam detection, admin, support, moderation, and other services for whatever new and improved flavour of fedi instances they can create in accordance with all the principles they used to talk about. They could use their marketing team, their money and connections, to become the provider of choice for corporations, governments, and NGOs who don't yet realize that they need their own instance.
  Would've been worth a try. Instead, after so much fanfare, they ran a small mastodon instance for a little while and then cancelled the project. I suppose it's likely that the same kind of fate will befall the new ad tracking stuff before too long.
  
  Maybe the fediverse could define a limited subset of web standards, such that creating an alternative browser capable of rendering all services remains tractable.
  
  Podcasts, by their very nature, do not use any kind of tracking whatsoever (well, besides IP address regions, anyway).
  Absolutely no reason for a browser developer to get in on this besides shameless profiteering.
  
  Maybe I'm cynical but I'm thinking whatever platform the podcast is on probably has that tracking information for sale anyway if the podcast producers want it.
  
  That is probably true for podcasts on exclusive platforms like Spotify, but those are few and far between. Even with those, I don't think Spotify is delivering customized audio files to each user.
  It's more like with broadcast TV, where they have general demographic information that they use to attract advertisers.
  The general case is a plain ol' RSS feed accessed by any arbitrary client. There's not much data to be tracked there. And there's not a whole lot you can do with an IP address without introducing highly-visible problems. You can infer the general geographic location of your listeners, but that's about it. If you try to do personal tracking via IP address, it's going to be messy. Cell phones don't typically have persistent unique IPs, and even most laptop users are going to be running on a shared external IP (e.g. at a college campus, business, or any ISP that does not provide users with a dedicated IP). And again, they're not customizing audio files per user. It's a mostly static medium.
  
  Erm, podcasts very much get dynamically placed locally-relevant ads based on listener location (probably IP) by now. Which even makes sense, some ads are not legal to run for listeners in other countries, so as long as you conduct business there (say the BBC's podcasts when listened to from Germany) then they got to abide by local advertising laws and hence need to partially present other ads. And would want to, as not all products of theirs are available in all countries equally (as some are local in their content) and hence they have no reason to run cross-selling ads.
  You actually see (hear?) this a lot nowadays. Sure, it doesn't work with all platforms and definitely not with all providers, but "tracking" for ad-purposes exists in podcasts. For legal reasons, if nothing else.
- They should find other ways to make money. There are so many different ways they could create value.
  Also I'm not convinced that Mozilla would make much off of ads anyway as the ad space is very competitive
  
  There are so many different ways they could create value.
  Such as?
  
  Selling products and services
  
  They've tried, notice how many of their products and services with a cost get shut down?
  Their power users are too picky for what they offer, and the normie users wouldn't want a product the power users demand.
  
  It sounds like a management issue. They keep frolicking around and not listening to the userbase. There is no reason other than management that Mozilla couldn't be a profitable and sustainable company. They create some half baked thing no one asked for and then kill it off.
  
  That's why you make enterprise products. Companies will continue to pay for services they don't even use for years because nobody knows what it is or what it does.
  
  And then SimpleLogin comes, as just one example, and succeeds. Mozilla obviously messed up all their efforts, for one reason or another.
  
  what products and services?
  Theyve tried that many times already
  
  Not really
  They create 100 random things no one wanted and then offered then mostly for free. They have a massive management problem. I think the biggest issue is how risk adverse they are. They don't want to take big risks so they instead take a bunch of small useful risks that fail. They need to start something and then commit. Also baking more things into Firefox is not the way forward. They need stuff that is separate and useful.
  
  they tried a bucnh of paid services, like their vpn, email alias and data broker remover.
  Do you think you can come up with a better idea?
  
  Why not ask the CEO of Mozilla? They're paid to have all the smart ideas, allegedly.
- Refreshing.

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