Mozilla doubling down on ads in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org Improving online advertising through product and infrastructure | The Mozilla Blog

LAURA CHAMBERS, CEO, MOZILLA CORPORATION As Mark shared in his blog, Mozilla is going to be more active in digital advertising. Our hypothesis is that we n

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla's earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

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I'm not interested in my computer striking a balance between my needs and the needs of people seeking to manipulate me into buying things.
I paid for my computer, it serves my needs. Yes I do run Linux, how did you guess?
- But that isn’t the balance that’s being struck. Mozilla is trying to balance between useful services being available for free and people’s right to privacy. If you’re using any websites that has staff employed, they’re more likely than not being paid for by advertising.
  
  The model for most the content on the internet doesn't work without advertising. The people who are "zero tolerance" on ads are going to prevent possible compromises from being made and just encourage an arms race. I don't think we win that arms race, we get more insidious forms of tracking and brazen advertising.
  
  Honestly, despite the crypto, good on Brave browser for trying to subvert the advertising model by providing an actual monetization alternative

Adverts are visual and psychological pollution. Get fucked.

Mozilla sold out a long time ago, they are nothing like they used to be. Everyone should be ditching Firefox for forks if possible. Yes, Firefox is still miles ahead of anything Chromium-based but we can't trust Mozilla to not screw over their users anymore (and it's been apparent for YEARS...Pocket, "Sponsored" shortcuts and links, Mozilla VPN popup ads, this behavior is hardly new). What can we trust? Firefox forks with the bullshit stripped out, mostly. I've been using LibreWolf for several years on my Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems now. I originally switched because of the Mozilla VPN popups but at the time, complaining about those popups was met with a bunch of Mozilla apologists going "it's not that bad" "they're a big company and they need their precious monies"...no. That was ADVERTISING front and center, and it was in Firefox years ago. So was Pocket. So was having Amazon links auto-filled on the new tab shortcuts. Go to something that isn't run by money. Go to a community-maintained and sanitized fork.
- You do understand those forks do 1% of the work required to keep the Firefox codebase performant, standards compliant and technically sound?
  If Mozilla disappears those forks will too.
  
  Hopefully Mozilla employees will kick out their money sink CEO with double legs before the browser disappears for good.
- Been called an idiot for saying that I wouldn't trust Firefox as far as I can throw it like 2 months ago after they made telemetry opt out.
  I can't believe that someone who is privacy conscientious would just stick to their guns rather than watching out for their privacy.
  I just hope someone else picks up the shards and runs with it and then we can all just focus on making them better instead of getting riled up over a god damn browser lol.
  
  This is such an ignorant take, this preserves privacy, did you even read the fucking article??? Like seriously this comment is purely false assumptions
- It's crazy how for me the worst thing about Firefox is how much people complain about it online, never had a single issue with it
  
  Firefox hate has become more and more rampant as Google tries to tighten their fist around chromium challengers

It'd be cool if Mozilla could just stick with one thing for more than a couple months. Even if that thing is terrible. Right now it's like some physical embodiment of ADHD is running the company.

fuck it
just going to print out the man pages for wget and study it like a religious text

we maintain the same goal – to build digital advertising solutions that respect individuals’ rights
Does it include the right to be able to choose not to be advertised to?
Yes, advertising enables free access to most of what the internet provides
What does this even mean?
I don't read their blog posts but seems like they have fully embraced startup lingo.
- At the end of the day web sites cost money. There needs to be a way to fund them.
  People 100% aren't going to pay to access every random website they want to visit. So what you'd end up with in a world without ads is only the big corporations being able to run a website.
  Back in my day (lol) ads were based on the website not the user. When you set up ads you selected keywords for your website and those were used to select ads.
  Like you'd visit a programming blog and get ads for computer games and porn. Made total sense. You're still targeting your target audience just not the individual.
  Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it's not the only way.
  The alternative is to set up some system where you pay a monthly fee and it's divided amongst the websites you use. But that seems like an equally bad privacy nightmare.
  
  Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it’s not the only way.
  I'm not so sure this has turned out to be all that true
  
  People 100% aren’t going to pay to access every random website they want to visit. So what you’d end up with in a world without ads is only the big corporations being able to run a website.
  I'm not so convinced. I run a website with zero ads or tracking and I'm not a big corporation.

I've been sticking with FF proper since it has the sync stuff that's easily used. But it sounds like it's about time to set up a sync server and run a FF fork.

I will never ever accept any ad technology except maybe <a href="company_url"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>
- Would you look at that, privacy preserving advertisement!
  Let's take it one step further and go really crazy with a/b testing
  undefined
  
  <a href="company_url/campaign1"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a> <a href="company_url/campaign2"><img src="different_picture.gif"></a>

I'm so glad that Libre Wolf fork exists, that doesn't change a fact of Mozilla foundation goes in a really wrong direction :/
Edit: typo
- The fork is not maintained by LibreOffice.
  
  Yes, thanks - autocorrect messed up my post (I meant Libre Wolf). it’s fixed now
- Don't quote me on this but if I remember correctly, Mozilla foundation has nothing to do with Firefox development and was also kind of shady for some reason.
  
  Thanks for pointing this out - I’ll do some research on this topic in a free time (as I don’t know much facts about Mozilla foundation) :)

We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market. But taking on controversial topics because we believe they make the internet better for all of us is a key feature of Mozilla’s history. And that willingness to take on the hard things, even when not universally accepted, is exactly what the internet needs today.
Out of touch with reality...

I need to send an email to Mozilla soon. The fact that I'm highly convinced that these three Linux youtubers would do a better job than the current management should tell you a lot about what's happening at Mozilla (yes, it's that bad).
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcndYHPkE14
- Daily reminder that Mozilla's new CEO is a former McKinsey consultant.
- Please do, that email will totally change everything

I hope everybody criticizing the move either do not use products from Mozilla or, if they do, contribute however they can up to their own capabilities. If you don't, if you ONLY criticize, yet use Firefox (or a derivative, e.g. LibreWolf) or arguably worst use something fueled by ads (e.g. Chromium based browsers) then you are unfortunately contributing precisely to the model you are rejecting.
- So just to be clear, people aren't allowed to criticize ads in Firefox unless they're open source developers actively contributing to Firefox or they only use... What, Opera?
  
  I thought saying
  contribute however they can up to their own capabilities
  was actually very clear but seems I wasn't clear enough so that means... literally doing ANYTHING except only criticizing. That can mean being an open-source developer, yes, but that can also means translation, giving literally 1 cent, etc. It means doing anything at all that would not ONLY be saying "this is good, but it's not good enough" without doing actually a single thing to change, especially while actually using another free of charge browser that is funded by advertisement. Honestly if that's not clear enough I'm not sure what would be ... but please, do ask again I will genuinely try to be clearer.
- Mozilla could have focused on being user-supported through fundraising like Wikipedia. Instead they chose the comfortable path of being funded by their biggest competitor, who is an evil monopoly spyware ad business, which has been compelling Mozilla to kill Firefox and become the badies on the way down.
  
  You can donate to Mozilla.
  Perhaps they should've put that more front and center. But if they add a prominent donate button the people on here would probably lose their shit too.
  
  If you were implying that I said being funded by Alphabet/Google was a good thing then let me be explicit, I did NOT say that nor believe it to be the case. Now, once again, cf my actual comment about pragmatic better alternative we can rely on and support today. If you meant to suggest better and are supporting that, please do share.
- So, blaming the victim.

Would you look at that yet another anti Mozilla post in this community. Go ahead and scroll thru the posts and you'll find at least 4 from the last week or two alone

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