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EFF Says Mozilla's PPA is better than Google's Solution (www.fastcompany.com)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @[email protected]. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.”

https://mastodon.social/@eff/112922761259324925

Privacy experts say the new toggle is mostly harmless, but Firefox users saw it as a betrayal.

“They made this technology for advertisers, specifically,” says Jonah Aragon, founder of the Privacy Guides website. “There’s no direct benefit to the user in creating this. It’s software that only serves a party other than the user.”

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Everyone’s up in arms about a literal anonymous counter, but the other option is the current “spy on everything you do”

How is Mozilla getting flak for this outside of a few hardcore nerds that are welcome to use chrome if they so desire…

And I say that as a huge privacy advocate. In the local tin foil hat “privacy matters” nerd and I honestly don’t see the problem.

And quite frankly anyone that’s said it’s a problem has only been able to come up with “it shouldn’t help them count your views “ which is ridiculous, because it’s very anonymous.

Sooo …. Help me out here, what’s the issue?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It isn't anonymous, it's slightly obscured.

They use ohttp ( a proxy ) run buy a "partner" they control to do the obscuring.

That should be part of people's informed threat modeling. Having a tattle tale in the browser reporting web activity to a third party is a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

From what I've seen PPA doesn't depend on OHTTP to do the obscuring. This page mentioned Distributed Aggregation Protocol and differential privacy, that are meant to ensure that it is literally impossible for any one party to see your data. Not just "obscured", but impossible to access.

But be sure to let us know what data about us a partner could theoretically view, and how, if you disagree.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I see only two data leak risks mentioned:

  1. The user leaks their data themselves.
  2. The aggregators (one of which is Firefox, I believe) can collude to compromise your privacy.

The first doesn't need PPA. As for the second, Firefox can already conspire to compromise your privacy, if you're using it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm still looking for some concise documentation about exactly what Firefox sends, and if I could, I would love to intercept that data so that I can send it myself at a later time, with extra details

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

There's a bit in the technical explainer here. But there's really no way for you to add details; the whole point is to share nothing about you specifically.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

"The other option," like there's only one. Like you can't imagine anything else.

Until Mozilla got directly involved, other option was, fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (4 children)

There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.

Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago

If privacy preserving ad features become good enough, we won't have as much privacy inversive ad tracking and a better internet overall. For the long game, this might not be such a bad thing as ads won't go away anytime soon.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

If people aren't ready to see an ad or pay to support something. Then maybe they don't deserve that thing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Fine.

But today they want us to pay and collect everything about us.

I highly recommend "Taking Control of Your Personal Data" by prof. Jennifer Golbeck, published by The Teaching Company, ISBN:978-1629978390, likely available at your local library as a DVD or streaming.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Exactly. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for content (I'm paying a bit for Nebula, for example), and my hope is that transitioning advertising to a privacy-friendly system run by clients will encourage more options to pay for content in lieu of ads.

I'd pay a few dollars a month to avoid ads on most sites, and I'm guessing that's about what advertisers are making from me, but instead the options are:

  • pay 10x what they'd make from ads
  • see ads and get my privacy absolutely violated
  • don't interact with the thing

So the more we move toward privacy-respecting ads, the more likely we are to see more options than the above. At least that's my take.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I just sent feedback to google from the "my ad center" page describing the wallet idea to pay the ad price instead of watching the ad. Last time i sent youtube feedback they didn't come back to me but they did apply the change i was asking for. So we never know.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Cool, but I doubt Google honestly cares much. If they do it, it'll be something much higher than the actual amount that ad is worth as a way to nudge users to pay for some kind of subscription.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yea. That's also what i think would happen if anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

exactly. If the price was as much as ads pay it would cost users fractions of pennies per view. They just charge paid users so much more then that for the same thing. Since google ads is one of the biggest ads supplier we could technically have a wallet that substracts the ad value to not see it directly with google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I mean, go ahead, rethink our digital economics. While we wait for that, what do we do in the meantime?

(And of note: Mozilla itself has launched several initiatives there as well (example), but none have panned out so far.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it couldn’t happen overnight. I feel like ad blocking is a better solution to invest in up until that point however. We don’t need to enable advertisers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

We have adblockers. Websites keep finding ways to track us still, and/or to block people who are using them :/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I would support something like this. Or something like what brave does. Or something like GNU Taler.

Pretty much anything but sending extra tracking data out.

I feel a little worried that I'm not even sure how Mozilla could monetize this. At least when Brave does its ads, people know how Brave makes their cut.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago

Getting shot in the feet is technically better than getting shot in the stomach, but is still a bad option.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (6 children)

This entire thing is just idealism vs pragmatism for the trillionth time. The idealists are mad because they think all ads are bad and we shouldn't try to work with advertisers in any capacity. They do not believe reducing the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach, because that would be an acknowledgement of ads. Common talking points there are about how this is technically working with advertisers and how the internet shouldn't have ads in the first place.

The pragmatics also think ads are bad, but believe that an Internet without ads is very unlikely to happen, so they believe attempting to reduce the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach. Common talking points there are about how this isn't giving advertisers anything they don't already have and about how this doesn't matter if you're using an adblocker.

Like all other debates of this type, this probably isn't ever going to be resolved to anyone's satisfaction and we've really just been seeing the same talking points over and over again since the beginning. So I hope y'all have fun duking it out, I don't think I'm gonna bother looking at these pointless PPA threads anymore.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

As a privacy enthusiast and pragmatist, I see Firefox as providing no additional benefit to users or advertisers. Considering the laughably small market share of Firefox, I'm not sure how it is expected to woo advertisers over either.

Which of these options look more robust: Google Topics, Mozilla PPA, or advertisers doing AB testing on their own by simply using different links for different audiences?

Method: PPA Topics Using different links
Corporate creator Facebook Google -
Needs users to trust 3rd party? Yes (Mozilla) Yes (Google) No
~% browsers it works on <3% >60% 100%
Guaranteed privacy increase? No No No

If you trust the advertiser, they can do it on their own. If you don't trust the advertiser, then the additional third party does nothing.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Wrong.

Not an idealist, I'm not even mad, just calling out the hypocrisy because Mozilla did this quietly, not telling us at all.

"I'm doing this for your benefit, but I'm not telling you about it", where have we heard that before?

Save me from people "doing things for my benefit".

Just so funny how you blatantly mis-charaterize this, even using pejoratives to label people who dislike Mozilla's arguably adversarial approach.

And frankly, they had a chance to develop a fair balance over 20 years ago, and chose to say "fuck all the users" instead. And the website owners keep repeating this. Ok, fine, I will never stop blocking ads - they chose this battleground, not me.

To take your approach to making arguments: how's the taste of boot today?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Please argue how removing all (non-voluntary) advertising from society right now would do anything other than vastly improve society, and keep calling people like me idealists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

All ad supported services would need to move to a paid only model, locking out those who couldn't afford to pay.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Many of the non-pragmatists also see this as somehow leaking information about you to advertisers though, rather than only working together with advertisers in the first place. But nobody has been able to mention what an advertiser would be able to know about me.

(Yes, yes, there are also people for whom it is only about working together with advertisers - I'm not talking about you, so no need to let us know.)

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The problem with PPA wasn't anything to do with the method it uses. Given enough announcement, discourse and investigation by the community; it's entirely possible that users in general would have accepted it.

However; Mozilla did something very wrong by deploying this without asking the greater community. Point blank. That's not good faith; and that did not allow for the community to go over the code and suggest fixes and express their concerns with how it works.

Instead Mozilla took the lead and decided it will exist; quietly. Without consulting the community. Given that this is how most companies turn selfish, that alarms MANY people who are knowledgeable about how Mozilla typically operates, and it undermines public trust in Mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

They don't necessarily need to run everything by me (or us, the community) but this context would've lessened my rage greatly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I still don't understand what's so bad about this. Isn't it a good thing for people not using adblocker and changes nothing for adblock users?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The problem is that they auto-opted all users into it, without giving notice or warning about what it is. They've done this before too with other "experiments". The problem is that Mozilla becoming an ad oriented business is bad for user privacy. No different to Apple's shift from hardware to services. The fox is infiltrating the hen house. Line must go up, and the users always pay the price for that with their data.

Turns out a user base who hates ad tech and surveillance capitalism doesn't want ad-tech or surveillance embedded in their browser. Who would've thought?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The biggest issue I have with this is that it is opt out

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wouldn't be a very useful metric if no one had it on lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

At least they could have popped up a dialogue saying it existed, like Google Chrome does.

Insult to injury, Mozilla posted an excuse to Reddit that said that they didn't want to confuse users with too many pop-ups. This is the same company that would pop up messages reminding you that they were blocking trackers, or saying you should change your browser...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

That is a very anticonsumer and user freedom mentality.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Sure but it's the reason why

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Other big issue is they didn't consult the Open source community. They could've been just straight with us and told us that donations aren't cutting it and then community as a whole could've come up with something to monetize. And even if it ends up being advertising they could've worked with community to implement in such a way that it would respect the try reason why most people switch to Firefox to escape Google's surveillance. And maybe I can stop daydreaming about an utopia

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It was never about money. This feature isn't and was never going to make Mozilla one cent.

It's about reducing the leverage advertisers have on legislators when it comes to the measurements necessary to operate effective ad campaigns. The hope is that with privacy-preserving methods available, privacy-violating measurement can be more easily outlawed.

I think we would have arrived at the very same feature.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

There's a lot of people that trust the privacy guides website and yet the founder is just spewing emotional bullshit that's not even grounded in facts. A bunch of smart people can see the benefit to the average end user and then Jonah is putting out bullshit. I'm disappointed in him and privacy guides.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (8 children)

What in his statement was incorrect?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

As the other comment mentioned, it's about caring about principles in theory vs. real-world effect. He still says that you should use Firefox (with some tweaks - installing uBlock Origin is the most important one, of course) if you want the most privacy-friendly browser, but I'm sure his ruckus will have caused people to just give up and stay with Chrome too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I don't think that PG's and EFF's standpoints are incompatible.

PG says this is not private.
EFF says this is better than google's solution.
Being better than google's solution does not mean that it's now private.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I don't want ads.

Their effectiveness is not really a factor.

Half the problem with Chrome is, browsers should have NOTHING to do with advertisers. It is a conflict of interest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your title has your title has a grammatical error

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Lol, sorry, didn't realize that. Thanks for telling me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Np. Love that they're editable here

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