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This is after they bought an ad company last month, Mozilla is compromised now
Edit: Somebody pointed out the reason: Mozilla Foundation has no members. It's just the executives, no one in the actual community has any input in Mozilla's direction, and considering how wildly out of touch tech executives are this explains it all
The original mastodon post was with more details, and some drama, but the guy is trying to spam this link everywhere he can. so desperate for attention. lol
So you didn't care reading up what PPA is, eh?
But yeah I agree with the toot, we need more browsers heck even more browser engines to not end with just one engine controlled by fucking Google.
The way it works is supposed to anonymously allow the measuring of advertising performance. Which ads do well with which kinds of users. Instead of tracking each individual user this tracks context, meaning what site the ad was seen on etc. Thereby providing a way to know what kinds of ads work with what kinds of users without profiling every individual in the world.
That is what it's supposed to do. Data still goes to an allegedly "trusted third party" (let's encrypt, apparently) which then does this anonymization.
The idea is a lot less egregious, but it's still only a good idea assuming you agree ads would be a good and ethical way to make the internet go round, if only they weren't profiling everyone. I don't.
This is misinformation. The setting in question is not a "privacy breach setting," it's to use a new API which, for sites that use it, sends advertisers anonymized data about related ad clicks instead of the much more privacy-breaching tracking data that they normally collect. This is only a good thing for users, which is why the setting is automatically checked.
Are you trying to tell me that the host server is showing the ad, because last I checked, with my whitelist firewall, I never see ads because all ads are links to the ad server you are actually visiting. It is no different than opening up the webpage and connection to them. They get all the same fingerprinting info.
I'm not saying one way or another here, but there is no such thing as anonymous data collection. It only takes 2-3 unique identifiers to connect a person between a known and anonymous data set and there are almost always quite a few more unique identifiers than this in any given dataset. When I hear anyone say stalkerware is anonymous, I assume they are no longer just a privateer of a foreign drug cartel level state, instead they are full blown slave trader pirates fit for the gallows or worse.
This does not prevent regular ad tracking, this provides additional data to advertisers. It also means Mozilla is now tracking me, and then Mozilla does this "anonymizing" on their servers. I do not trust Mozilla with this data, and I don't trust that no way can be found de-anonymize or combine this data with other data ad networks already collect.
This is not in my interest at all. This data should not be collected. The ad networks can suck it, why should I help them?
https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/
Advertisers can already easily get this data without this setting, and any measures you take to block ads also by definition affect this setting.
Meanwhile, if this works and becomes widely available, regulators will be able to take measures against user surveillance without having to succumb to the ad industry's argument that they won't know whether their ads work.
And yes, this provides data to advertisers, but it's data about their ads, not about users.
It's illegal in Europe to have an opt-out checked by default, must be an opt-in unchecked by default. This is one of the reason that Microsoft has always troubles in Europe about privacy and opt-out services.
In the EU*
Sorry to be pedantic, but the UK, Swiss etc. are all in Europe but not in the legislative region where this law applies.
This even gets some people confused thinking those countries “aren't in Europe”, which is why I wanted to correct this.
"Firefox is just another US-corporate product with an 'open source' sticker on it."
unlike EU-corporate products
But what are real alternatives that ...