[HN Gopher] Control your data for good with Mozilla Rally
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Control your data for good with Mozilla Rally
Author : oedmarap
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-10-06 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hacks.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hacks.mozilla.org)
| vntok wrote:
| It really defies comprehension how much Mozilla has fallen over a
| decade. This link
| (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Br...)
| gives a broad picture of the incredible fall they sustained.
|
| They were perfectly positioned in the late 2000s, all they had to
| do was to keep laser focused on (1) offering a Web agent working
| for its user vs Google's Web client (privacy, extensibility,
| compatibility), (2) web standards, which would have limited the
| damage from Chrome and resulted in a healthy competitive
| landscape.
|
| I for one refuse to believe that Google's "monopoly on the most
| popular Web properties" is responsible. Duckduckgo is a
| tremendous success, Opera does way more than simply surviving,
| Brave has a tiny team and strives, etc. All of those share having
| a vision and executing with a laser focus on a single aspect of
| that vision.
|
| Anyway, now Mozilla is so far down in market share that they are
| virtually undistinguishable from the rest of the pack.
|
| Prediction time: with the recent developers layoffs and teams
| restructuring, the writing is on the wall: barring a positive
| external impetus, in a few years tops, they will fork Blink and
| continue their descent to irrelevancy. At first they will spin it
| as a necessary evil to pivot the dev effort back to the browser,
| but no one will be fooled.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Hard. Pass.
|
| No one can be trusted with personal data, even do-gooder
| researchers.
|
| And the data will be tainted by extreme self-selection bias so in
| the end, how useful are the studies you're contributing to?
|
| Also, what about honeypot "studies?"
|
| It's easier for me to just say no.
|
| > Big Tech has built its success by exploiting your data. It's
| time you put your data to work for you, not them.
|
| No one is going to "stick it" to big tech by doing _anything_
| other than completely locking up their personal data.
| habitue wrote:
| I think in the ideal world, "control your data" means something
| like what Rally is trying to do: controlling how much data you
| give out, and knowing who you give it to, and who is using it.
| Being intentional about it, and also ensuring you're getting
| something commensurate in exchange.
|
| The problem is the first step is you need to have leverage. As
| long as advertising companies just have your data already without
| your consent, a tool that lets you thoughtfully give them data
| is... completely superfluous.
|
| This reminds me of the Do No Track thing. Like, you have no
| leverage, they decide if they want to respect it, so ... they
| aren't going to respect it.
|
| Once tracking companies are completely locked out and they can't
| get your personal data, then the tables are flipped and tools
| like this could be useful to let people decide if they want to
| share some data to get something in return.
| redmand wrote:
| I'm a big supporter of Mozilla and everything they do and stand
| for, but I think the way this is explained leaves people
| (including myself) thinking "why would I want to do that?" The
| promotional video uses a lot of flowery words, but I'm missing
| the message, so I imagine the average user would as well.
|
| For me, "control your data" means I own it, I own the only
| instance of it, I know everything about how it's being used and
| by whom because I've granted those specific uses (but not through
| policy notices and disclosures), and can revoke its use at any
| time. Kind of like how Amazon, Google, etc, treat your purchases.
| li2uR3ce wrote:
| Seems centered on what data they collect rather than on limits to
| how said data can be used. Privacy policies should limit what can
| be done with collected data. Practically, such policies only seek
| to limit what I can litigate against.
| deusum wrote:
| I'd like to see it used as a replacement for those "Login with
| Google" and "Login with Facebook" buttons.
|
| That way you'd know what you're sharing when you "Login with
| Firefox".
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > In a world where data and AI are reshaping society, people
| currently have no tangible way to put their data to work for the
| causes they believe in. To address this, we built the Rally
| platform, a first-of-its-kind tool that enables you to contribute
| your data to specific studies and exercise consent at a granular
| level. Mozilla Rally puts you in control of your data while
| building a better Internet and a better society.
|
| I've read all the text on this page and still have no idea what
| "Rally" actually is...
|
| I guess the video may elaborate but my interest was already lost,
| sadly.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Same, I read through it twice because I thought I'd missed
| something, but I'm still none the wiser.
| risedotmoe wrote:
| Everything about this from being talked to like an idiot
| ("interwebs!") to the fugly corporate art tells me this is about
| no different than any other corporation that's hungry for your
| data. It also tells me who they think is foolish enough to use
| their product with all the left wing revolutionary imagery. I
| think "useful idiot" is the term? Services these days that throw
| around words like "privacy" and "control" seem like a way to
| profit off of people sick of being taken advantage of by taking
| advantage of them in a way that makes them feel good.
| bmarquez wrote:
| It seems they want to "fight for privacy" by collecting[1]:
|
| > On specific news websites: the full URL of the website you are
| on, the full text of the article you are reading, the size of ads
| on the article's webpage, and the amount of time you spend
| browsing and playing media
|
| > On news aggregators, search engines, and social media websites:
| the domain (no webpage information) of the website, and the
| amount of time you spend browsing and playing media
|
| > All other websites: the amount of time you spend browsing and
| playing media (no domain or webpage information)
|
| I get what they're trying to do but it's a hard no for me.
|
| [1] https://rally.mozilla.org/current-studies/
| Y_Y wrote:
| Give us your data for targeted ads, but less evil!
|
| I shan't bother, thanks. I'll pay money or someone else's data if
| they resurrect Servo, or even just stop reinstalling Pocket.
| speedybird wrote:
| What the hell is Mozilla doing? If they want to protect peoples'
| privacy, they need to ship Firefox with an adblocker by default,
| not ask people to install spyware to surveil ads.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Firefox already blocks ads (via the "Tracking Protection"
| feature: https://i.imgur.com/Z3050xN.png ). Does it block as
| much as an addon like uBlock Origin? No, but stuff like Google
| Adsense or Analytics should be blocked.
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(page generated 2021-10-06 23:01 UTC)