[HN Gopher] Make Firefox Private Again
___________________________________________________________________
Make Firefox Private Again
Author : eloy
Score : 348 points
Date : 2024-08-21 15:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (make-firefox-private-again.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (make-firefox-private-again.com)
| stuartd wrote:
| A bash script to set a config value...?
|
| I've been blocking ads in Firefox since you used CSS to do it [0]
| but let's face it, advertising isn't going away.
|
| Advertising is annoying, but tracking is evil and I hope
| initiatives like this can pave the way to having ads while not
| compromising user privacy.
|
| I'll still block them, though.
|
| [0]
| https://www.gozer.org/mozilla/ad_blocking/css/ad_blocking.cs...
| (love it that site is still up!)
| Terr_ wrote:
| The actual change-commands aren't actually that much longer
| than its worrisome instructions telling you to download
| unpredictable arbitrary data from an internet URL and blindly
| execute it.
| deadbolt wrote:
| "Concerned about your privacy? Don't worry, just pipe this
| code right to your shell"
|
| :\
|
| Setting the flag in about:config is simple enough, I don't
| understand why anyone would do anything else. Who's seeing
| this page who is also unable to make an about:config change?
| shiomiru wrote:
| A picture-based guide seems both safer and more effective.
| e.g. many Firefox users run Windows, where curl | sh doesn't
| even work - clicking on the right buttons also requires less
| technical expertise.
| sn0wleppard wrote:
| You don't even have to go to about:config - it's got a
| checkbox on the user settings page!
| account42 wrote:
| > Advertising is annoying, but tracking is evil and I hope
| initiatives like this can pave the way to having ads while not
| compromising user privacy.
|
| This is wishful thinking. As long as ads exists they are going
| to grab as much information about you as possible. All this
| does is give them _additional_ information to add to whatever
| they are already doing.
| replete wrote:
| My guess is that this[0] means we might see some manifest v3 type
| stuff happen in the future as ad blocking becomes a conflict of
| interest for Mozilla.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b...
| mrinfinitiesx wrote:
| wasn't aware that 'anonym' existed. I don't care if PII is
| stripped or not. the answer to 'helping advertisers' or anything
| with advertisement metrics in any fashion is always 'No.' -
| training things so that there's better data on how to best
| manipulate our psyche / give people data to psychologically
| manipulate us in to buying/doing things is a hard 'No.'
|
| > Asked whether Mozilla has any concerns that its user base, many
| ardent ad-blockers among them, will oppose Anonym, a spokesperson
| for the Firefox house told The Register advertising as a business
| model is what allows the internet to be free and open to
| everyone, though there's still room for improvement.
|
| No, the internet being free and open is what allows advertisers
| to exploit us. They can find other business models other than
| advertisement. It's not our problem. They need to stop making it
| our problem.
|
| I turned it off in about:config
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Without advertisements, the internet would only have content
| worth paying for and content people want to share for reasons
| other than financial gain. How awful (/s).
| kelnos wrote:
| That's the thing... people would still make free content, and
| since there wouldn't be as many shady ways to monetize, it
| would cut down on low-effort (and AI-generated) garbage. The
| internet would be such a better place.
|
| We would probably lose some good stuff, or see it moved
| behind paywalls. That would be a shame, but I think it would
| be worth it.
| fragmede wrote:
| I doubt that it would cut down on the amount of low effort
| garbage. The high effort non-garbage stuff is produced by
| professionals who have the luxury of spending a full work
| week's amount of time improving their craft. writers
| writing free content with no business model can't do that
| unless they have a trust fund. which, I suppose they're out
| there, but I doubt the number of those that are writers.
| josefx wrote:
| > I doubt that it would cut down on the amount of low
| effort garbage.
|
| Right now the main search engine everyone uses is run by
| an ad company. Just getting rid of that conflict of
| interest would probably help to significantly weed out
| garbage.
| nox101 wrote:
| I'm pretty confident that without advertising, the majority
| of YouTube channels people love most would not exist.
|
| maybe overall that would be a good thing as there's so much
| trash too
| grishka wrote:
| And that's fine. YouTube channels are always better when
| they're someone's hobby rather than a full-time job.
| nox101 wrote:
| hard disagree. the majority of the channels I love the
| most have become full time jobs.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I'm pretty sure ad revenue for most channels is
| negligible so they resort to third party sponsorships or
| platforms like Patreon. The advertisements are there for
| Google to recoup _some_ of the cost of running YT.
| nox101 wrote:
| not sure what your point is. let's assume it's true. That
| still means the ads are paying for YouTube to host the
| videos. Without that those channels would have to pay for
| hosting themselves and could not afford to make the
| content.
|
| Further, most of them would have never even tried if it
| wasn't free to start
|
| Then, I don't buy your premise. Most of the channels I
| watch insert ads directly for Brilliant, NordVPN, etc...
| which means even without YouTube's ads they're still ad
| driven
| rchaud wrote:
| Youtube didn't have ads for years. Yet there was plenty
| of content people uploaded with no expectation of
| payment. Just like the early Internet. MIT OCW and Khan
| Academy also pre-date YT.
|
| As for all the high production value channels out there
| now, YT doesn't pay their bills, subscriptions, brand
| deals and merchandise do. YT is like MTV: good for
| exposure, the real product is sold through other
| channels.
| digging wrote:
| Most of my favorite channels make more money from one or
| more of:
|
| 1. Premium subscribers
|
| 2. Direct support on Patreon
|
| 3. Direct video sponsorship (a form of advertising, but
| wholly tolerable IMO)
|
| 4. Direct support by joining Nebula, which has no ads
| Tepix wrote:
| I remember an internet without ads. It was hardly all low-
| effeort garbage.
| stavros wrote:
| That's the GP's point too.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Most people won't pay for content, no matter how good it is.
|
| Especially for text content.
|
| People still download or stream movies and TV series even
| though there are multiple high quality and official streaming
| platforms.
| skydhash wrote:
| > No, the internet being free and open is what allows
| advertisers to exploit us.
|
| The internet is neither free, nor open. I'm paying for it and
| there are all the geo-blocked and walled content. I'm grateful
| for the parts that are accessible at least (without sucking my
| private data dry). I don't mind advertising, but it should be a
| function of what I'm currently watching/listening instead of
| myself. I pay for F1TV and there are so much logos, but I don't
| mind them. Likewise for Soccer.
| account42 wrote:
| And free beer isn't free because you still need to pay for
| gas to haul it home?
|
| That certain parts are locked off also doesn't make the
| internet as a whole not open.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I don't wholly disagree, but it's always a tad ironic to read
| "money is ruining the free/open internet" discussion on a free
| forum powered by VC money.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| If HN didn't exist people would gather on another link
| aggregator.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| HN is only as good as dang makes it. There are a ton of
| other link aggregators out there, many more "free" than
| this. Yet here we are. Why? Because the folks behind this
| link aggregator pay dang to be here.
| InfiniteLoup wrote:
| There is obviously also a network effect at play here
| that makes people unwilling to explore new options. But
| just like MySpace, Facebook or tumblr showed you can
| always ruin a good thing and eventually people will move
| onto greener pastures.
|
| However, I love love love Hackernews and dang is one of
| the main reasons this little internet place became such
| an oasis for the intellectually curious, and interesting
| as well as serious conversation.
| Gud wrote:
| What are they? Can you link to them? Would love to see
| what else is out there! Personally I don't care much for
| discussion about web programming really, but more general
| tech news(fusion, space and the related politics).
| p-e-w wrote:
| And yet no successful link aggregator has ever been "free"
| or "open" in a meaningful sense.
|
| Matrix, Lemmy, and many others exist, work well, are free
| from centralized control, and are well-known to the crowd
| that frequents this place. And yet users prefer to stick to
| one of the least transparent platforms of its kind, which
| could be turned off, or turned into something else
| entirely, at the whim of a small group of people, with no
| recourse or accountability.
|
| I've been listening to users lamenting "the tech to avoid
| centralized control doesn't exist" etc. for 20 years, but
| it definitely _does_ exist today, and it is now clear that
| the vast majority of people (including tech people) just
| don 't give a fuck.
| yeevs wrote:
| I think the problem is simply the network effect. Reddit
| and Twitter are just hard to beat, maybe threads,
| utilizing the massive Instagram user base managed but I
| haven't heard anyone use it and I don't think you can
| force it
| zanellato19 wrote:
| Centralization is what makes stuff like this interesting.
| I come here because the comments are nice, not just
| because the links are interesting.
|
| It's the thing a lot of tech people miss about
| centralization. It has lots of good effects.
| bluGill wrote:
| The fediverse gets all those centralization advantages
| without being centralized. However there are not (yet!)
| the quantity of people needed to make it work.
| inkywatcher wrote:
| Nor quality, unfortunately.
| digging wrote:
| > it is now clear that the vast majority of people
| (including tech people) just don't give a fuck.
|
| This is a fallacy. Sounds like you're invoking "revealed
| preference."
|
| I care strongly that decentralized tech like Lemmy
| exists... but Lemmy is a dumpster fire project badly
| managed, so I've given up on using it.
| throwaway34760 wrote:
| > Matrix
|
| Not a link aggregator.
|
| > Lemmy
|
| Checked the top 6 communities (sorted by activity on
| join-lemmy.org), not counting the NSFW-oriented one. Five
| of them have some sort of political bullshit on the front
| page and one of them explicitly describes itself as a
| "leftist social platform". Now, to Lemmy's credit, the
| community in 7th place didn't have any political bullshit
| on the front page, but it's also got a measly 1k active
| users month, compared to HN's >1m. Have you instead
| considered that other platforms may have real issues that
| could drive people away from them?
| rty32 wrote:
| Care to explain how those websites are funded? Would any of
| them be viable with the amount of traffic of HN (server,
| moderation etc)?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I come here largely to find out what VC money (and the
| culture around it) is doing because it affects me (and
| everyone). Don't mistake that for supporting what VC money is
| doing.
| xg15 wrote:
| On a free forum ran by an actual VC even, not just powered by
| the money...
| krapp wrote:
| Yeah but the layout is basic and doesn't use javascript so
| you know they're cool.
| immibis wrote:
| the relationship this forum has to the VC is similar to what
| a lot of forums had to their operators. There is little
| direct revenue gathering here - the VCs make money in other
| ways and spend a small fraction of it on this forum. At most,
| they advertise their other activities sometimes. The whole
| web used to be like this.
| rchaud wrote:
| It's no more ironic than the thousands of Google-related
| topics on this site that focus on their technology, and
| almost entirely ignores their ad business that holds up the
| entire operation and drives their strategy.
|
| If Google drops some pet projects we'll see the same
| predictable stream of comments blaming ladder-climbing PMs,
| MBA management, H1B employees, everything other than the
| simplest explanation, that the powers that be got tired of
| subsidizing it with the one line of business that actually
| makes money.
| sobellian wrote:
| HN does not have extensive server costs. Last I saw (~10
| years ago) it was running off a single machine in a closet.
| Apparently they've since moved to _two_ machines at a hosting
| company.
| dartharva wrote:
| Hey, if the VCs don't want to run this site, I will gladly
| host it for free.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| > They can find other business models other than advertisement.
|
| The awful thing is, I'm not sure they can.
|
| Lots of sites turned to shitty ads and clickbait because it
| makes lots of money, but I've followed some passionate writers
| and journalists who decided to stick to their guns and focus on
| quality content with a reasonable subscription price.
|
| I don't follow any of them anymore, because they all either
| want out of business or gave up and switched to advertising
| hell.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Article in German about this from August 1:
| https://netzpolitik.org/2024/klage-gegen-
| datenschutzbehoerde...
|
| They're calculating with EUR 0.1 per user per month for
| targeted advertising. The "Pur Abo" (EUR 4-5 per month per
| site) are thus 40 times more profitable. The advertising has
| become mostly a mechanism to pressure readers into paying.
|
| The question is, can you convince roughly 1/40 of your
| readers to pay 5 bucks a month if you don't use targeted
| advertising as the "threat"? Maybe, just maybe, non-targeted
| advertising would already be enough? Many people pay to get
| rid of ads, not of surveillance, after all...
| pndy wrote:
| > The question is, can you convince
|
| Seen recently few sites which blocked access unless you
| agreed for vicious tracking - so much for _convincing
| readers_ , I guess.
|
| I'm afraid that it's a new trend to paywall everything and
| give user a quite harmful choice of being tracked if it
| won't pay.
|
| Few years ago there was an agreement in Poland between
| major media outlets to put an unified paywall system but it
| was abandoned quite fast. That was still before these
| vicious tracking techniques and cookie banners. People
| simply didn't want to pay for the access. Their tagline was
| " _Do you value good journalism?_ " and it was memed out
| because the quality of these paid materials was considered
| as low. Many people complained that it's not that much
| different from stuff available for free. Others raised an
| argument that access to the information on the Internet
| should be free and they didn't want to spend money on this.
| Discussion happen, taking on paid content in general but
| whole thing fizzled out just like that paywall system.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > I'm afraid that it's a new trend
|
| Well that's exactly what we've been seeing these recent
| years right?
|
| And it's also the subject of the article whether that's
| even legal. Nobody disputes the legality of an actual
| paywall. But whether the "consent" given in face of an
| "aggressive tracking vs payment" choice is actual legally
| considered consent in the sense of the GDPR, that's
| exactly what's being sorted out in court now.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > The awful thing is, I'm not sure they can.
|
| It might be one of those things that are extremely painful at
| first, but becomes better when things have settled down.
|
| All that sites that have turned to clickbait and scammy ads,
| wouldn't we be better of without them? If the ad market where
| to collapse the real newspapers, who still have actual
| subscribers would still be around, things like the BBC and
| other local and tax/license funded media would still be
| around and assuming that the free market is actually a thing,
| companies would emerge to plug the holes left be the
| clickbait sites, at a price.
|
| As it stands we're seeing those with the means paying for
| actual content and everyone else is just getting absolute
| garbage.
|
| msn.com is my favorite example, why is that still around?
| Most of the ads are actual scams, all article link to other
| sites, which are equally scammy. Why? Because it makes
| Microsoft money and they do not care about their users
| getting scammed, as long as they get their cut.
|
| I don't think ads should be the main way we fund content
| online, it's clearly not working anymore. The ad space has
| become the product and whatever content remains is just
| enough to trick people to going to the site and clicking a
| link or two. The content is no longer about enlightening or
| even entertaining, it's about trapping people in some twisted
| hedonic treadmill.
| jart wrote:
| It's not a problem if you don't go to the parts of the web
| that have ads. I spend my time online on places like GitHub
| that operate as ad-free commission-free gift economies.
| Environments that have ads, have nothing that I want. I
| don't care about what happens in them any more than I care
| about what happens in shantytowns. Why do you care? What
| pulls you into those dark Internet spaces?
| mrweasel wrote:
| That's a fair point, but I care also care a great deal
| about society as a whole, and I feel like the ad model is
| damaging to those around me. I quite frankly don't get
| why TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Facebook and
| others are allow to manipulate people to spend hours doom
| scrolling, just to show ads. TikTok even knows this is
| bad, because that's not how they operate in China
| apparently.
|
| I see very few ads, my daughter sees even less, but when
| I see how easily an ad can manipulate a child I question
| why that's even legal to create that ad and what kind of
| sick people thought that it would be an acceptable
| business strategy. Adults doesn't fair much better, the
| only way to see how awful it truly is, is to block out
| all ad funded media for an extended period of time, then
| come back and feel the assault.
|
| The ad based economy is making the world worse. It
| promote scams, pollution, gambling, pushes people into
| debt, hurts the mental well being of young and old and
| creates division between people.
|
| I don't like online ads and the web they've created.
| jart wrote:
| Society is full of predators. In the beginning, people
| got eaten in the jungle, and today they get monitored to
| learn their desires and then shown pictures of things
| they want. How do you know you're not being manipulated?
| Getting you to care and be concerned about things you're
| powerless to change is what the system did to you. Power
| is focus which means people are disempowered by getting
| them to focus their attention on things that don't
| matter. Advertisers normally need to pay cash money to
| buy someone's attention but you gave yours up for free.
| If everyone else is watching ads, then you're watching
| them watch ads. You're not any more free than they are.
| The simple fact of the matter is you won't be able to
| save others from this system, because you haven't even
| saved yourself.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I agree that ads are basically here to stay, in one form or
| another. And that most people arguing that the internet could
| migrate towards another model are probably wrong (people want
| free stuff, and a lot of people don't even mind ads sadly
| enough...). But I think that the user agent (the browser)
| shouldn't care at all about the sustainability of businesses
| or how viable blocking ads are for tech businesses. It should
| just do what's best for the user, or at least give the option
| to do that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _focus on quality content with a reasonable subscription
| price_
|
| We're a minority. See: every comment complaining about
| paywalls.
| Terretta wrote:
| You're arguing that speech should earn a living, which sounds
| like asserting everyone has the right to patronage.
|
| Just as most musicians or artists have to have a day job, so
| do most authors when they start. That's been true even for
| "political" speech: for about as long as people have had
| things to say, forms of self-subsidized pamphleteering have
| existed. In the 1990s, hobbyists were most of the web, enough
| to be able to kickstart a wikipedia.
|
| Self-publishing still works today, thanks to platforms like
| ghost.org at $9/month that also give an onramp from free to
| patronage.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| > You're arguing that speech should earn a living
|
| I'm saying it sucks that the majority of periodical writing
| has succumbed to race-to-the-bottom clickbait and
| adflooding.
|
| Newspapers and magazines from three decades ago certainly
| weren't perfect, but on average they were a whole lot
| better than modern news sites, and I don't see how we can
| ever get back to that situation. I don't know what the
| solution is, but I can see a problem when it's punching me
| in the face.
| timeon wrote:
| >> allows the internet to be free
|
| As far as i know I still pay for internet. Only free internet
| is with public wifi.
| bluGill wrote:
| You pay for the pipe to your house (which in turn pays for
| the backbone). However the content is mostly things you don't
| pay for.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Also advertising is certainly not the reason the web is free.
| It was free before the insane amount of advertising.
|
| Maybe for platforms like Youtube or similar sites advertising
| is part of their business model. But the primary reason here is
| foremost people creating content.
|
| That Youtube has insane infrastructure costs is secondary and
| we certainly don't need Browsers to help advertising at all.
|
| If it doesn't stay optional, Firefox should be forked. It is
| not a wanted feature. Danger is that Firefox gets gimped
| because of bad business decisions, because other features
| regarding privacy aren't as good as they could be.
| stavros wrote:
| > It was free before the insane amount of advertising.
|
| It was _better_ before the insane amount of advertising.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > It was better before the insane amount of advertising.
|
| There was anything on it really before that. Wikipedia
| didn't start until 2001 and there were already pop-ups and
| banner ads everywhere. t was better before the insane
| amount of advertising. I seem to recall GeoCities having
| ads everywhere.
| geobmx540 wrote:
| In the beginning there was no ads, but they got pretty
| aggressive at the end (1999ish)
| strictnein wrote:
| Geocities is an interesting case. It didn't start with
| ads and they monitored sites and told people to remove
| them (I received one such email). It wasn't out of some
| altruistic ideals though. They just didn't want anyone to
| advertise before they got their ads running on everyone's
| sites.
| LunaSea wrote:
| How can you say that the infrastructure costs are secondary?
|
| How do you think that the video content is going to be stored
| and served if not through paid infrastructure?
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Through torrents, for example.
| LunaSea wrote:
| The YouTube size estimates represent between 10 and 15
| exabytes, that's not a possible volume for Torrents.
|
| And that is simply touching the easiest problem to solve
| which is the storage part. Serving the video fast with
| adaptive quality and having the available bandwidth close
| to the user is another much larger problem.
| Intralexical wrote:
| > The YouTube size estimates represent between 10 and 15
| exabytes, that's not a possible volume for Torrents.
|
| Since filming, editing, and streaming videos already
| consumes users' storage and bandwidth resources anyway,
| the total amount of resources available to a P2P torrent-
| style network clearly is already in the ballpark of
| what's needed for YouTube.
|
| > Serving the video fast with adaptive quality and having
| the available bandwidth close to the user is another much
| larger problem.
|
| No idea how well it works in practice, but in theory
| PeerTube has already solved this using WebTorrent.
|
| The nice thing about P2P is that your network's capacity
| scales organically with load. More users=More capacity.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > Since filming, editing, and streaming videos already
| consumes users' storage and bandwidth resources anyway,
| the total amount of resources available to a P2P torrent-
| style network clearly is already in the ballpark of
| what's needed for YouTube.
|
| I doubt it because a lot of this content doesn't exist
| outside of Youtube and because the content does exist on
| external drives has not internet connectivity or capacity
| to get it.
|
| > No idea how well it works in practice, but in theory
| PeerTube has already solved this using WebTorrent.
|
| It seems to currently have 220K users, not exactly what I
| would call representative or a success for that matter.
|
| > The nice thing about P2P is that your network's
| capacity scales organically with load. More users=More
| capacity.
|
| Only if they agree to themselves share the content they
| host which is not necessarily the case.
| ben_w wrote:
| Seems like you think the whole collection has to be in
| one single torrent, rather than a separate torrent for
| each video, and that the complete works of all channels
| have to be seeded from a single source?
|
| The Pirate Bay existed... huh, still exists, OK...
| without requiring any single person to have all the
| pirated content on any single system -- the combined size
| of all videos on YouTube may be 10 to 15 exabytes or
| whatever, but no single video, no single creator, is
| close to that. Even LTT is about 3.6 petabytes for their
| entire working-archive backup system last I heard, and if
| they wanted to stream those as a torrent, well, the files
| are right there.
|
| It may not suit the current way YouTube content is
| consumed, where you share a link to a specific timestamp
| and whoever follows that link can see that moment almost
| immediately, but that doesn't detract from "can people
| share videos, perhaps even ones they made themselves,
| using this system?"
| nulbyte wrote:
| > How do you think that the video content is going to be
| stored and served if not through paid infrastructure?
|
| Secondary doesn't mean nonexistent, it comes after the
| primary thing, content creation.
|
| When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for
| privilege of sharing content. Creation was the primary
| motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I think it
| resulted in more and better communities than today, where
| people pull out all the stops to rake in the dough as the
| primary means of earning money.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid
| for privilege of sharing content. Creation was the
| primary motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I
| think it resulted in more and better communities than
| today, where people pull out all the stops to rake in the
| dough as the primary means of earning money.
|
| Yes and on this young Internet your site had 100 views,
| mostly from people close by.
|
| The content shared was mostly text and a small amount of
| images. Video and audio were largely non-existant.
|
| > I think it resulted in more and better communities than
| today, where people pull out all the stops to rake in the
| dough as the primary means of earning money.
|
| You're describing hobby content creators which didn't
| have the volume and quality of individual content
| creators nowadays.
| nottorp wrote:
| > which didn't have the volume
|
| agreed
|
| > and quality
|
| filming with an 8k camera doesn't mean quality though, it
| just means more production/hosting costs...
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Agree. Production quality != overall quality. I'd much
| rather have great content badly produced than
| professionally produced crap.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Most people still seem to watch Hollywood quality movies
| so I don't know if your taste is very representative.
| nottorp wrote:
| High sales != quality. Maybe high sales ~= lowest common
| denominator?
| LunaSea wrote:
| High sales doesn't mean quality but it does reflect the
| choice of the majority.
|
| So if we were to move to a world where high quality
| productions were not feasible anymore for some reason or
| another then by definition most people would find this to
| be a problem.
| nottorp wrote:
| No, I think the majority would just take what they're
| given.
|
| Most "content" is "consumed" just to have something to
| do.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Would they watch so many if they weren't available at
| every movie theater in town and every streaming service
| on earth? A lot of attention has been devoted to such
| movies that would have been invested elsewhere in other
| efforts if movies didn't exist.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| If by Hollywood quality you mean that it's professionally
| produced to a high standard (of production, of course),
| than I don't see what's bad about that. I only said I
| value content quality much more than production quality.
| Great content produced to a high standard is better than
| the same content badly produced.
|
| There are some great movies out of Hollywood.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > filming with an 8k camera doesn't mean quality though,
| it just means more production/hosting costs...
|
| Quality is also a factor of time which unpaid people
| usually do not have enough of.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I would argue that the average quality was higher by a
| few magnitudes due to the higher entry barrier alone. The
| average production value is higher these days, but that
| doesn't correlate with quality too much. Simple truth is
| that hobbyists, enthusiasts and professionals are often
| one and the same people.
|
| There was also always a way to accommodate a large amount
| of users through mirrors and other channels, which people
| shared frequently.
|
| With "the web" they meant their business idea for their
| specific platform isn't viable without advertisers
| exploiting user data to the largest degree possible. That
| is something entirely different. On if they just
| paywalled the content, people would probably again use
| alternatives.
|
| Of course I didn't mean to say that infrastructure costs
| are negligible. On the contrary, it is the largest
| expense for certain platforms and services. But if a
| platform has advertising as a business model, it is not
| on my browser to accommodate that. Then they need to let
| someone else fill the space they cannot serve without
| manipulating my user agent.
|
| I do even approve of platforms enabling some creators to
| make a living with online content creation. But I am
| still not interested to accommodate advertisers. It is a
| toxic industry that strives on exploiting users and their
| privacy. There is no sensible means of cooperation
| possible and I want my browser have realistic perspective
| here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid
| for privilege of sharing content_
|
| This silences a large number of people and communities
| who can't afford that privilege. Not saying that's
| inherently bad. But it's worth weighing in the moral
| calculus.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Posting video on someone else's hardware is not a human
| right.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Posting video on someone else 's hardware is not a
| human right_
|
| Straw man. Nobody in this thread argued it is.
| exe34 wrote:
| has anybody tried to argue this here? who are you
| replying to?
| Intralexical wrote:
| That's the general problem of economic inequality,
| though. It's not specific to the Internet.
|
| Disadvantaged groups will already have less free time to
| share content, less exposure to the technical skills
| needed to do so, less attention, respect, and opportunity
| from doing so, etc. Advertising places a fig leaf over
| unequal access, but really makes the inequality worse by
| centralizing wealth and control in the hands of a few
| rent-seeking operations.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > That's the general problem of economic inequality,
| though. It's not specific to the Internet.
|
| Yes, but advertisement showed that it wasn't a structural
| limitation and that other options were available. Even if
| said options themselves had downsides.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Donations were and are a thing for covering hosting costs
| in many communities.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Not if the site serves videos and has 2024-levels world
| traffic.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _This silences a large number of people_
|
| I'd argue advertising silences many more.
|
| Any niche topic is already so SEO'd to death with keyword
| rich but contentless content that those with something
| truly relevant to say are unlikely to ever be heard.*
|
| * Unless commenting in a niche subreddit, a web-ring
| indexed by small web engines, or the like, where the
| audience are like minds who've previously found the
| niche.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The thing is, if your community is small costs are
| probably in the couple dollars a month range. An order of
| magnitude lower than the costs of hardware like your
| computer. If communities are large where an individual
| cannot trivially bear the costs, donation models have
| worked where the community itself funds its hosting.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'd happily provide hosting to a whole lot of media that
| I enjoy myself and would love to share. I might have
| bandwidth limits each month, but within reason, I'd
| share.
|
| predatory lawyers and greedy creators is the reason I
| don't.
| autoexec wrote:
| Honestly, when the internet was younger the costs to host
| content were basically zero. Anyone could run a web
| server on their own PC and run a website for zero costs.
| Many ISPs offered shell accounts and provided basic
| webhosting at no additional cost. These could be scaled
| up as needed, but everybody with a modem and an ISP had
| the opportunity to take part in sharing content on the
| internet.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I pay my telecom for 500mbit up and down, what other
| infrastructure must be paid for to support torrenting?
| Zetaphor wrote:
| Each individual seeder is paying for electricity,
| storage, and internet access to make those torrents
| available to you.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Also advertising is certainly not the reason the web is
| free. It was free before the insane amount of advertising.
|
| It never was free before modern internet advertising, the
| costs were just hidden somewhere else. I remember the time
| before that... IRC servers and a lot of code hosting
| (SourceForge, Linux distro repositories) were paid for by
| volunteers/donors/universities, newsgroup servers were ran by
| ISPs and paid for by ISP customers, forums, MMORPGs, general
| online game servers and the likes by donations or sometimes
| just the pockets of whomever in the community had some money
| to spare, and a lot of the warez scene was just plainly
| skimming off of others: STROs for hosting, phone dialer scams
| and credit card fraud. Additionally, some sites made small,
| direct advertising deals with relevant companies (say, a
| forum about car DIY could run banners from a dealership).
|
| A lot of stuff that we take for granted today - especially
| animated content beyond short GIFs - simply was unfeasible
| because the amount of money you needed to cough up was so
| immense. The influx of money through modern advertising,
| especially Google Ads, made many things even possible in the
| first place.
|
| Also, times (and legal responsibilities) changed, driving up
| the cost particularly for anything involving UGC. Blog
| comment sections, guestbooks and the likes got impossible to
| moderate due to spam, and as that vanished, so did blogs in
| general. Forums had to deal with CSAM spreaders hiding out,
| and then came terrorists and the regulatory responses towards
| them requiring very strict timeframe for the removal of such
| content... it's a real effort to host _anything_ beyond a
| static HTML site these days.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > The influx of money through modern advertising,
| especially Google Ads, made many things even possible in
| the first place.
|
| If the customers of online advertising platforms ever
| realise that much of their ad-spend is in vain and cut
| their ad-spend proportionally, do you think that the
| internet as it is today will change?
|
| BTW: Serious question, I really want to know what you
| think.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If the customers of online advertising platforms ever
| realise that much of their ad-spend is in vain and cut
| their ad-spend proportionally, do you think that the
| internet as it is today will change?
|
| Oh of course it will, we're already seeing the first
| effects. Or rather, Twitter (now X) is - they lost pretty
| much all major brands as advertisers and the majority of
| their income as advertisers realized that appearing next
| to Catturd, porn spammers and dropshipping scams is not a
| platform that yields high returns.
|
| The only platforms still offering decent ROI are Meta and
| Google's search results, and the real game for online
| advertisers these days is influencer marketing.
| xeromal wrote:
| I might not be old enough to remember when the internet was
| ad free but I'm 34 and since I've been on the internet,
| popups and advertising garbage have always been around. I
| want to say I started using it around 1996-1997
| rchaud wrote:
| Ad space was sold directly by the website owner, and the ad
| banner was just static HTML or an image served from the
| site directly. Then iframes and DoubleClick arrived, and
| suddenly ads were served from third party sites via
| iframes, which would load advertiser scripts and it was
| downhill from there.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It was free before the insane amount of advertising.
|
| It was free to users, but the operators were paying hosting
| fees. Maybe the did that out of love or charity or simply
| because nobody knew how to make money with it. First gen ads
| came from companies buying banners directly with the host
| based on user metrics which ultimately landed with GoogAnals
| installed every where. Hosts used that to offset their out of
| pocket expenses. But the content was still the content. The
| wheels started wobbling when blogs started chasing topics for
| the metrics. The wheels came completely off the bus when
| socials introduced algos tweaked to feed your addictions.
|
| It was never free. The form of payment has moved to
| unsuspecting users' data instead of money out of pocket.
| autoexec wrote:
| > If it doesn't stay optional, Firefox should be forked. It
| is not a wanted feature.
|
| This is already something they insisted on leaving enabled by
| default because they knew no one would opt into it. They knew
| full well that this isn't something people want. Mozilla is
| an ad-tech company now. Instead of improving firefox they
| spent a ton of money buying an ad company created by facebook
| employees. They're going to claw back a return on that
| investment and they're taking it from Firefox users.
|
| They simple do not care about the privacy of Firefox users.
| There is zero chance that this is as far as Firefox goes in
| violating your privacy. Expect more anti-features, expect
| things you disable in about:config to re-enable themselves
| after updates, expect more tracking that you can't disable,
| expect more invasive forms of tracking. It's all downhill
| from here.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Yeah, being against advertising isn't fundamentally about
| privacy. I mean, I care about privacy too, but even an ad that
| collects no data about me is bad. I simply do not want products
| shoved in my face. If I need something from your company I'll
| come to you.
|
| Yes, in the current environment, companies have to advertise to
| compete with competition that advertises. This is why we need
| to agree as a society to stop this nonsense, so that companies
| that don't advertise are in competition with other companies
| that don't advertise, competing for independent review based on
| the quality of their products and services.
|
| Advertising undermines the fundamental premise that companies
| win in competition by providing the best products and services.
| An well-marketed inferior product outcompetes a poorly-marketed
| superior product every time, _and that 's a problem_.
| Advertising should be viewed as anti-competitive, because it's
| not competing on the metrics that serve people's needs: which
| is the entire point of an economy.
| lolinder wrote:
| > advertising as a business model is what allows the internet
| to be free and open to everyone
|
| My favorite period in internet history was the years in which
| self-hosted phpBB forums dominated the social landscape. We had
| a diverse set of forums paid for by one or more of their
| participants, who made the forum available simply because they
| liked hanging out with the community they were hosting.
|
| Advertising-based social media took all the air from that model
| and replaced it with the enormous advertising-driven attention
| economy. Genuine social interaction was largely replaced by
| vacuous attempts to get "engagement" as the platforms persuaded
| millions to act in _their_ interests. Vulnerable interactions
| with persistent communities that allowed real internet
| friendships to develop gave way to ephemeral rage bait that
| ruins real life friendships.
|
| I'm not saying that advertising is the root of every single
| social ill we have today, but it's responsible for its good
| share of them.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Having run one, I have to say that towards the end people
| were moving to social media BECAUSE posts had a like counter.
| I regret not adding one to my forum.
| lolinder wrote:
| Oh, for sure. They created a drug that suffocated all non-
| externally-rewarded social interaction and drew users in.
| But they created that drug in service to advertisements.
| commodoreboxer wrote:
| Most importantly, advertisement is a business. It's not charity
| and it's not a publicly owned resource. It doesn't keep the
| Internet free, because it makes a boat load of money doing what
| it does. It doesn't take an expert understanding of economics
| to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free
| Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere,
| notably from you.
|
| Either advertisement works, and you pay for your content by
| being psychologically manipulated into paying more than you
| otherwise would on things you don't need, or it doesn't, and
| businesses pay for ineffective advertisement, leading to
| increased prices.
|
| Advertisement is not free. It's a trick that looks free if you
| ignore the entire way it functions.
| bluGill wrote:
| > It doesn't keep the Internet free
|
| There are two different definitions of free.
|
| Advertising keeps the internet free as in your don't have to
| pay for it. However there is also freedom and advertising
| doesn't help there at all.
| commodoreboxer wrote:
| That's the rub. You do pay for it. By the intention and
| definition of the business, advertisement eventually
| extracts money from you. It wouldn't be profitable
| otherwise. The fact that it happens more subtly and enables
| them to extract money from you in ways that you don't
| notice doesn't change the fact that it's still paid for.
|
| An advertisement funded Internet is still you paying for
| your content, it's just built so that you don't feel like
| you're paying for it. Advertisement is not free money, and
| it can not be free money. It's for-profit.
|
| So with advertisement, you're still paying for the
| Internet. We don't have a free Internet. We have an
| Internet built around businesses that make their entire
| business around psychological manipulation and extracting
| money from people without being noticed. The fact that
| people still push the myth that advertisement enables a
| free Internet like ad companies are somehow a public
| service shows how good they are at manipulation.
| benmanns wrote:
| I think there are legitimate cases where a business has a
| product available at a price that is net positive to both
| the business (profitable) and customer (consumer surplus)
| but is having trouble connecting with consumers. What %
| of advertising this is versus pushing low quality trash,
| branding, status symbols, and scams, I have no idea.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Advertising keeps the internet free as in your don't have
| to pay for it. However
|
| Ads and the spying they depend on only trick you into
| thinking that you aren't paying for it when in reality, not
| only are you paying (often resulting with money coming out
| of your pocket) but you also never get to stop paying for
| it.
|
| Once your data is out there, it will be used against you
| for the rest of your life. It never goes away.
|
| It'll be passed around to advertisers, data brokers, law
| enforcement, lawyers, employers, insurance companies,
| scammers, retailers, and activists and year after year,
| decade after decade, every single person who gets their
| hands on your data will try to use it against you in any
| and every way that they feel will be to their benefit, and
| it will almost always be at your expense.
| anewguy9000 wrote:
| mozilla used to have this smart guy, brendan something, as
| their cto. but he was chased out of mozilla and created a new
| browser called brave. it actually does what this current cto
| claims to be trying to do
| kazinator wrote:
| > _is what allows the internet to be free and open to everyone_
|
| The internet is free to hardly anyone. People pay for broadband
| and mobile plans.
|
| Free Wi-Fi hotspots are what actually keeps the internet free
| for many people.
| 3np wrote:
| Here is the actual script, if you prefer copy-pasting a one-liner
| over curl|sh... echo 'user_pref("dom.private-
| attribution.submission.enabled", false);' | tee -a
| $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/$(grep "Default=.*\.default*"
| "$HOME/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini" | cut -d"=" -f2)/user.js
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Really sad to see Firefox's direction but also not sure how they
| should be funded to avoid these things. I'm also not sure that
| the web can be made into something different unless web standards
| aren't freed of influence by giants like Google
| the_third_wave wrote:
| They should concentrate on developing the browser and get out
| of political activism entirely. Use the rather large amount of
| money they already have as an investment fund to finance a
| slimmed-down operation while also soliciting donations from
| users and some select companies. Ditch the large administrative
| staff they gained during the Baker years, swap some of them out
| for developers. They should not try to be a PAC, there's enough
| of those already.
| rnd0 wrote:
| Wouldn't this be a case where the iron law of bureaucracy
| applies? Meaning that the people who are already there and
| are invested in their 'mission' would resist any kind of
| reform of the organization because the primary task of any
| such organization is protecting itself from outsiders?
| account42 wrote:
| Yes, but only because the Mozilla _Foundation_ has the same
| problem. If it was just the corporation then the foundation
| could decide to replace it entirely.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Really sad to see Firefox's direction but also not sure how
| they should be funded to avoid these things.
|
| I'm not sure there is an alternative. It's not just Firefox:
| other big projects like this already have foundations and lots
| of money in funding, but then spend the money on things not at
| all related to the core mission.
|
| From what I've read, Mozilla won't even take your money to
| develop Firefox. They'll instead use it for the Mozilla
| foundation which funds a bunch of social causes.
|
| Wikipedia has a _huge_ endowment, so they really don 't need
| money to keep the lights on, but if you donate, it'll similarly
| be used for funding social causes through the Wikimedia
| Foundation.
|
| There's also a Linux Foundation for funding Linux-related
| stuff, but here again a lot of it is spent on social causes,
| not directly on development-related costs.
|
| You'd think that if funding were really _that_ tight, social
| causes would be cut and just keeping the servers running and
| essential personnel employed would be the highest priority,
| with SW maintenance and development a close 2nd. So,
| apparently, money must not be that tight. Or, if it is, it 's
| being woefully mismanaged. But I think there's more to it: it
| seems like when times are too good (something gets popular and
| gets funding), then the people in charge expand the scope of
| the project to consume all the funding, adding on various pet
| projects (like those social causes), instead of saving the
| money in case of a funding downturn later. Wikipedia probably
| did it best by setting up an endowment so that everything else
| is just gravy, but even here they're constantly asking for more
| money on the site and acting like they really need it when they
| don't.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It's depressing that anything moderately successful may be
| doomed to being taken over this way, by people looking to
| abuse the institution for their own political activism. I
| wasn't aware that Wikipedia also had the same issue. Not
| using donations for the core thing donors think they're
| supporting is so deceptive.
| kentrado wrote:
| This is the case with most software "foundation".
|
| As much as I disagree with Ayn Rand on a lot of things, she
| did make an important observation.
|
| Parasites will be attracted to high value things in order to
| extract value, not to add to it. They climb the hierarchy of
| the organisation and then use it for their own benefit.
|
| It is not only developers who do resume building oriented
| work. These people start social causes so that they can claim
| that they spearheaded this or that campaign. In order to gain
| prestige.
|
| Engineers who only care about the product become the bottom
| of the hierarchy and the organisation becomes a reflection of
| the needs and wants of these parasites.
| account42 wrote:
| > not sure how they should be funded to avoid these things
|
| From donations and government grants. You know, like proper
| non-profits that aren't trying to LARP as a SV unicorn.
| fsflover wrote:
| Which software with hundreds of millions of lines of code
| survives like this? Ideally show us security-critical
| examples.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| Firefox been like this for atleast a decade.
|
| All sorts of "experiments", normandy, telemetry, pocket,
| looking glass, all sorts of phoning back them or either
| google... so many things to name. And now this garbage to add
| to the list.
|
| You have to do so much work in about:config to clean this up
| and i'm not sure if it can be fully.
|
| Extremely scummy organisation.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I'd donate to Mozilla if the money was actually going towards
| browser development, and not whatever idiotic bullshit the corp
| side of it decides to buy (like Pocket, for example) next.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| `dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled` already was false.
| If you're having to set it manually in `about:config`, you're
| likely missing something bigger in `about:preferences#privacy`.
| kelnos wrote:
| Odd, it was 'true' for me, and I have all the privacy stuff in
| there set to the most private of settings. There was one
| section in there with an option labeled:
|
| > _Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement_
|
| Strangely, though, it was already unchecked, and at any rate,
| greyed out so I couldn't toggle it. Toggling that about:config
| value didn't change the state of that checkbox.
|
| I also found another about:config pref called "dom.origin-
| trials.private-attribution.state" (set to zero for me); I
| wonder if that has anything to do with it.
| sn0wleppard wrote:
| Yeah, I'd already turned it from the standard settings page.
| remram wrote:
| Do you know if there's a GUI setting that controls that on
| mobile?
| jmakov wrote:
| Can this be also disabled on Android?
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, about:config works there as well.
|
| Interestingly, it was already disabled on my phone, but enabled
| on desktop.
| cma wrote:
| Google likely pays them to disable about:config on Android or
| implies they won't pay them as much for default search and
| they read the tea leaves.
|
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/firefox-for-android-
| abo...
|
| It only works on the more insecure nightly version of
| firefox.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I just checked this config value on my Firefox Nightly and
| it's already preset to false. Interesting.
| remram wrote:
| Maybe you had turned it off last time this was on the
| front-page? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974112
|
| That's what I suspect for my own setting anyway.
| kilburn wrote:
| This is equivalent to about:config and works on the regular
| firefox mobile version too:
|
| chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml
| cma wrote:
| Didn't work for me just now. When there have been ways in
| the past the non-nightly version wipes the changes each
| restart unless they are already exposed in settings I
| think.
| user070223 wrote:
| Yes, beta version for sure(just go to about:config), possibly
| it works on the normal version with the following method (which
| allows you to insert a user.js)
|
| Instructions: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/issues/240
|
| Other option is to use another gecko based browser check this
| https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
| remram wrote:
| Go to chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml and set
| dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled to false.
| SubzeroCarnage wrote:
| Firefox 128.0.3 and higher has this globally disabled for
| Android.
| kelnos wrote:
| This is absolutely disgusting. Despite Mozilla's general decline,
| I always want to believe they're going to do the right thing by
| their users. But this is really hard to swallow.
|
| Advertising is unethical psychological manipulation, full stop. I
| don't care if the delivery or targeting mechanism is supposedly
| "privacy-preserving" (yeah, right). Ads themselves, even
| completely untargeted ads, need to go.
| roca wrote:
| Then I think it's only fair for you to completely stop using
| ad-supported sites and services, right away.
|
| (Which will also mean that Firefox's treatment of ads will not
| affect you.)
| bux93 wrote:
| What do you mean you don't want to sleep with me? It's a
| date! I paid for dinner!
|
| - advertisers
| LunaSea wrote:
| "It's not stealing, I'm just freely accessing your paid
| content"
|
| - users
| nmeagent wrote:
| "Officer, arrest this man! He had the gall to show up at
| my site and only consume _some_ of the content I tried to
| shove into his face! "
| anononaut wrote:
| They can always refuse to serve me anything. That's
| equally fair.
| bjord wrote:
| I just did a quick search of your comments on HN and I see that
| you're regularly sharing/using links to archive.is in an effort
| to bypass paywalls.
|
| So, given that you're unwilling to pay and that you believe
| advertising is unethical, how do you expect people to fund the
| content you consume?
|
| Don't you think it's unethical to expect they do it for free?
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author%3Akelnos%20archive&type...
| account42 wrote:
| curl | sh for THIS? Riiight, let's give that website permission
| to execute arbitrary code on your computer just to change a
| single FF preference? Really????
| zczc wrote:
| More privacy-related about:config settings:
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy/Privacy_Task_Force/firefox_...
| Hard_Space wrote:
| Please be aware that at least one of these settings will log
| you out of all your accounts (I suspect it may be the one
| related to fingerprinting, though I am not certain). If, as I
| am, you are signed into 10-20 essential accounts, including
| work accounts, it is going to be very difficult to get your
| browser back into its prior 'ready to use' startup, state, even
| after you have reversed some of the settings outlined here.
|
| There are easier ways of getting a 'fresh start' for cookies
| and logins on Firefox than this. It has taken me an hour to
| undo some of the damage done by even timid experimentation with
| these settings.
|
| Sadly, this experiment logged me out of a YouTube-only Google
| account that I was able to make before Google closed the
| loophole that allowed you to make a YouTube-based account
| without the need for any email address or phone number. Re-
| authenticating at login for this account now requires that you
| supply an existing email address and phone number, so the
| utility of that particular account has gone forever.
| layer8 wrote:
| > it is going to be very difficult to get your browser back
| into its prior 'ready to use' startup, state
|
| Creating a backup before making any changes would solve that.
| SCdF wrote:
| I just want to use a robust, secure and decently fast browser
| that uses a different backend than Chrome to support the open web
| not ossifying into a single browser spec. I'll pay monthly!
|
| Please just let me pay for this in money and not my privacy :-(
| trustno2 wrote:
| There is Safari. Or whatever is based on WebKit on Linux (there
| must be some...)
|
| GNOME Web/Epiphany (same thing) seems to use WebKit and is
| officially supported
|
| https://webkit.org/downloads/
|
| https://apps.gnome.org/Epiphany/
|
| It seems there is no WebKit browser for Windows.
| sulandor wrote:
| > There is Safari. Or whatever is based on WebKit on Linux
|
| webkit was forked from the kde browser, not the other way.
| trustno2 wrote:
| So? Epiphany is based on WebKit now, KDE Browser doesn't
| exist anymore. (I needed to check it first.)
| graemep wrote:
| Its called Konqueror, and exists, but it uses a webkit
| fork now!
|
| Webkit was forked from KHTML which has been discontinued.
| sulandor wrote:
| i guess we are both right.
|
| thx for the clarification
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| No good adblocking for safari like in firefox though
| layer8 wrote:
| Extensions like AdGuard and Ghostery are pretty good.
| grishka wrote:
| There's Ladybird.
|
| https://ladybird.org
| bjord wrote:
| looking forward to ten years from now, when it meets those
| requirements
| freediver wrote:
| If you use macOS/iOS, there is Orion. Webkit based, zero
| telemetry, lifetime license $150 USD, no other source of
| funding.
|
| https://kagi.com/orion
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| With a price like that I'm assuming this product has a shelf
| life. It would make way more sense to ask a dollar a month.
| In 13 years they will have made more than that $150, and this
| model also incentivizes them to keep up development for years
| and years.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| I recently switched to LibreWolf[0] and, after tweaking a few
| settings that were more zealous that I'd like, it has been just
| as good as vanilla FF.
|
| 0: https://librewolf.net/
| eitland wrote:
| Have used it as my secondary browser (~everything that doesn't
| need login: documentation, news, etc) for a couple of years now
| and it is great.
|
| Also always looking for someone to create a paid version of
| Firefox that:
|
| - stays up to date with development of FF
|
| - turns off all the stupid ideas
|
| - gradually re-implement the most important parts that certain
| old extensions dependend on: scrapbook, scheduled website
| update checker (have forgotten the actual name), those kinds of
| things
|
| I know many people here say: "everyone say they will pay for
| this or that but nobody does", but I am one of those persons
| who actually do pay for software that changes my life for the
| better or has the potential to do so.
|
| So far I can only remember a single one (Logseq is good for
| now) in the last category that hasn't either collapsed in an
| honest way (rip sandstorm) or rewarded my early support by
| doing something really stupid, like typically breaking the
| thing that made me support them in the first place, but I guess
| I will continue trying.
|
| If someone makes the thing I mention above at a reasonable
| price and I don't show up, please contact me, I might have
| missed it. (Reasonable = don't expect me to pay the same for
| bundling a set of patches as I pay for Jetbrains bundle or MS
| Office.)
| michael9423 wrote:
| Librewolf does #1 and #2 already. But generally, there's no
| market for that.
|
| Most of those who say "I would pay for that" would indeed
| never do it. Because those people want something very
| specific - something you can only have via extensions and
| personal modifications. What you want is very specific to
| what you personally want and it is different to what everyone
| else wants.
|
| And no one can create a browser project for your personal
| preferences.
|
| Just like you will probably say "Librewolf doesn't stay up to
| date the way I want them to... and they don't turn off all
| the stupid ideas the way I want them to."
|
| Librewolf is everything one can ask from an open-source
| Firefox fork.
|
| People always complained when Firefox moved to a more
| efficient extension system but practically no one cared about
| Waterfox keeping the old firefox extensions alive. That's
| because those people are the absolute minority and do not
| represent the common user.
|
| And what they complain about is not actually the technical
| change - it is about the overall change in society and what a
| move away from the more technical approach that allows user
| modification symbolizes - the dumbing down of software in
| general. For example, RSS symbolizes the old internet, but
| the old internet is gone.
| podiki wrote:
| What settings and why? Did they break some sites? Been meaning
| to try LibreWolf too.
| willywanker wrote:
| Or use Pale Moon, forked long ago and developed independently,
| that respects your privacy out of the box without needing 50
| different 'hardening' Arkenfox type changes or having to keep
| watch every time Mozilla tries to screw over end users like this.
| Zero telemetry, zero advertising and no mental gymnastics over
| how we're financially dependent on Google but still value your
| privacy. And bonus, it retains XUL extension support and the full
| customizability that went with it (including full support for
| full themes that can make it resemble Chrome or modern Firefox if
| you want to).
| efilife wrote:
| https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/palemoon
|
| This article is 5 years old and I'm not sure whether it's
| accurate anymore, but might be worth checking to be sure we are
| completely private.
|
| I also remember some drama about pale moon's author despising
| TOR and not wanting uBlock to work
| luuurker wrote:
| The first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Pale Moon" is
| their toxic developers. But let's ignore that... Is it safe to
| use Pale Moon as your main browser? How many security patches
| is it missing from upstream Firefox? Do they have any security
| team?
|
| I don't mind using outdated software for a specific task, but I
| feel uncomfortable after a certain point. Unless you absolutely
| need the old XUL-era functionality, does it make sense to use
| Pale Moon when you can tweak Firefox to be more private? In my
| case, I'm not sure.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Here's the Firefox CTO explaining the motivation behind the
| experiment controlled by this setting, and the measures taken to
| ensure that it actually _is_ private:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...
| pacifika wrote:
| Yup making this change will result in a slower move away from
| the current worse situation, which is less private then the
| proposed Mozilla future, is my reading.
| thoroughburro wrote:
| Because advertisers will voluntarily give up their other
| tracking tools? Does that sound likely?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| He doesn't explain how it works though, or why it is private.
| Only that we should trust them.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Incidentally this was published just now!
| https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/
|
| He also linked to this technical explainer, though I don't
| think that's necessarily written for a broader audience:
| https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-
| experime...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The hypocrisy in this post is astonishing.
|
| > The Internet has become a massive web of surveillance
|
| And Mozilla are contributing to it in all but name.
|
| > primary reason many of us are at Mozilla.
|
| If that is the case, and this is the best fight you can muster
| give up, go home and hand over the fight to better people. A
| mission to create the weapons people need to fight online
| surveillance requires guile, a strong will, a strong stomach, a
| clear understanding of who the enemy is and the ability to
| stick to some basic principles,
|
| > Digital advertising is not going away
|
| What kind of a defeatist attitude is that? People want it to go
| away. That's why they use Firefox. Mozilla are supposed to be
| defending that corner. What a lame cop out!
|
| > but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get
| it right.
|
| We had a working system for digital advertisement in the 1990s.
| Go back to that and figure where you got lost.
|
| The linked post is a sad masterpiece of appeasement, cowardice
| and snivelling apologetic. Mozilla is abandoning it's mission
| and selling out. The CEO should step down.
| mrinfinitiesx wrote:
| Truth.
| sensanaty wrote:
| The fact that the disgusting parasitic entity that is Meta is a
| part of this makes me sick to my stomach. The fact that the
| Mozilla CTO is supportive of Meta being a part of it? Just
| unspeakable.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Using overwrought rhetoric doesn't help to make your point.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| What point? They were describing their personal
| impressions. ffs.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| And unsurprisingly, he just lies. Here's the crux of the
| bullshit:
|
| "It's about measurement (aggregate counts of impressions and
| conversions) rather than targeting."
|
| No new technology is needed for measuring impressions and
| conversions. Your ad server can count impressions, and a simple
| referrer URL can track conversions. An Apache 1.0 server could
| handle this 30 years ago.
|
| What the advertisers _want_ is _all sorts of other info on
| you,_ whether you end up as a customer or not. And they and
| their willing accomplices, now including Mozilla, ardently
| frame this as a necessity to keep the ad-supported content
| industry alive. What they never mention is that industry was
| thriving with the bare minimum of data they had 30 years ago,
| and more to the point, thrived with NO DATA AT ALL for over a
| century before it moved onto computers.
|
| Do you think Macy's got any data on "conversions" when they
| listed their sale prices in the local paper? Yet somehow they
| were happy to keep paying for it, without any apocalyptic
| screeds about the imminent "death of newspapers" if we didn't
| start making customers record their unique customer ID before
| opening the paper or entering a retailer's store.
|
| The truth is quite contrary to the ad industry's narrative-
| it's clear the shift of power balance in favor of the
| advertisers has been associated with all the industries
| dependent upon it getting worse.
| cjpearson wrote:
| I really don't like advertising. I use uBlock Origin in my
| browser, AdGuard on my phone and pi-hole in my home. I even take
| a seam ripper to my clothes to make sure no logos remain. But I
| understand that advertising is the only viable business model for
| much of the internet. (Browsing HN and seeing that the top
| comment for every paywalled article is a pirated link confirms
| that.)
|
| If advertising must exist, I'd prefer it to be safe and private
| rather than the malware-ridden surveillance machine that exists
| today. Mozilla is working hard to make this happen and catching a
| lot of flak. It's notable that criticisms usually fall into three
| buckets.
|
| 1. It has "advertising" in the name, thus it is bad
|
| 2. Meta is involved, thus it is bad
|
| 3. Mozilla earns most of their revenue from Google, thus they are
| incapable of doing a good thing
|
| It would be much healthier if criticisms actually focused on the
| design and implementation of PPA. Perhaps things could be
| improved. Or maybe you have your own ideas for privacy preserving
| advertising. But it surprises me that even on a technical forum
| like HN, so many people endorse the awful advertising status quo.
|
| Yes, you can mostly opt out of advertising with uBlock Origin.
| You can still do that when PPA is enabled. The vast majority of
| browsers will continue to subsidize your browsing. What Mozilla
| is doing is working to provide the same level of privacy and
| security for the 90% of the population who does not use uBlock
| Origin. I think that's a noble goal.
| perchlorate wrote:
| Advertisers are going to use it as just another data point,
| though. Why give them any more information than they already
| have? You know some of the best technical people we have waste
| their lives working for advertisers, and they _will_ find a way
| to extract more information from these technologies regardless
| of how supposedly private they are.
|
| I don't think there can be a technical solution to this problem
| unless advertisers are forced by government regulations to
| behave, with very heavy fines for non-compliance.
|
| I personally really hoped for Mozilla to take a strong stance
| against advertisers and introduce an aggressive ad blocker, but
| it was pretty obvious they're not going to do anything like
| that because of the conflict of interest (Google's money). Now
| we get another conflict of interest on top that makes it even
| less likely.
| roca wrote:
| > I don't think there can be a technical solution to this
| problem unless advertisers are forced by government
| regulations to behave, with very heavy fines for non-
| compliance.
|
| Indeed, but such regulation is much more likely to happen if
| there already exist privacy-preserving solutions like PPA.
|
| "There's a good way to do it and a bad way, and we're making
| it illegal to do it the bad way" vs "There only way to do it
| is bad, and we're making that illegal, so sucks to be you"
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| This isn't an alternative, that's the argument
| lpcvoid wrote:
| I personally don't care if 90% of websites which rely on
| advertising disappear or replace their monetization strategy
| with gated, paid access. I even think this is a good thing.
|
| As such, I will fight the ability of websites to monetize by
| tracking wherever I can.
| LunaSea wrote:
| This means that people without means will automatically be
| excluded from the internet.
|
| Also most people don't want to pay for content.
|
| This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly
| disappear.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > This means that people without means will automatically
| be excluded from the internet.
|
| No, they'll be relegated to the charitable internet, the
| advocacy internet, the nerdy obsessive internet, the public
| science internet, the FOSS internet, the public domain
| internet, and the piracy internet.
|
| And whenever any of these groups come up with a project
| they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion
| dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible
| and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke
| users looking for alternatives.
|
| > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly
| disappear.
|
| I think the only risk of this happening is if free
| alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial
| internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or
| of running a server in general, or alternatively by
| lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments
| to do their dirty work for them. The US seems like it's on
| the verge of state licensing of speech and journalism, and
| that sentiment is easily moved to any sort of internet
| hosting of any service.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > And whenever any of these groups come up with a project
| they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion
| dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible
| and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of
| broke users looking for alternatives.
|
| They absolutely will have to since they won't have the
| means to serve the content to the community otherwise.
|
| Niche websites won't stay niche for very long if they are
| the only free option.
|
| > I think the only risk of this happening is if free
| alternatives get so generous and useful that the
| commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth
| somehow, or of running a server in general, or
| alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff
| to get governments to do their dirty work for them.
|
| I don't see most of these free alternatives even existing
| in the first place. For example: free news reporting (not
| even talking about foreign correspondents & co).
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| > the commercial internet tries to raise the price of
| bandwidth somehow
|
| This is already happening.
|
| They wanted to make us pay more because we are using
| netflix and other streaming services so much.
|
| Everything important like internet and streets should be
| built and maintained by the gov and not some random
| companies, f*ck Telekom.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The issue is our government doesn't function anything
| like that. We don't build roads. We write checks to for
| profit contractors to build our roads. What would
| government internet look like? A massive check to meta
| and more or less the same environment we have today.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Going back to 90s internet is a very good thing.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Which site from the 90s are you still visiting regularly
| in it's 90s form?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| /.
| LunaSea wrote:
| The same Slashdot that is monetised through advertisement
| with 500M monthly ad impressions?
|
| Source: https://slashdotmedia.com/advertising-and-
| marketing-services...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I mean, they still don't/can't handle Unicode.
| layer8 wrote:
| Personal blogs. Smaller online retailers. Not a web site,
| but Usenet and mailing lists.
| blueflow wrote:
| > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly
| disappear.
|
| 99.99% of _your_ web.
| LunaSea wrote:
| 99.99% of the web, full stop.
| blueflow wrote:
| What about HN? What about make-firefox-private-again.com?
| Go through the HN frontpage and the links. Thats why i'm
| sure you are wrong.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > What about HN?
|
| The same HN that is heavily moderated by a paid employee
| and paid for by a multi-billion dollars net worth company
| called YCombinator?
| lolinder wrote:
| Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-attention-
| economy world. They have proven themselves to be quite
| adaptable.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-
| attention-economy world. They have proven themselves to
| be quite adaptable.
|
| That's not the question. Hacker News was used as an
| example of an old-school site that worked without
| monetisation. Which is clearly not the case.
| cml123 wrote:
| Surely HN doesn't require the existence of YC as a
| startup accelerator to exist, right? HN has to me
| survived because of its community and shared values wrt
| discussion. The moderation probably plays a role in it,
| but that's also easily decoupled from big money.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > The moderation probably plays a role in it, but that's
| also easily decoupled from big money.
|
| Do you believe that users are going to pay to get access
| to HN?
| zamubafoo wrote:
| No, but I also believe that it's not so expensive that
| someone couldn't cover it if it was their hobby. This is
| doubly true if it's something like HN where it's not
| trying to scale to infinity.
| krapp wrote:
| If it weren't for YC and the network effect of of SV
| startup culture (remember it started as "Startup News"),
| HN would be just another niche forum from which most
| people would have migrated to Reddit ages ago. It might
| still exist, but only as a withered shell of its former
| self.
|
| The only reason HN still persists at the scale that it
| does is precisely because of its association with YC and
| "tech bros," because the billion dollar venture capital
| firm running it has made it a part of their identity.
| lolinder wrote:
| You used the word monetization, everyone else in this
| subthread is talking about advertising. HN is funded as a
| piece of content marketing for a startup accelerator.
|
| I suppose you could call the Launch HN threads ads, but
| only just, and they're of the absolute least
| objectionable sort--on topic, clearly labeled,
| unobtrusive, first party, with no tracking.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly
| disappear.
|
| Fine by me.
|
| I'll browse the remaining 0.01%, search engines will be
| useful again and people won't be doom-scrolling all the
| time to see morons eating.
| marcinzm wrote:
| That's not the alternative. The alternative is the death of
| most sites other than walled gardens like Meta and Amazon
| that own their own advertising end-to-end. Do you want the
| internet to be even more Meta controlled?
| staplers wrote:
| The internet and humanity would exist fine without
| advertisers. History has proven this to be true.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Who is using tracking? Its not mom and pop websites. Its
| big corporations. I could care less if they lost money. The
| internet would be a healthier place without corporations
| trying to shift public discourse in their favor.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > But I understand that advertising is the only viable business
| model for much of the internet.
|
| 1. Much of the internet simply doesn't need to exist. If nobody
| is willing to pay for something, maybe it doesn't have value.
|
| 2. For a lot of what _does_ have value, the problem might be
| your idea of what a "viable business model" is. If I write a
| weekly blog post and it makes $2000 a month, that's a viable
| business model. It's more than a lot of writing jobs pay. But
| it doesn't scale into some sort of multinational content corp
| so half of the people involved in the conversation are willing
| to write it off.
|
| 3. A lot of sites simply don't need to be businesses. I've
| _paid_ hosting costs and helped moderate to help run forums,
| with no expectation of financial recompense, simply because I
| enjoyed the community. The best forums nearly universally work
| this way, _still_.
|
| The real value of Reddit, for example, comes from subreddit
| moderators who are typically volunteers. _Everything_ I value
| about Reddit is provided by people who don 't work for Reddit,
| and the hosting/software could easily be swapped out with
| minimal impact for most of these communities. In fact, all the
| _problems_ I 've had with Reddit _are_ caused by Reddit 's
| decisions--I've never had a problem with an AskScience or
| ProgrammingLanguages moderator policy change, but Reddit makes
| some decision that harms their users significantly probably
| twice a year.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| We had safe and private advertising back in the 90s. Local
| computer store in Cityville would pay money to local Cityville
| forum, and when you'd open the "computers" subforum, the
| Computer store banner would be at the top.
|
| Then advertisers and websites went beserk, covered every square
| centimeter with ads, including the content of the websites
| themselves, and started tracking everything, from location,
| age, gender to shoe and penis size, and the only way to browse
| the internet as a sane person is with an adblock.
|
| They had the possibility to work with a few ads that didn't
| bother people, but that wasn't enough, so now, blocking just
| some of the ads isn't enough for us. They started with the
| shitty behaviour, and I don't care if they go bankrupt and
| websites switch to a new way of surviving.
| godshatter wrote:
| I keep hoping that enough people will start ad blocking and
| tracking script blocking that advertisers or companies
| wishing to advertise will have to find ways to deliver ads
| that doesn't involve tracking users, but that doesn't seem to
| be going anywhere. People I know are mostly indifferent to
| ads or actually like seeing them sometimes so they can buy
| whatever the latest craze is. I find this situation
| absolutely maddening.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It would be much healthier if criticisms actually focused on
| the design and implementation of PPA.
|
| Let's start with the fact that they've added their spying
| scheme as opt out instead of opt in because they know that
| people were asked they would not consent to it. They're already
| disrespecting users by trying to slip this unwanted thing into
| their browser largely unnoticed.
|
| There is no way to exploit people that is safe and private. A
| browser is a user-agent. It's supposed to be working for you,
| the user. Not for advertisers who will try to manipulate you
| and take your money.
|
| Mozilla is not working to protect your privacy and security.
| They are trying to come up with a scheme that will trick users
| who object to ads and reject surveillance capitalism into
| accepting them along with the violation of their privacy and
| security they depend on.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| https://support.mozilla.org/no/kb/privacy-preserving-attribu...
| explains what the setting is about, the important bit being:
| > 3. Firefox creates a report based on what the website asks, but
| > does not give the result to the website. Instead, Firefox
| encrypts > the report and anonymously submits it using the
| Distributed > Aggregation Protocol (DAP) to an "aggregation
| service". > 4. Your results are combined with many
| similar reports by the > aggregation service. The
| destination website periodically receives > a summary of
| the reports. The summary includes noise that provides >
| differential privacy.
|
| The above docs also tell you how to turn it off with mouse clicks
| in regular settings (I don't understand why OP proposes to set it
| using the command line, perhaps so they can run it as a cronjob
| in case it gets reset? -\\\\_(tsu)_/- ).
|
| -----
|
| The intention of the project seems to be that the surveillance
| economy should switch over to this less invasive method of
| tracking you, and that perhaps if only Everyone did that then
| they would stop doing the worse tracking. Good intentions, but
| I'm guessing the only real effect it will have is to make some
| people stop using Firefox, most people not even notice it's
| there, and trackers will just use this as yet another input among
| their many other inputs. (OTOH, maybe Mozilla gets paid a lot for
| this aggregated data, I guess that's "good".)
| remram wrote:
| Did you find a way on mobile, other than browsing to
| chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml and finding
| dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled?
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| Author mentions this:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181120211720/https://make-linu...
|
| pti=off spectre_v2=off l1tf=off nospec_store_bypass_disable
| no_stf_barrier
|
| Looks like a set of kernel params that turn off security features
| to speed up the OS. Did anyone test it in practice?
| perchlorate wrote:
| Just set mitigations=off if you want this, it's a meta-
| parameter that enables all the others. I used to run it on old
| hardware (Haswell) because of significant impact of all those
| mitigations on IO performance. It's not a problem anymore on my
| newer Zen 4.
|
| Probably a bad idea in the general case if you work with
| anything remotely private (ssh keys, banking) and browse the
| internet routinely. I visit few weird sites and block JS almost
| everywhere, so it both made sense to me and was relatively
| safe.
| red_admiral wrote:
| What I'd really like is to edit the file (sqlite database?) where
| my "ad topics" are stored. Just because I search for X once
| doesn't mean I want to see ads about it in future.
|
| Someone should write instructions for this for both firefox and
| chrome.
| red_admiral wrote:
| From the CEO's comments on reddit (https://old.reddit.com/r/firef
| ox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...):
|
| > we support people configuring their browser however they choose
|
| I rate this one as half true. If you leave firefox for a while
| and come back, it displays a bar with text like "Would you like
| to refresh your experience?" The first time I clicked that, it
| uninstalled my adblock extension. Not making that mistake again.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| That offer to refresh always seemed a bit strange to me.
|
| It's like Microsoft acknowledging the crust in the registry and
| offering their own CCleaner. A lot of activity, dubious work
| actually being done.
|
| Perhaps the effect of profile lifecycles should be addressed if
| some hand-wavy refresh process may be required and instituted
| by the application.
|
| Said another way, that's a concern for the program. Not me.
| This shouldn't amount to wiping the profile/extensions
| takluyver wrote:
| I think there's been some concern that people compare the
| speed of Firefox with a bunch of random extensions against
| Chrome with none. I wonder if the 'refresh' is an attempt to
| get away from that at the point where someone might be giving
| Firefox another chance.
|
| I don't remember if the refresh offer appeared back in the
| xul days, when there was much more scope for extensions to
| hurt the experience.
| bjord wrote:
| it is--it uninstalls all of your bloat
|
| the suggestion that its purpose is to trick people into
| uninstalling their adblocker is a ridiculous one
| red_admiral wrote:
| I would agree in general, but arguably uninstalling ublock
| makes the web much _slower_.
| mccr8 wrote:
| That's the CTO, not the CEO.
| DavideNL wrote:
| Strange, apparently the setting (dom.private-
| attribution.submission.enabled) still hasn't been added to
| Arkenfox user.js ?
|
| I see it's mentioned and committed, but not in the latest release
| yet.
|
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
| pointlessone wrote:
| Why does this have to be curl | sh if there's a checkbox in the
| settings for this specific setting? Do you value your privacy so
| much that you're ready to run arbitrary script directly from
| internet?
| prmoustache wrote:
| OTOH the script is 2 lines long and perfectly
| readable/understandable.
| spinningslate wrote:
| The site covers all bases. The content of the script is shown
| on the landing page - and you have to visit it to see the
| instructions to run it. The comment also explains how to do it
| through through the configuration UI.
|
| That means you have 3 choices:
|
| * Use curl to run the script as directed
|
| * copy/paste the command line content, edit if desired, and run
|
| * follow the instructions to update through the UI.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| It annoys me that Firefox removed the ability to link directly
| to a setting in `about:config`. I'm almost certain this was
| possible before.
| LordShredda wrote:
| It's disabled on Arch by default. Maybe choose an operating
| system that doesn't treat you like a product?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Since my post critical of Mozilla is being rather savagely
| downvoted I'll just leave this here [0]
|
| [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/you-are-too-dumb-for-tech/
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| There is a form of advertising that doesn't invade your privacy
| and doesn't need metrics. It is called "context sensitive"
| advertising.
|
| This is what happens when you go to a web site dedicated to pets
| and you see advertising related to pets. It's reasonable to
| assume you have an interest in pets; otherwise, you probably
| wouldn't be there. No metrics required.
|
| "Personalized advertising" is what happens when you go to a web
| site dedicated to pets and you see advertising for automobiles
| because you did some searching 3 weeks ago. What the "metrics"
| don't tell the advertiser is that he is wasting your time and his
| money because you already bought a car last week.
|
| "Personalized advertising" is just plain dumb. It is a way to
| waste your time and advertiser's money with a false sense of
| confidence that this is not the case.
|
| This explains why more than half the users on the internet are
| now taking active measures to block this annoying stupidity. And
| Google is actively trying to counter this trend.
|
| The only question left to answer is at what point will
| advertisers wake up and smell the coffee and realize a different,
| more privacy respecting approach might be just as effective for
| the same or maybe even less money?
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Personalized advertisements exist because all-sites exist.
|
| Facebook isn't a pets/cars/vexillology site, it's an all-site;
| it and its kin are designed to contain almost all of humanity's
| interests. It stands to reason that all manner of ads would fit
| in there, and in order to make these ads useful you need to
| filter or target them. If you see the history of targeted
| advertising, a case could be made that Facebook invented it as
| we know it today. No diss meant to Google and Googlers that
| might read this, I'm sure they played a big role as well.
| rcxdude wrote:
| All-sites still have a context in which their ads appear. You
| are looking at _some_ content on their site, so thy can
| advertise _in the context of that content_.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Personalized advertising has one key property that is very
| useful to this generation of Internet companies: it moves the
| ad dollars away from websites selling ads (aka "publishers")
| and to the networks (Google/Facebook).
|
| If you're, say, the NYT, you can sell ads, of course. But
| anyone who wants to buy ads on NYT can instead buy ads on other
| websites that only target NYT readers. Which are much cheaper.
|
| This is why news organizations all went paywall a decade ago.
| When you had to buy ads on a website to advertise to that
| website's audience, news was rolling in money. That's why they
| gave everything away for free, it'd be really dumb not to. But
| then Google and Facebook pirated[0] their audience, meaning all
| that free website traffic from the search engines is completely
| meaningless and provides no revenue.
|
| [0] Piracy as in "stole our lunch money", not piracy as in
| copyright infringement. We're making a moral judgment, not a
| legal one.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| It's possible for someone with deep pockets to build an ad
| network that operates in a similar manner and offers
| everything Google and Facebook do _minus the privacy invasion
| crap_.
|
| The only essential difference being how the ads are targeted.
| Instead of targeting individuals, the web content they are
| looking at would become the target --- based on the blatantly
| obvious "metric" that they have at least some interest in
| what they're looking at.
|
| This should actually be easier/cheaper to implement and
| maintain. The main reason this doesn't exist in a more
| popular form --- Google/Facebook have sold advertisers a big
| load of their own marketing hype and used this to effectively
| monopolize the market.
| kuon wrote:
| Do you know the list of domain we can block to do this at the
| firewall level?
|
| I already block firefox.com and mozilla.org
| (developer.mozilla.org is exception for MDN).
| clcaev wrote:
| Perhaps we could have a search engine that indexes only pages
| free of advertising?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Ditch Mozilla. Full stop.
|
| They are hand-in-hand with Google - Bought and paid for.
| baliex wrote:
| Where do you propose we go instead?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Personally - I use ungoogled-chromium, librewolf, and
| ladybird.
|
| The first two are still fairly dependent on the upstream
| companies - but at least they're ripping out the junk - They
| are pragmatic solutions in the short term.
|
| Ladybird is nicely independent in the sense that's truly one
| of the few offerings that isn't a derivative of
| Firefox/Chromium, but it's not "ready" yet for most daily
| uses.
|
| But seriously - please don't fall for the Mozilla marketing
| that Firefox is some privacy beacon as an alternative to
| Chrome. It's marketing not reality.
| modzu wrote:
| mozilla going all in on advertising as a hedge against losing
| their google funding? it is sad. i support brave, but if brave
| went away whats left? did we lose?
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