• sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology…

    Ya, that reputation is taking a big hit right now.

    • trevor
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      3 months ago

      Servo cannot come soon enough. And yet… it’s so far from being even close to ready for real usage.

  • drspod@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I’ve been using Firefox since the beginning, before that Mozilla, and before that Netscape Navigator.

    But I think it’s finally time to switch to Librewolf.

    I don’t want digital advertising of any kind, even if my privacy is “preserved” through fancy data-laundering.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        They do need to earn some money after all

        If every ad-supported website went dark today, nothing of value would be lost.

        • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          I don’t agree. As a single counter example of many YouTube has a huge wealth of information and content.

          Maybe that value isn’t worth the ads, that is much harder to say for certain. But it is clear that there is some valuable information on some sites that are supported by ads.

        • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Duckduckgo manages to have privacy respecting ads. I really value that. If you’re searching cars, cars pop up, they don’t look at your history or anything else. Unobtrusive and you can look away

          • pizzaboi@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            And you can just… Turn them off. No questions asked. DuckDuckGo is a great example of how an advertising company can be both financially viable and respecting of user-choice.

            Google could let users choose to opt out of seeing any ads across their network for free today and still be one of the most profitable companies in existence. A huge percentage of users wouldn’t know or care to turn ads off, another percentage actually wants them, and for advanced users they could offer more advanced, useful features for money.

            But try pitching that to stakeholders and upper-management lol

  • antihumanitarian@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Well this is a tremendous step in the wrong direction. The economic problem is the ad supported model in the first place, no matter how it’s run. This is the same thing Google does, they keep user data to themselves and sell the ad placement. So now Mozilla has the same economic incentives as Google. Unfathomably bad move.

  • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Mozilla is going to absolute shit lately. Partnering with a fucking ad network? You’ve got to be kidding me. Firefox is still the better browser, but it’s time to abandon Firefox proper for forks that get rid of Mozilla’s bullshit. I have been using Librewolf for a while and unlike Firefox, it’s not adware.

    • SomeGuy69@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I just switched to Firefox to get away from Browser who prevent me from using an adblocker extension. sigh

  • RustyNova@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Let’s just hope that they won’t use it as a justification to put ads in your browser, or go the brave route.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Data anonymization is a good thing. If websites start using this solution instead of Google ads that’d be quite good. Well better than Google at least. But people seem to be afraid of ads getting added into Firefox. If it happens it will be a ticking bomb because the hunger for data and profit will rise every day.

  • Eggyhead@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    An argument I frequently make about using an ad blocker is that I’d be more comfortable with ads if they weren’t so thirsty for personal information. I still stand by that, and I’m not completely convinced this satisfies that concern. Personal data is still getting slurped up, but now we have the privilege of trusting it’s completely anonymized.

  • Unskilled5117@feddit.de
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    3 months ago

    While there are a lot of critics of this, ask yourself: for how many services and apps you use (e.g. messenger, cloud storage, email, operating system, web browser…) are you willing to pay recurrently? If that answer is not for every single one of them, then this move is the answer.

    The internet desperately needs a way to fund things and advertising seems to be the only viable solution on a bigger scale. And I don’t think that there is anyone better suited than mozilla for the job of pushing a privacy respecting way of doing so. Sure this needs to be done the right way, but they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

    And this doesn’t mean that everything needs to be cluttered with ads. You could still pay a bit to remove them.

    Even if the answer to the question above was yes, consider the masses. Other people might not care enough/have the same awareness about privacy to pay, but they could gain a lot with this. Consider people in less fortunate circumstances monetary wise. Don’t they deserve privacy if they can’t afford to pay for services?

    • neo@lemy.lol
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      3 months ago

      There are radio stations, financed through ads. And they check if people are listening by calling random persons to ask them what station they are listening to.

      So this is a viable business model and nobody is stopping anybody from putting plain pictures and links on sites and just estimate the page visits, but online advertisers want to know more. They always want more.

      At the same time, a browser is the essential software to browse the web. So this is as if your TV was like:

      Yo, many people mute their TV during commercials and don’t pay attention, which kills the poor networks. So I made a deal with advertisers and will check what your doing, while I provide unmutable ads , but don’t worry, your privacy is very important to us and we only care about providing to you the best TV experience possible.

      • Unskilled5117@feddit.de
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        3 months ago

        So do i understand it correctly, that ads are ok for you, but not targeted ads, because the advertisers always want to know more? Then that seems to be what mozilla is trying to achieve here: to limit what advertisers can know about you.

        The technology for targeted ads are already in place, this could be an alternative that preserves more privacy than current ad networks.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It is a bullshit false dichotomy to claim that the only options for business models are charging fees or showing ads. Knock it off with the misinformation.

      • Unskilled5117@feddit.de
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        3 months ago

        Thats why i said “seems“ to be and „on a bigger scale“ to allow for other options. But those other options like through donations(=paying them) are often not enough. Apparently you don’t see opensource developers struggling and choose to just ignore the reality. You also fail to point out other options that scale as well as advertising does. As you seem to have the solution that many people struggle to find, feel free to actually tell us about it. I only expressed my opinion not „misinformation“. Your comment on the other hand failed to provide any arguments to further the discussion. So yeah “knock it off“

          • Kayn@dormi.zone
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            3 months ago

            We can cherry-pick projects too.

            Lemmy barely gets enough donations to fund a single developer.

            core-js, one of the largest JavaScript libraries, was cussed out for even having the audacity to ask for donations.

            Donations aren’t the steady source of income you seem to be thinking they are.

          • Unskilled5117@feddit.de
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            3 months ago

            Again you ignore words like “often”. There certainly are projects that are doing extremely well, and I am happy for them, i am one of those donating.

            Yet you ignore the funding problem that exists in open source. You can’t make it go away by naming a few that have done well for themselves. Even those that are doing well enough, what could they achieve, if they had comparable funding to bigger players that are advertising? I am not saying that it’s the option that everybody should go for, but if one chooses to, i would like it to be privacy respecting, and thats where hopefully mozilla will come in. And outside of opensource, on a “normal” persons phone, how many apps are funded via ads? Wouldn’t it be great if those were privacy preserving instead? It’s a step in the right direction.

            I will stop replying to you, as you don’t seem mature enough to hold a respectful discussion, without trying to frame my opinions as trying to be manipulative.

  • sunzu@kbin.run
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    3 months ago

    Timing is a bit sus… While google making chrome straight up ad serving client … Firefox does something shiti?

    Collusion or not, can’t even get the clock is broken twice a day from these “businesses” jfc

    These people never skip a time to fuck the user.

    • AJ Sadauskas@aus.social
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      3 months ago

      @sunzu @dvdnet62 Oh come now. If there’s one thing Mozilla doesn’t need anyone’s help with, it’s shooting itself in the foot with its own gun.

      Now excuse me, I have some Pocket articles to read on my Firefox OS phone…

  • IllNess@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    I’m going to hope for the best and assume this has nothing to do with their browser. Mozilla has a lot of other products.