Mozilla, owner and developer of the Firefox browser, has attacked Facebook (now Meta) many times over the years for the company’s disastrous record on privacy and security. However, the two companies are now working together on a proposal for slightly more private online advertising, which is already drawing criticism from long-time fans of Mozilla.
Mozilla revealed in a blog post on Tuesday, “For the last few months we have been working with a team from Meta (formerly Facebook) on a new proposal that aims to enable conversion measurement – or attribution – for advertising called Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA.” The project aims to allow advertisers to measure the success rate of online ads, while being more privacy-respecting than existing online ads.
Source XDA - https://www.xda-developers.com/mozilla-meta-interoperable-private-attribution/
Question - Wouldnt this just single out Firefox users and do more harm than being just another cow in the herd?
I think the point was allowing appropriate advertisements to be served to people without it being a creepy privacy invasion. It is just a proposal and people should be just -okay- with it but people would rather be angry over it.
Its fine. I mean I hate the thought that Moz/FF is working with a shit company like Meta/FB but if Mozilla can show Facebook a better way to serve ads without feeling Zuck’s breath behind your neck, I think we should chill…
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This is not a people problem, this is a company problem. If you get served an irrelevant ad you won’t probably care.
Companies want their ads to be the most relevant so that there is a higher chance of click-thru; thereby netting the company more money.
This is literally just companies trying to make more money. Not an evil goal in of itself. However, when people who are really averse to being tracked in such a way feel their goodwill has been violated by a company touting security and privacy then it gives off bad vibes of mistrust.
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So my workplace does this with broadcast ads.
Its a lot more privacy respecting than you’d think. The legal requirements surrounding the industry, in the US, prevents the targeting of individuals, and quite frankly, the systems are set up in such a way that unless you have root, you can’t target an individual, and if you do have root, you’d have to do it all manually after downloading the whole DB.
Facebook and google already do IA across the board and the idea that its private is laughable. If Mozilla wants to try to improve it, I’m game. Personally, I’m not changing my behavior with browser usage, but that’s just me.
Its also worth mentioning that Mozilla hasn’t lived up to the privacy standards of advocates for about a decade, so this should really be a non-story.
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What browser are you using? Based on your last few sentences are u using something like brave?
Nope, I use Firefox and Chrome.
Chrome for work, due to our g-suite integration, FF for personal.
I’m not so fussed with all the omega-privacy stuff.
I keep my sensitive data encrypted and offline unless I need it, and then I maintain strong firewall rules on the machines I access that data on. Typically works out well.
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As others have expressed, this is a step in the right direction and better than what is currently in-place. While I think targeted adverting is creepy, I’m not in favor of an outright ban as it will likely leave content creators with few options outside of a paywall. If it can just be anonymized in a way that respects privacy I’m in favor of it. Baby steps…
Then the average, non-technical internet user can support creators through ad revenue while all my DNS requests pass through Pi-hole. It’s a win-win for me 
Edit: This doesn’t relate to the Mozilla/Facebook, but it just occurred to me that Mozilla’s partnership with Google (default search engine) accounts for 86% of their revenue. And the IPA standard Mozilla/Facebook are proposing is in direct competition with Google’s new Topics platform. I sure hope Mozilla has a multiyear agreement with Google or they may looking for a new revenue source in a hurry.
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