Linux

I think this a problem with applications with a privacy focused user basis. It becomes very black and white where any type of information being sent somewhere is bad. I respect that some people have that opinion and more power to them, but being pragmatic about this is important. I personally disabled this flag, and I recognize how this is edging into a risky area, but I also recognize that the Mozilla CTO is somewhat correct and if we have the option between a browser that blocks everything and one that is privacy-preserving (where users can still opt for the former), businesses are more likely to adopt the privacy-preserving standards and that benefits the vast majority of users.

Privacy is a scale. I'm all onboard with Firefox, I block tons of trackers and ads, I'm even somebody who uses NoScript and suffers the ramifications to due to ideology reasons, but I also enable telemetry in Firefox because I trust that usage metrics will benefit the product.

Google's "just so we can claim there's competition in the marketplace" payment to Mozilla to stay the default search engine is what funds most of Firefox, even without the executive pay and unrelated nonprofit work. Building and maintaining a browser engine is not cheap, I don't think mere individual donations are going to help here.

Without the reputation and contacts of Mozilla, those devs also wouldn't have much of a say in the social side of browser development, like web standards and certificate authority programs.

I'd love a first party Firefox fork that's not limited by Mozilla's desperate attempts to stay afloat when Google decides not to keep them around anymore, but I don't think a few developers are going to be enough to get it done. The current situation, "Firefox but with very minor tweaks", is probably the best we can expect for now.

Proton did something similar.

This poll shows promise: https://mastodon.neat.computer/@jonah/112654592627487236

You’re definitely not alone. If this happens and it becomes some major news in the community with reasonable visibility, I’m sure many people would support this.

All of these claims clash with the reality of so many core open source projects, used by private users and massive corporations alike, that rely on single voluntary developers or super small groups which receive no flowers and no donations.

That only applies to personally-identifiable information.

In the EU*

Sorry to be pedantic, but the UK, Swiss etc. are all in Europe but not in the legislative region where this law applies.

This even gets some people confused thinking those countries “aren't in Europe”, which is why I wanted to correct this.

If it is truly anonymized then it isn't protected under GDPR.

Advertisers can already easily get this data without this setting, and any measures you take to block ads also by definition affect this setting.

Meanwhile, if this works and becomes widely available, regulators will be able to take measures against user surveillance without having to succumb to the ad industry's argument that they won't know whether their ads work.

And yes, this provides data to advertisers, but it's data about their ads, not about users.

So, serious question: How is this good for me?

It's the same principle as what Brave is based around: advertising isn't going to go away, ever, but if we can set up a profitable advertising model that doesn't require stalking people online, we can at least make advertising better.

I disagree with their current methods, but I also don't know of a better alternative. Brave's weird crypto stuff sure isn't the answer, and neither is this, but if nobody figures out an alternative (that we can , advertising is only going to get more data hungry. The best alternative we have right now is Google's FLoC and just about everyone hates that too.

I've enjoyed Mull as an Android alternative https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix

They don't. They rely entirely on donations (and sponsorship donations). It also mean, they have less resources to maintain and develop their software, ESPECIALLY Conqueror since it's not as much well-maintained compared to other parts of the KDE software suite. Plus, Firefox do maintain their own web-engine, while KDE just use the WebKit one, so even more reasons that Firefox can't substain with the resources KDE currently has.