this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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Bas Schouten: "If you are 'completely anti-ads' (i.e. even if their implementation is private), you probably use an ad blocker. So are unaffected by this." - Mastodon (mastodon.social)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Just wanted to surface this comment, because not enough people are cognizant of the fact that adblockers do their job and prevent any PPA submissions.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. This helps the quiet majority, and the people who would turn it off are also those who would block ads anyway. So the majority gets a privacy bump, and those who hate ads get what they've always gotten.

I honestly don't see the issue here.

If Firefox blocked all ads by default, why would a website bother making any accomodations for Firefox? The number of "broken" websites would go up and Firefox users would get even more frustrated. If the quiet majority, who are okay with ads, leave because websites are broken, the rest of us are worse off.

On the flip side, if Firefox is able to broker a deal where privacy is respected so some of the privacy community disable ad-blockers (probably another quiet majority), that's a net win for advertisers because they're getting access to a demographic they otherwise wouldn't. Firefox could take a share of the profits as well, which provides another revenue stream apart from search, meaning Firefox is more independent.

I honestly don't see the issue with PPA. It sounds:

  • good for users - more privacy
  • good for advertisers - more people seeing ads
  • meh for anti-ads people - ad-blockers can still block these ads, or you can disable the feature
  • good for Firefox - privacy win + more revenue streams

That's exactly the thing Firefox should be doing, finding a way to increase privacy while making itself more independent from Google search revenue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Does this introduce more revenue streams for Mozilla? This dev said this does not impact their financials in any significant way. Your post is a hypothetical, but this opt-out feature is very real.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

It's not currently rolled out to any advertisers AFAIK, but when it does, I imagine it could become a significant revenue stream. So yes, hypothetical.

I don't think this feature is harmful in any way. If you block ads, it won't impact you. If you don't, you'll either get the current type of ads or the more private ads, so it either does nothing or improves your privacy a bit. It sounds like a win-win to me, which is rare in privacy circles, with the only caveat being a theoretical issue from Mozilla technically having access to your metadata, which they technically already do since you're using their browser.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

adblockers do their job and prevent any PPA submissions.

Does it actually prevent all PPA submissions or just submissions for blocked ads, because they weren't shown in the first place? If an ad managed to slip through, would the impression still be reported?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Should be both that the ads don't get in and no ad related traffic gets out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

no ad related traffic gets out

But the outgoing ad-related traffic (i.e. submission of DAP reports to aggregation services) is generated by Firefox itself, not some website. I don't think adblockers have any influence on that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm inclined to believe the multiple parties that have said that adblockers protect you from PPA.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Logic being that blocker won't led the ad load?

So nothing to track?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Won't let it load, so there's nothing to send and even if something loads it will be blocked like when you try and visit a site in your blocklist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ublock is not 100% tho so there would still be some leakage tho?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

According to the technical lead at Mozilla, there's no leakage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Just like today, yes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

"Privacy features, in Firefox, are not meant to be opt-in. " But anti privacy features and user influencing features are. So what's the point here?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

I think they believe it's not anti-privacy, but a lesser of two evils.

Mozilla/Firefox simply can't exist without ads. Google same thing. So why would they actively contribute to their own demise by declaring war on ads?

Instead they chose a compromise that still allows ads but in a more responsible/private way. And you can still turn it off. Sure it should have been opt-in, but I think most people wouldn't use it then and we're back to the same problems.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

But it's a privacy feature? 🤷

I mean sure, it's easy to read this and go immediate full-on "someone suggested another distroy than arch"-nuclear. But as someone else said, and what is essentially the linked post, this is a feature for those that do not run adblockers.

If you run an adblocker, this feature does nothing for you. Whether on or off. It could not matter any less. You don't interact with ads, so there is no ad interaction to track.

But if you don't run an adblocker - and let's be real here, that's going to be the vast majority of even Firefox users probably - then this is how advertising ought to work, so it's a privacy-enhancing feature. Yes, right now it doesn't do much. But were it opt-in, it could not do much. Not now, not ever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Tell me, what data does an advertiser know about me if I have enabled this feature? You can assume that I don't run any tracking protection, no ad blocker, and all telemetry enabled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I just hope ad blockers don't simply stop working (and by extension, existing) simply because multiple websites have started blocking the blockers (looking at you, YouTube).

I guess for small independent websites that run ads, I sorr of understand why I need to disable ad blockers, but for a website like YouTube, owned by an advertising giga-company, that's just stupid.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don’t like that guy

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh, why?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Seems reasonable? Adding a video codec makes you more identifiable than PPA does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I feel like he has the unfortunate job