Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

  • @utopiah@lemmy.ml
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    21 hour ago

    I hope everybody criticizing the move either do not use products from Mozilla or, if they do, contribute however they can up to their own capabilities. If you don’t, if you ONLY criticize, yet use Firefox (or a derivative, e.g. LibreWolf) or arguably worst use something fueled by ads (e.g. Chromium based browsers) then you are unfortunately contributing precisely to the model you are rejecting.

  • Kot Lasu
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    23 hours ago

    I’m so glad that Libre office fork exists, that doesn’t change a fact of Mozilla foundation goes in a really wrong direction :/

    • @Blizzard@lemmy.zipOP
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      13 hours ago

      Don’t quote me on this but if I remember correctly, Mozilla foundation has nothing to do with Firefox development and was also kind of shady for some reason.

  • @zurohki@aussie.zone
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    398 hours ago

    I’m not interested in my computer striking a balance between my needs and the needs of people seeking to manipulate me into buying things.

    I paid for my computer, it serves my needs. Yes I do run Linux, how did you guess?

    • @sunbeam60
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      96 hours ago

      But that isn’t the balance that’s being struck. Mozilla is trying to balance between useful services being available for free and people’s right to privacy. If you’re using any websites that has staff employed, they’re more likely than not being paid for by advertising.

      • Tekhne
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        34 hours ago

        Honestly, despite the crypto, good on Brave browser for trying to subvert the advertising model by providing an actual monetization alternative

        • @RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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          53 hours ago

          What does this even mean? Brave didnt find something to “subvert the advertising model”, they have a subscription lol. Mozilla is trying to keep its browser free and safe, especially now that it’s losing its billion dollar google funding.

          • @LWD@lemm.ee
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            116 minutes ago

            You haven’t heard about the Brave ads that let you slowly accumulate tokens that you can then use to tip creators or websites? I’m not saying it was a good plan, or an ethical plan, but it was… You know, something.

            Unlike what Mozilla did, Brave didn’t enable this by default, but they heavily marketed it as a feature.

            If Mozilla implemented some kind of tipping system, that could be interesting. Apparently, such a system already could exist under GNU Taler too.

  • wander1236
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    76 hours ago

    It’d be cool if Mozilla could just stick with one thing for more than a couple months. Even if that thing is terrible. Right now it’s like some physical embodiment of ADHD is running the company.

  • Flamekebab
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    107 hours ago

    Adverts are visual and psychological pollution. Get fucked.

  • @hackerwacker@lemmy.ml
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    6 hours ago

    I will never ever accept any ad technology except maybe <a href="company_url"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>

    • @LWD@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      Would you look at that, privacy preserving advertisement!

      Let’s take it one step further and go really crazy with a/b testing

      <a href="company_url/campaign1"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>
      
      <a href="company_url/campaign2"><img src="different_picture.gif"></a>
      

      😲

  • @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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    1910 hours ago

    Mozilla sold out a long time ago, they are nothing like they used to be. Everyone should be ditching Firefox for forks if possible. Yes, Firefox is still miles ahead of anything Chromium-based but we can’t trust Mozilla to not screw over their users anymore (and it’s been apparent for YEARS…Pocket, “Sponsored” shortcuts and links, Mozilla VPN popup ads, this behavior is hardly new). What can we trust? Firefox forks with the bullshit stripped out, mostly. I’ve been using LibreWolf for several years on my Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems now. I originally switched because of the Mozilla VPN popups but at the time, complaining about those popups was met with a bunch of Mozilla apologists going “it’s not that bad” “they’re a big company and they need their precious monies”…no. That was ADVERTISING front and center, and it was in Firefox years ago. So was Pocket. So was having Amazon links auto-filled on the new tab shortcuts. Go to something that isn’t run by money. Go to a community-maintained and sanitized fork.

    • @sunbeam60
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      106 hours ago

      You do understand those forks do 1% of the work required to keep the Firefox codebase performant, standards compliant and technically sound?

      If Mozilla disappears those forks will too.

      • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        65 hours ago

        Hopefully Mozilla employees will kick out their money sink CEO with double legs before the browser disappears for good.

    • @pipe01@programming.dev
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      24 hours ago

      It’s crazy how for me the worst thing about Firefox is how much people complain about it online, never had a single issue with it

    • Been called an idiot for saying that I wouldn’t trust Firefox as far as I can throw it like 2 months ago after they made telemetry opt out.

      I can’t believe that someone who is privacy conscientious would just stick to their guns rather than watching out for their privacy.

      I just hope someone else picks up the shards and runs with it and then we can all just focus on making them better instead of getting riled up over a god damn browser lol.