this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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EFF Says Mozilla's PPA is better than Google's Solution (www.fastcompany.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @[email protected]. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.”

https://mastodon.social/@eff/112922761259324925

Privacy experts say the new toggle is mostly harmless, but Firefox users saw it as a betrayal.

“They made this technology for advertisers, specifically,” says Jonah Aragon, founder of the Privacy Guides website. “There’s no direct benefit to the user in creating this. It’s software that only serves a party other than the user.”

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There’s no reason why open source software should cater to advertisers.

Advertising is a plague on humanity. If we have to rethink our digital economics to fix it, then so be it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Typical. You post a reasonable response and get a bunch of ad-pilled shit takes:

"But will you eat shit if I put a little chocolate on it?"

"If you don't eat shit, you don't deserve to ~~interact with the internet~~ eat."

"Maybe if you pay them a little money, they'll stop trying to serve you shit?"

Advertisers contribute nothing of value to our society and contribute little of value to even the companies they serve. Let them burn. Every action they take to "serve" me ads will be met with an equal counteraction.

We deserve to live a life without being constantly bombarded with messages telling us to buy, buy, buy! This significantly decreases our quality of life and is endemic within our entire society. What the hell are all of you who defend advertisers thinking?

Give them an inch and they will take a mile. It definitely won't be the first time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Everyone’s up in arms about a literal anonymous counter, but the other option is the current “spy on everything you do”

How is Mozilla getting flak for this outside of a few hardcore nerds that are welcome to use chrome if they so desire…

And I say that as a huge privacy advocate. In the local tin foil hat “privacy matters” nerd and I honestly don’t see the problem.

And quite frankly anyone that’s said it’s a problem has only been able to come up with “it shouldn’t help them count your views “ which is ridiculous, because it’s very anonymous.

Sooo …. Help me out here, what’s the issue?

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

It isn't anonymous, it's slightly obscured.

They use ohttp ( a proxy ) run buy a "partner" they control to do the obscuring.

That should be part of people's informed threat modeling. Having a tattle tale in the browser reporting web activity to a third party is a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

From what I've seen PPA doesn't depend on OHTTP to do the obscuring. This page mentioned Distributed Aggregation Protocol and differential privacy, that are meant to ensure that it is literally impossible for any one party to see your data. Not just "obscured", but impossible to access.

But be sure to let us know what data about us a partner could theoretically view, and how, if you disagree.