this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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About the ads thing in 128 (lemmy.zip)
submitted 2 months ago by Blisterexe@lemmy.zip to c/firefox@fedia.io
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Right. I'm getting tired of seeing people dump on Firefox and Mozilla about this thing in the release notes:

Firefox now supports the experimental Privacy Preserving Attribution API, which provides an alternative to user tracking for ad attribution. This experiment is only enabled via origin trial and can be disabled in the new Website Advertising Preferences section in the Privacy and Security settings.

What is this? And why is it not something to get heated about?

Attribution is how advertisers know how to pay the right site owner when someone clicks on their ad. It's important for ad-supported sites that clicks get attributed.

Right now, attribution is basically incompatible with protecting privacy. Advertisers use every method of tracking you can name, and some you can't, to provide accurate attribution.

The Privacy Preserving Attribution API is an experimental way of informing an advertiser that someone clicked on an ad on a given site without leaking that it was you, specifically, who did that. Specifically, ads using the API ask Firefox to remember that they were seen, on what sites, and to what sites they lead. Then, when the user visits the destination site, the destination site asks Firefox to generate a report and submit it via a separate service that mixes your report with reports from other people and forwards these aggregated reports in large batches. Any traces that might be unique to you are lost in the crowd.

This is still experimental, being enabled by Mozilla on a site-by-site basis as developers request it. It's not a free-for-all yet, and I can only find one entry on Bugzilla of a site who's requested it.

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[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

what I’ve seen so far is that the heat isn’t against the API, it’s against it being shipped enabled by default (opt-out rather than opt-in)

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Itd be useless opt-in though, why would companies adopt somehting that only a small minority

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're just supporting the point.

[–] Scary_le_Poo 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, he's illustrating that opt in is the best of both worlds here. Users get protections of privacy and advertisers get the info that they need while not being able to violate the privacy of people visiting a website.

[–] Senal@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Based on what you've written it seems you're assuming:

  • Users will get any protections from this.
  • That giving advertisers what they need is considered a win by everyone.
  • Advertisers aren't just going to do exactly what they did with the "Do not track" option.
  • Attribution is the only thing they are using the collected data for.
  • This will somehow disable their ability to collect fingerprinting data.

I'm not generally one for absolutes but i would put a significant portion of my current and future earnings on the fact that even if there was 100% adoption of this new privacy preserving by everyone in the world, advertisers would still be pulling some shit.

They would be performing elaborate privacy ignoring shenanigans because privacy gets them nothing and data is potential profit.

AdTech companies have a rich history of doing absolutely everything they can to profit from anything they can, it is naive to think they will do anything different in the future.

[–] Scary_le_Poo 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

People like you 🤡 are exhausting. Time to Just block and move on.

[–] Senal@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Feel free, if you can't deal with counterpoints to something as basic as this, a full conversation is probably off the table anyway.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If it's such a great thing for users, why isn't Mozilla shouting from the rooftops how they've improved things, instead of it being enabled automatically?

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because its not really ready yet, im sure theyll talk more about it once they get big websites on board

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

What you're saying is that they're not vaporwaring their feature while it's still in beta, if I get you.

This is a positive, if so, and I have Mozilla for what they did with .. well, mozilla.exe .

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So you won't even notice this if:

  • you don't click, or block, ads, or
  • you never visit a website that's part of the origin trial.
[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, ans it REPLACES traditional, more invasive ads for those sites

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 2 points 2 months ago

Well, that depends on the website, I assume?

Of course, Firefox already partitioned (and can block, if you enable Strict Tracking Protection and accept some extra breakage) cookies, so those more invasive ads were already neutered. Unlike e.g. Chrome, whose Topics API proactively reports characteristics about you before you click an ad, and does so while third-party cookies are still allowed too.