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Mozilla Welcomes Anonym: Privacy Preserving Digital Advertising | The Mozilla Blog
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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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If you don't think that's about advertising, then I guess they've managed to sneak "Firefox Suggest" in there without you noticing that its main purpose is to show you ads unless you take the time to find out how to opt out.
They extract sensitive data from the users, but simply promise not to keep it except in anonymized aggregate form. They talk about and acquire a venture that specializes in collecting such data for advertisers but promises to keep to it only in a super-secret encrypted computing enclave. It's the sort of thing Mitchell Baker often talked about wanting to do, in various interviews. They are aiming to turn Firefox into an ad platform.
I imagine they'll probably fail and give up eventually, but who knows how much more damage will have been done by then.
It's a bit of a stretch to turn "may also" into "main purpose is", but you're right - that shows that indeed it's not a big leap to use it for advertising.
But no, as I understand it, this isn't extracting sensitive data from users and then only keeping it in anonymised aggregate form - the sensitive data is handled on your device and never reaches Mozilla, and the anonymised aggregate form (i.e. the high-level category derived from that data) is the only thing that's actually sent.
And again, it's always been an ad platform, it's still the only proven way to fund development.
I won't comment on this acquisition, cause I have no idea what this company does.
They cannot aggregate or anonymise the data locally on your device, because that requires combining it with data from other devices. They can only water it down a little, just like google does with Floc or whatever they call it now.
The difference between this and the minor act of selling out that is their main source of income is enormous and seems too obvious to need commenting on. The difference between this and something more comparable such as sponsored links in Pocket is indeed that they are starting to collect audience data to enable it. It's a small start, but it's a major departure from the already somewhat distasteful situation people were accustomed to.