No argument from me there. I didn’t mean to come across this argumentative, I just wanted to point it out here because of the context of this post (someone looking to move away from Firefox). And because, to me, ad telemetry still is a black box.

Mozilla is adopting a ton of the things that were wrong with Brave. Recently, Brave criticized Mozilla’s PPA data collection for being too centralized, which implies to me that otherwise, there’s a lot of overlap between the two allegedly “private” systems. I don’t trust Brave telemetry, but it seems not even they can come up with many ways to differentiate themselves from Mozilla.

If they’re different somehow, I would love to know how.

In a way other than accrued trust or distrust, that is. At this point, I don’t think Mozilla is owed any inherent trust.

How worried should people be if they are on the latest version of Fennec, which was last updated for 129.0.2 a couple months ago? (For anyone who isn’t keeping track: that’s not ESR (128 is), and it’s two major versions behind Firefox Release).

I wasn’t going to make a generic comment about how cryptocurrency is only worth money to people if they can convince other people to also purchase the cryptocurrency…

… But then I looked at your post history, and it’s like a week of pivoting conversations to be about Monero.

• New GPU released? Perfect for mining Monero.
• FBI made fake cryptocurrency? Monero isn’t fake.
• People shouldn’t store your information, so use Monero
• Taylor Swift donates for hurricane victims? Monero is worth more than her!

Edit: oh god it was worse than I thought

• All cryptocurrency is good… JK just Monero
• Good YouTube video? They should accept Monero.
• Good nudes? (NSFW) Take my Monero
  (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
  (probably more, but mods removed many)
• Their phone wallpaper? Anime girl Monero

Basically. Insultingly, it was built alongside, and in some collaborative measure with, Google. (A bunch of companies bigger than Mozilla, and a bunch of ad networks, are all teaming up for the PATCG).

You:

What is transmitted is not user activity.

Mozilla:

When a user interacts with an ad or advertiser, a record of that interaction…

User interactions are not user activities to you?

You said

All user activity remains local in the browser

The pertinent information is that you were incorrect. That should be a big enough red flag for you to reevaluate how safe and secure you think PPA is.

When a user interacts with an ad or advertiser, a record of that interaction is… sent to two independently operated services.

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/

How about Reddit or DeviantArt? I’ve noticed issues with each of those

…For now. Looks like they’re going to get rid of it too (which makes sense, because they copy Chromium’s codebase).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3

I think that’s the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it’s been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.

If a company is unethical, they will ignore the Mozilla standard. If a company is ethical, they don’t need the Mozilla standard, as they can adopt their own tracking-free methods of serving ads.

I have been told repeatedly by Firefox advertisement advocates that PPA only affects people that don’t use ad blockers, so it allegedly only affects people that are already blasted by tracking networks to the fullest extent possible, while people who use ad blockers wouldn’t see the supposedly less invasive ads anyway. So it’s either 100% tracking to 110% tracking, or 0% tracking to 0% tracking. Seems like a lose-lose scenario for both sides of the equation.

With all due respect, Mozilla is now (and, for a while, has been) an ad company. When an ad company tells you ads are necessary, you should not trust them. Plenty of lousy things have been entrenched as social norms, but it is the job of the entrenchers to justify their existence… Which Mozilla is definitely not doing here.

Well, I don’t foresee any downsides. Hopefully they can continue making an incredible browser and operating system respectively.

Depending how deep you are into using the service, this might be an indicator to start shopping around for other options, as there are some that provide multiple domains and unlimited aliases for the cool price of $0 versus whatever Proton charges you…

…Especially if iCloud makes the other side of the equation difficult.

The Mozilla Foundation is a thin wrapper for the Mozilla Corporation, and it’s run by the executives themselves.

Please explain to me how sending additional data from your private computer to Mozilla servers gives me more privacy and not less.

In addition, a lot of Proton services are overpriced compared to third-party offerings.

You can use your own self-hosted servers with this too.

If you want.

Self-hosting can create its own additional privacy and security issues… unless you totally trust not only the place where you put the server, but also yourself to be a security expert

Maybe they could even stop charging subscription fees for client-side features for the people who self-host…