I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The ad may then of course not 'phone home'.
They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at the new tab screen.
> This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users.
At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.
Hi, I'm an engineer on the team working on Tiles at Mozilla.
It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change the ad industry.
The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change.
We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is what they need to do to achieve their goals.
We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay.
That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech.
Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built.
Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same way they are now. They don't need to be creepy.
And you know what? They may not even be ads as you know them today.
We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being honest?
How about bringing back Power user features instead of bloating the browser with ads, chat and social networking features?
How about delivering again something for power users which does NOT require add-on installs aka toolbar customization or moving buttons where i want to have them? Or.. how about offering features for both user target groups like it was able until Firefox 22 before you started to remove features because of simple users? How about that?
But you do not care and you are not interested in this! Here is my answer.. Moving to Seamonkey as main browser and to Vivaldi. The later one may be closed source but that developers have at least a brain and know how to handle power users!
And i also quit donating for you month after month and make sure everyone i know is uninstalling your browser.
Btw. the big computer trader of my town is also not supporting Firefox because of your treatment of advanced users! He now only installs Firefox if there is some extra payment!
Congratulations, you anger both loyal users and technology advocates!
>The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change.
> We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay.
How are ads in the browser relevant to websites that depend on ads for their revenue?
It's not hard to imagine how this concept could expand to the web at large. Rather than deciding what ad to display by consulting a user profile built on cross-site history tracking, a site could simply ask the browser for advice on what to show, without the site having to learn anything in particular about the user.
Good for the site because they get better advice; good for the user because they get more privacy and control.
(I've nothing to do with the team behind this at Mozilla, and have no idea what their roadmap actually is. But it's pretty clear that this is just a first step in a broader version of re-inventing advertising on the web, not a stand-alone attempt to generate a bit more revenue).
Back in 2013, Mozilla Labs had been experimenting with a similar idea, a feature called "User Personalization" (UP). It was an API that get web content access to (user-controlled) user interest keywords, but AFAIK nothing came of the project.
EDIT: Looks like the "Firefox Interest Dashboard" add-on is a more recent exploration of this idea, letting you explore the categorization of your own local browsing history:
There's no such thing as a free lunch. The way to reduce ads on websites is to pay for websites. But, so far, that's proven less practical and acceptable to users than just putting up with the ads. But, ads are getting annoying and intrusive. So, if we're stuck with ads because folks won't pay, maybe it makes sense to try to make that situation better?
You are interpreting him too literally. What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising.
Mozilla cares about funding itself, yes. But digital advertising is also how most of the web is funded - and Mozilla cares about that, too, because it directly impacts everything else under the Mozilla mission.
As a user, you might prefer no ads when asked - but an enormous majority of people have endorsed the ad-supported free-of-charge model on the web through their daily actions. So, practically speaking, we have to find a way to deal with it and make it better.
>What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising
Yes. I do not agree with this statement. Mozilla as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as a steward of interests of hundreds of millions of Mozilla products users has diverse and complex interests in the direction of evolution of digital advertising. These interests are not limited to the immediate profits.
I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The ad may then of course not 'phone home'.
They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at the new tab screen.
Still, I don't really like this development.