It's about damn time. I hope this is true across all OSs. Dashlane is one of the biggest holdouts on supporting YubiKey on Firefox Linux because Firefox didn't support biometrics.
Wasn't Mozilla supposed to be looking for a new CEO? Maybe they should get that done before throwing away millions of dollars on acquisitions? Surely the rush to destroy everything by adopting slogans like "data is the fuel that drives performance advertising" can wait for a few more months?
As it says there, Laura Chambers was to take the job "for the remainder of this year" in a "transitional period" before a more permanent choice was made.
But I suppose this removes any doubt we might've had about whether she is keen to continue Mitchell Baker's bright idea of turning Firefox into an ad platform. I had harboured some hope that opponents of that idea were the ones who forced the previous CEO out.
But I suppose this removes any doubt we might've had about whether she was keen on continuing Mitchell Baker's bright idea of turning Firefox into an ad platform.
Unless you insist that Mozilla shouldn't get funded (or mistakenly think it would not do severely worse if it had a lot less money), then you'd be proposing a pretty big bet to find a different funding source. Essentially, Mozilla is already funded by advertising - on Google, when you use it via Firefox's default search engine settings.
As for potential alternative sources, donations wouldn't bring in near the same amount of money, and the subscription business is still nascent (but still proof that advertising isn't the only thing Mozilla is looking at), and not a guarantee that it would bring in sufficient revenue.
And of course, there's the question of how to fund the rest of the web. That's currently advertising, and if that remains the primary funding source, it'd at least be nice if it could be done without extensive surveillance.
How to free the rest of the web from advertising is not Mozilla's problem. They are not even asking the right questions.
As for how they should deal with finances, in my opinion they should've taken some of the many hundreds millions of dollars they're paid annually in excess of what it costs to maintain a web browser, and used that money to build up an endowment that would suffice to keep them funded for eternity. Mozilla Corp is said to be organized as a for-profit corporation in order to give it freedom from the legal restrictions that govern how non-profits can spend their money, so I don't see why it wouldn't be allowed to do that.
There are of course many other possible ideas. Trying to collect data about Firefox users in order to better target ads at them — while preserving everyone's privacy of course — is fairly close to the worst one I can think of. It thoroughly undermines their brand identity, and will only accelerate the loss of market share. Not being an ad company has until recently been the number one advantage they had over the competition, and they're slowly throwing it away piece by piece. Aside from the considerable technical challenges in actually doing privacy-preserving surveillance advertising, saying "we'll collect data about you for advertising purposes but never invade your privacy" is also practically impossible to convince people of. Nobody without an MBA is buying it, and I don't blame them.
How to free the rest of the web from advertising is not Mozilla's problem.
It kinds is though, the reason it exists is to ensure the internet is a healthy global public resource.
Some of the many hundreds millions of dollars they're paid annually in excess of what it costs to maintain a web browser
AFAIK Mozilla nets about $500 million a year from Google being the default search engine, which is roughly the entire budget, and is lower than what Google and Apple spend to maintain their web browsers. So your numbers seem optimistic to me.
Trying to collect data about Firefox users in order to better target ads at them
I haven't seen that happening, or at least, not "collect" in the sense of "Mozilla has data about Firefox users in order to better target ads at them". Possibly that the user's own local device has that data.
Again, Mozilla has always been an ad-funded operation. But also always without doing surveillance.
(I do 100% agree that it is a risky business to be in and that I'd hate to see it cross the line, but I'm withholding judgment until I actually see that happening.)
Ah right, we're talking different definitions of "Firefox users". I meant that they're not collecting data on specific users, i.e. there's nothing on Mozilla servers that says anything about me specifically. The post is talking about Firefox users as a collective, i.e. "this many Firefox users are searching for animals". Which is something it's done for ages, albeit not for what websites people are loading. (But it is known, for example, which menu items are most used.)
I'll also note that that post is not about advertising but about what features to develop, but I'll grant that it's not a big leap to use it to serve more granular advertisements as well.
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.
"Firefox Suggest results may also include contextual suggestions from the Web and occasional sponsored suggestions from Mozilla's partners, which are also on by default."
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.
As I understand it, the way it works is that the aggregate categories are defined beforehand, e.g. "these sites are part of the "animals" category. So then if you visit any of those sites, your local install will match them against that list, and then share the aggregation outcome (i.e. "you visited an 'animals' site"), without having to share the specific site you viewed - which thus Mozilla can't even know.
Right, no doubt it's something like that. So in short it's sending information about your web browsing habits to Mozilla so that they can better inform their advertisers of who they'll be reaching with their sponsored url bar suggestions.
Sometimes I forget that there are people who would have no problem with that. But after all, billions of people are happy to use Chrome.
Yeah, and the main difference to me is that that's not going to sway elections or disclose a journalist's sources or expose a human rights activist or something like that.
Yeah that's a fair point, although it's still a bit… well, funny (not "funny ha ha") that they even temporarily blocked those extensions. Not sure what Roskomnadzor could have done if Mozilla had refused even a temporary block, at least assuming the foundation doesn't have any legal entities in Russia which they may well have
The browser extensions, which are hosted on the Mozilla store, were made unavailable in the Land of Putin on or around June 8 after a request by the Russian government and its internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor.
Among those extensions were three pieces of code that were explicitly designed to circumvent state censorship – including a VPN and Censor Tracker, a multi-purpose add-on that allowed users to see what websites shared user data, and a tool to access Tor websites.
It turns out wasn't mere PR fluff, as Mozilla tells The Register that the ban has now been lifted.
"In alignment with our commitment to an open and accessible internet, Mozilla will reinstate previously restricted listings in Russia," the group declared.
"Our initial decision to temporarily restrict these listings was made while we considered the regulatory environment in Russia and the potential risk to our community and staff.
"We remain committed to supporting our users in Russia and worldwide and will continue to advocate for an open and accessible internet for all."
The original article contains 328 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 48%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
[Off-topic] As I was reading the comments from a related thread, I noticed that the comments there can be tagged by the community. (See Alfman's comment, being tagged as "verbose"). That would be an amazing feature here in the Fediverse forums/link-sharers.
[On-topic] I wonder if Mozilla was buying time to retract its staff from Russia? Even if not, I respect their ability to revert a decision in a transparent way, and apologise to the community without sounding like a corporate "apology". It shows that they actually care about the principles that they're babbling about, even if they violated them with the temporary removal.
They were forced to delist it temporarily in Russia. The fact that they listed it again tells me that they listen to the community, like they claimed, and that they value said community above the russian government.
Well, they listen to the community when what the community is pointing out is a very obvious mistake which has a very high probability of causing a whole lot of bad press, at least.
I know it says the extension is not available from the Firefox addon site if using Russian IPs, but I wonder if they have also gone so far as to make the browser itself not be able to install them in other ways. I would guess they have not, since that would mean a complicated setup in terms of the signatures, like they would have to have a separate FF version and set of signatures per country, or use a central server to authenticate things rather than client validation of signatures. In that case it would be easier to find the addon file somewhere other than the store and install it, since using unsigned addons requires installing a whole separate version of Firefox.
Even if that's how it is this whole thing still illustrates that prohibiting unsigned addons from being installed is user-hostile, because on an ideological level Mozilla probably would use that power to advance state censorship if it came down to it.
Ah yeah, true, getting just the signed XPI should work as well.
And well, it is tricky. The signing requirement allows them to block malicious add-ons, which could also be used for state censorship.
I think, offering a separate path for people to install unsigned extensions, if they need it, while blocking them for the majority and therefore making them inviable for malware to target, that's in principle a smart compromise.
Also, side-note: Folks who are on Linux likely don't need to install a separate version of Firefox. Linux distros tend to compile with the unsigned extension support enabled (just need to toggle the flag in about:config).
I guess in this case the malware angle means it's probably better to require signing, since maybe Russia could successfully distribute malicious fake versions of these extensions otherwise. Still, the centralization here is worrying.
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