Mozilla did their biggest Reddit AMA yet on Thursday, June 13, with eight members of the Firefox leadership team. With 400 total comments on the post, they c...
Mozilla has acquired Anonym, a trailblazer in privacy-preserving digital advertising. This strategic acquisition enables Mozilla to help raise the bar for the advertising industry by ensuring user privacy while delivering effective advertising solutions....
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In alignment with our commitment to an open and accessible internet, Mozilla will reinstate previously restricted listings in Russia. 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.
In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape
If they're using a CLA, that would only be used if you want them to merge your code into their codebase. If you're running a fork, that shouldn't be a problem.
Mozilla Did a Reddit AMA About Their 2024 Firefox Priorities… See What You Missed ( www.quippd.com )
Mozilla did their biggest Reddit AMA yet on Thursday, June 13, with eight members of the Firefox leadership team. With 400 total comments on the post, they c...
Mozilla Welcomes Anonym: Privacy Preserving Digital Advertising | The Mozilla Blog ( blog.mozilla.org )
Mozilla has acquired Anonym, a trailblazer in privacy-preserving digital advertising. This strategic acquisition enables Mozilla to help raise the bar for the advertising industry by ensuring user privacy while delivering effective advertising solutions....
Mozilla reverses course, re-lists extensions it removed in Russia ( www.osnews.com )
In alignment with our commitment to an open and accessible internet, Mozilla will reinstate previously restricted listings in Russia. 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.
Zed editor: Linux when? ( zed.dev )
In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape
The editor Zed will have regular alpha builds soon ( github.com )
I AM SO DISAPPOINTED WITH UBUNTU 24.04 😡 ( news.itsfoss.com )