Hacker News Reader

Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

I get that people don't like ads, but is that really a privacy concern?

Of course it is.

It compromises Mozilla's claims that they still put users' interests first. Furthermore, they insist that these promoted tiles is something that people want, whereby it absolutely bloody obvious that nobody, except for Mozilla, wants this junk. These tiles basically show that Mozilla can act against users' interests and in a blatantly disingenuous manner. This in turn makes you question the rest of their efforts that are branded as pro-user.

I see what you're saying, but I still don't understand why it's a privacy concern.

Ads on the web want to track that you saw it, clicked on it, on which website you saw it, when, with which browser, which OS, which was the previous page you visited, what site you are used to browsing, what you purchased, where you live, what is your sexual preference, ... and nowadays they can and they do :/ There are many sites that I like and would happily unblock their ads to support them, but I often don't because they use ad systems that want to spy on me. The main problem with ads on the web is not that they are annoying (like on TV for example), it is that they are spying on you.

The ads in Tiles specifically don't track you in the way that regular ads do. It's an experiment in ways to do advertising without being creepy.

More info: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab?red...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com