Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com
monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com
Is it? Or is it to make people aware of product existing? It's a subtle difference.
I don't own a TV anymore, but when I'm visiting relatives, I do watch it a bit on a rare occasion.
My first impression is that every show is hopelessly interspersed with frequent commercials. I don't understand why they put up with it. I am the master of my attention span, not the advertisers or the broadcaster. If I'm too frequently interrupted, I lose interest and find something else to do. Traditional TV has become a non-option to me, not the least because I don't want to arrange my life after the TV scheme.
My second impression is.. why the hell are they spamming me with their commercials? Yes, I DO know about the f* product, I already DO have a favorite brand, and a commercial is not going to make me switch.
But sometimes, extremely rarely, I do learn about a new product (through any kind of ad -- TV or web) that may interest me and then I look for more information or just buy it to test it if it's something cheap (like, e.g., a new coke edition).
Side note, my wife lost 35 pounds after ditching cable. She noticed her cravings for fast-food and pizza subsided when she wasn't being bombarded with food adverts all day long. TV commercials are designed to tickle your insecurities and then sell you stuff to lessen those insecurities. That was how we were taught in advertising school. Being aware of the tricks still doesn't always work at lessening their impact.
Additionally ad targeting means they might see adverts for things they could afford and that's t be relevant to their life instead of things meant for rich westerners.
The whole mental confusion between advertising and privacy in the technical and media community is really irritating. What's the alternative to advertising? Direct payments. And how do you do those? Credit cards. And what do credit cards have on them? Your legal name and your physical address. And how do they work? You provide those details to the seller.
Good luck using Tor or even incognito mode on a an without adverts.
Ah, the grand delusion of advertisers put out again. Sure, people aren't robots, but if ads couldn't influence their behaviour no one would pay for them and there wouldn't be any.
What's actually argued is advertisements aren't 100% effective, in that they can't force you to purchase a product as a mind-controller.
Ads let you know a product exists, may convince you that it's worthwhile or better than competitors, and offer reminders to keep the idea of the product on your mind. However, that's all the same things a carefully crafted in person sales-pitch could do, and sales pitches aren't mind-control even though they are far far more effective than any number of internet banner ads can be.
My point is to claim poor people are exploited by advertising is nuts. It's the other way around. Advertising is why poor people can have exactly the same gmail account with all the same features as a rich guy can. Nuke advertising and you evict poor people into a ghetto web. These people at Mozilla don't seem to be thinking these things through at all and that's a problem ..... there was a time that I had a lot of technical respect for Mozilla and Firefox, but it seems every time I read about the projects these days they're doing something that I find to be kind of dumb.
I started to turn when they offerd some products for free.(I still don't use the products they offered, but it was a nice gesture.) The best Ad I heard was on here. A guy commented, 'I like my Surface. I use it to take notes in class.' I started to think about the possibilities this devise could offer over Apple's products.
I still have some healing to do though--I was in Costco today and looked at a Surface, but just pushed one key and walked away. Do a few more acts of kindness Microsoft, and get that Surface price as low as possible; I will seriously think about giving you money again or at least push a few more keys. I don't think I will ever pay for your OS though--just on principle. As to ads, I think Microsoft is wasting money. Manufacture good hardware, and keep giving away software--people will notice.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Bill Hicks
I had a startup that made PowerPoint collaboration software, and we advertised on Google for terms like "work on presentation at the same time" and "PowerPoint collaboration." We got almost all of our users from Google, and most of these users were thrilled to find our software which they wouldn't have been able to find without targeted ads.
A/ws even people struggling financially like to relax and enjoy 'content', should this just be a privilege of the wealthy? Without ads it seems like it would be even more so. As for being a solution to their problems, its not ads, but the type of services ads can support. Using a Search Engine as an example again, they are a way to educate and empower oneself. I used a search engine to teach myself programming and I now am a developer. While of course most poor people could never dream of doing such a thing, for numerous reasons. Making content only accessable behind a pay wall acts to strength someone's,without means, ability to compete in the modern world.
I would like to see Mozilla take the lead on bad advertising. Ads which cripple browser performance and page load speeds. These ads would then be automatically blocked by the browser. It would be similar to when apple decided to disallow flash on ios.
Just as apple encouraged a move away from flash, this would encourage content providers and advertising companies to create lighter, less intrusive ads.
Basically it would look at blocking ads which are known to track, ads which take a long time to serve, ads which prevent the page from loading till the page loaded (this might be difficult) and full ad overlays (again, could be difficult to identify)
Nevertheless, I do not believe that any good whatsoever comes from advertising. It is all, without exception, an attempt to propagandize. If nothing else, the underlying agenda is, "Consume, comsume, consume! You don't live up to <impossible image>. You're inadequate and hopeless until you buy <stuff>." Not a healthy message.
However addressing the quote directly. If Tyler Durden truly had that simplistic of a view of modern human life, than he sadly lacked any empathy for his modern man. As the character in the film suffered from some form of Bi Polarism that would make sense. Dealing with his ego over shadowed his ability for him to comprehend others. Didn't really like the film tbh.
If there are specific words or phrases in the quote you disagree with, point them out. If you have compelling, relevant quotes from Rihanna or Eminem, feel free to share them and add to the discussion.
To address the quote directly, I don't see how advertising has us working jobs we hate (unless you work for an ad agency and don't enjoy it).
Who pays for the ads? Companies.
Who pays the companies? The customers.
When I check out at the grocery store, I pay for all the ads of the store, the suppliers, the factories and all the tools and services they use.
If I could deduct all these fees for all my purchases, I would gladly distribute that money directly among content providers of my choice. It would likely be shocking to learn how many google searches that would pay for.
I get really frustrated by paywall sites, even those I have subscriptions to (journals) when I need to enter my credentials. People complain ads are disruptive while looking for information, I find the process of logging in or not being able to access something I want because I need to get a subscription a lot more disruptive.
Also - a side effect of paying for every site you go to is selectivity. You'll end up locking yourself into a bubble. I'd only be willing to pay for more conservative news sources since that's the majority of what I read/enjoy. It's healthy for me to get alternative perspectives from sources like The Guardian or I'll never challenge my own opinions.
tracking != advertisingYMMV of course but for my purposes it was not worth it.
Most good paywalls that support metering will now use some kind of fingerprinting at a minimum.
No thankyou.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110201052634/http://billwarner...
The alternative need not replicate all of Google's infrastructure.
Before Google the Internet was more useful. Smaller and more content focused. I'd gladly go back to hotbot or whatever to get away from Google and their ilk.
A combination of disconnect, Adblock pro, and self destructing cookies gets me there.
Google isn't solely responsible for this, but them and other ad-financed companies played a crucial part in building the web as we know it to day. And for me, and everyone I've ever met, the web is a lot more useful today than 15 year ago.
And as a result your ability to retain the knowledge fades. You outsource your memory and ability to think at your own peril, my friend.
1. Academia. Money is obtained from teaching and grants, which requires researchers, which requires publications, which can be made on the Internet.
2. Ads. Content and services attract users, ad networks pay for pixel space / clicks / views.
3. Payments. Users pay for content and services directly. They are otherwise in the deep web.
There are combinations (such as Premium, which is a mix of Ads and Payments), and marginal other models (such as donations, which are typically for free content and (yet rarer) services).
Considering I am running a successful donation-supported service, I can tell you it does not pay the bills. It merely sustains itself. Projects such as app.net show that even payment-based projects can be challenging.
Edits -
This quote from the article is interesting, especially considering Google the worlds biggest advertising industry company also has a browser.
"That Firefox is first and foremost a user-agent, not an industry-agent"
I believe that Mozilla can make progress in privacy,
but leadership needs to recognize that current advertising
practices that enable "free" content are in direct conflict
with security, privacy, stability, and performance concerns
-- and that Firefox is first and foremost a user-agent, not
an industry-agent.1) Firefox should be software that serves its computer user's interests.
2) The Mozilla corporation is pressured (to whatever degree) to turn Firefox into software that serves the entertainment and advertising and surveillance industry's interests.
3) Sometimes Mozilla bends to industry interests rather than user interests. This is a bad thing.
When you excerpted that quote, you changed the author's statement into:
"Firefox serves the interests of computer users, rather than industry titans."
Understand? :)
"[Mozilla's] leadership needs to recognize that current advertising practices that enable "free" content are in direct conflict with security, privacy, stability, and performance concerns..."
Not to be crass, but read between the lines. All statements have context. That one sits in the context of a world where browser makers have spent many years removing infoleaks from their browsers, much to the chagrin of advertisers and surveillers.
(In the same sense, I'm surprised that "incognito browsing" windows don't implicitly download a Tor "component" and route through it, the same way DRMed <video> elements implicitly download the Adobe DRM component.)
*In particular the information that you share with the exit node. Especially if you're not aware you're using Tor, it would be easy to share identifiable information.
That is, when I load some pages with tracking protection and ublock, the number of requests blocked by ublock is smaller (but still far from 0).
After looking at Firefox log, it doesn't seem this feature blocks anything that was not blocked by ublock. But this might be wrong, I only tested a few sites, and I have no idea about the internals of these tools.
More knowledgeable info would be appreciated.
This would at least fix sites that aren't going out of their way to break things.
It's trivial to implement - just ship a list of hashes for every published js library on all the popular CDNs (+ anywhere else that comes to midn), and if a HTTP request returns a file that matches one of those hashes, put that URL on a hard cache list. (it would be worht experimenting if wildcarding all query strings is feasible)
The only UI change needed would be a menu option to flush the cache for any files associated with current page, so the user can simply reload any website that hasn't figured out how to version their js files.
This method wouldn't fix everything, of course, but it would cover a lot. Additionally, it's easy to use, no copyright is violated (the user still downloads any cached file at least once - firefox would only ship hashes). and it would be trivial to extend in the future.
I acknowledge that it isn't perfect. Someone who is really determined could (and will) send HTML with unique URLs for every javasscript/css/whatever, effectively making a cache useless. That takes proactive effort on their part, though, and in the meantime there is a lot of low-hanging-fruit.
For example, currently Google can track those of use that ban google-analytics at the router when we load any non-Google page that requests jquery fron Google's CDN. Limiting that to "about one" load to fill the cache would be easy and help in the short term..
It's very impractical.
They would gain a lot with such a move, but I still doubt they'd do that, because I think they still believe they can become big players at the advertising industry.
From my, very quick, tests it appears to work quite well as a poor man's adblocker as well. Nice!
I've been running multiprocess Firefox as well, and every extension that I use regularly still works. The only exception was Vimperator, so I had to write my own extension to give Vim keybindings[0], since none of the others support e10s.
I'm curious which extensions have given you trouble, since Ghostery, NoScript, and uBlock all work for me (at least for the most part).
EDIT: I forgot that some extensions may need to be disabled/re-enabled the very first time after enabling e10s[1].
The other two that were broken were FindBar Tweak (highlights ctrl+f results in the scrollbar like Chrome) and TileTabs.
I guess that's why pages have just decided to take four times as long to load.
That's a good point. Reminds me of "coal energy is cheap"...except for the millions of people it's killing or the billions of dollars paid in healthcare costs. And that's without mentioning coal is usually heavily subsidized by taxpayer money.
In the same way advertising that's more and more focused on monitoring everything you do or say online (thanks to all the companies that don't want to enable end-to-end encryption in their IM's - Google, Microsoft, etc) is causing a lot of harm as well.
Users constantly complain that ads are not relevant, so it's either/or...
Anyway, now I can think about some harm. Since they got their data, ads have become less relevant (yes, those people are extremely incompetent). But that isn't much of a trouble.
My point: Privacy issues are somewhat pointed at the wrong institutions who really aren't a threat.
Yes, Facebook is a bigger problem. State level universal surveillance is even bigger. Fighting any one of the three is worthwhile.
I really dont understand this argument of privacy as if everyone was living off the grid somewhere. What is the impetus here? And in context of web publishers, if you dont want ads then you'd have to pay for content directly, which is no more private and in fact reveals even more info.
The reason you use a credit card and not cash during real transactions is because you care more about value and convenience than privacy, so why are ads online such a target of all this?
Yet, I block ads on most sites because I don't like being tracked. The argument is quite simple. I don't know you (ad network), and I don't want you to watch everything I do. I'm pretty sure you won't do anything bad with that data, but I don't like it anyway.
I'm quite ok with my bank knowing what I spend money on, because I do know them, I have a choice on what bank to use, and because the service they provide me does require that data. None of that is exactly true for ads.
For anyone who wants an opt-out, here it is: http://www.youradchoices.com/
The dichotomy is either you have generalized ads or they're targeted closely to you. What is false about this?
Note the juxtaposition of imagined agency on part of the user, they supposedly complain a lot about it and want it changed right? So the solution is tracking!
Also some vauge language burried 40 pages into a EULA isn't knowledge or consent.
How this is actually implemented is not something I ever wrote about nor is HN really the place for it. There are some contextual based options other than tracking user behaviors but at the end of the day, yes tracking is how you get to the most targeted information. This is used in more than just ads by the way, everything from your search results to emails to music/video services to any other place you get recommendations is personalized to you. And the vast majority of the population has time and again shown they have more interest in the end result of better content for them than the collection of anonymized information.
Do you have a better solution? How would you provide targeted ads that match people's interests and intent without any tracking? And please don't say you just don't want ads or that sites should just figure out a different way to get paid. This is a serious question because it's not like the industry has just been sitting around wondering, so if you have a better idea it would be helpful and there are lots of companies willing to hear it.
Last thing re: EULA. I'm sorry but I have to disagree. Legal agreements do not become void because you signed a big contract and then claim it's too long or you didn't actually read it. And yes, signatures are not required for agreement and acceptance to be binding. These documents do not exist for convenience and the long length with all the complex edge case wording is precisely because standard language is so often contested by anyone who suddenly feels like they no longer want it to apply.
If you're worried about your entire history being used, I'd point to social networks like Facebook/Twitter/Google that have far more info, including personal details, and keep it permanently. If you are worried about privacy, read the ToS of those services very careful and either opt-out or delete your information because that's a whole different level to what most ad networks have.
When a website doesn't work, you can look at the specific blocked domains and types of content and selectively unblock for the current domain, or you can be lazy and just turn off ublock for the current domain.
I worry that if tracking/ad blockers become very popular, then websites that don't work will be rewarded with all the tracking/ad blocking being turned off by most people.
I used to just use flashblock for click-to-play. I like the simplicity of that - it attacks the biggest problem in a totally generic way, and if the main content is flash, you can almost always just click on it.
E.g. this thread's article requests a lot more than what it needs to be readable:
They should block trackers that have no effect on website features and restrict and monitor the ones that do effect features.
...and this is another reason Mozilla needs to have their own search engine. They could have much greater influence on these this things if they had the ability to punish bad behaving websites.
It seems that even Bing is unable to gain meaningful market share.
Unless, DuckDuckGo plans on punishing websites that heavily use tracking cookies and/or they're a nonprofit that aims to advance the web they aren't actually relevant to what I was saying.
Seems like a win win for both Mozilla and DDG.
Like limiting by when the page appeared.
It seems like an essential feature to use for software developers, since you can sidestep irrelevant posts.
Your naïveté is touching.
EDIT: Check their last quarter's results, Apple makes only 6% of their revenue with online services: https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy15datasum.pdf
Apple is using third parties to help make Siri better not to make money.
And let's be clear we don't know the contract between Apple and these companies. Given Apple's track record it should have numerous privacy conditions.
Well Apple collaborate with the NSA, so that immediately disqualifies them from giving the slightest shit about privacy.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/05/28/apples-app-store-r...
The OsX machine at my office is mystifying, am I supposed to provide my personal credit card to apple to get security updates? That is more secure and insures more of my privacy than not entering my credit card into a system I don't trust?
I view Apple as insulting my intelligence with promises of "convenience" that amount to being able to give them money on impulse.
I've always end up back in UX loops wanting my credit card since I seem to need a new version that is free but in the app store to get security updates..
Make an account - does not require payment option
Buy a FREE app in the store
None will be a payment option as one of the possible credit cards (as you dont have to pay for a free thing)
They have been always been available for download from the Apple site:
Apple's walled garden approach to everything makes apple one of the worst offenders with regards to not just privacy, but freedom as well.
From other comments, it sounds like I can dance around to make it possible on OsX, but every other OS (except ebooks?) that I have ever installed either makes opt out a transparent (though smaller button/font) process or has no registration process at all.
I don't like that the machine will be in a very small group of opt-out OsX systems compared to reasonable percentages of other Oses. By not sharing my personal details, I might be risking my coworkers having lower than normal privacy when using OsX machines.
Apple seems pretty solid on the protection of users' privacy. Devices are encrypted by default, for example, and there are robust protections from rogue applications in place.
Is there are specific practice that Apple engage in that makes you think they are particularly reckless regarding users' privacy?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/google-quietly-backs-...
http://blog.lifars.com/2015/03/18/google-now-manually-review...
Nowadays both companies do a pretty good job vetting App submissions, though Apple also filters on quality (sometimes) where as Google does not, but that's within each companies respective philosophies, and can be considered a strength or a weakness, depending on your own philosophy.
In any case, you made an assertion that Apple does NOT run automated scans, unlike Google. I asked for proof. Now you demand proof from me that they do. It doesn't work that way. You made an assertion first, you back it up.
My proof is in the result. AppStore has next to no malware on it. PlayStore (now) is also very clean and safe. Google achieved this through combination of automated and manual vetting. Apple is notoriously silent about their process, other than advertising their one USP, which is no longer unique, but given if we use logic, we must assume that both companies use similar tools to achieve similar results.
Your assertion that Apple is far less secure would suggest much more malware being live on the AppStore, and yet in my search on google I was only able to find a few older articles about researches being able to smuggle in custom written malicious code onto AppStore. Meanwhile, while searching for malware on iOS, google presented me this in a search result at some point:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/03/new-adware-found-in-google-...
That's just one example from 2015. I don't think it's fair to check back to 2014 and prior, as back than Google Play Store was basically Wiled Wiled West.
It sounds like user info is the only things worth selling!
Edit: ok, revenue is from Yahoo now. That doesn't make me any less confused as to what parent reply meant though.
As for someone else's reply to you, same question. What in the world do they do with 1000 people?
And yet they can't develop something useful, like e.g. an improved alternative to Certificate Patrol? That way TÜRKTRUST Bilgi İletişim ve Bilişim Güvenliği Hizmetleri A.Ş. (first certificate in my browser) can't compromise my browsing in the USA. Fine to use them for someone browsing to a website in Elbonia, not so fine for anything that I would ever do.
Edit: just to be clear, Turktrust actually did abuse their privileged position, and Mozilla did get rid of them. But why were they there in the first place, and what about the 100 or 1000 other certificates that Firefox comes with?
However, this it would be a bit hypocritical for Mozilla (and probably the reason why the filter is off by default). Firefox is not much better than Chrome when it comes to phoning home and privacy invading features. Heck, on mobile it's even worse.
What about disabling by default "beacon.enabled" for a start? Contrarily to massive ad blocking, nobody would notice. Err, maybe these ad networks would? Oops.
At every new Firefox release I do a tour of new settings/flags and it's saddening how many times I have to switch something off.
On the second launch after a new install or new profile creation, Firefox shows a notification bar about these settings with a button to quickly change them. I don’t remember how long ago those settings were added, nor whether they showed the notification bar for those updates.
Sometimes the number of domains that gets loaded in the background on certain sites is mind numbing.
Anyway, ... I got sidetracked. I meant to say that what's even "funnier" is that if I disable Ghostery for some domain temporarily, the number of trackers usually skyrocket even further, since now the scripts get to run more scripts.
Yes, it's insane and honestly out of control.
And sometimes you have to dig 3+ layers into the nesting to get the site to function at all...
See also this small thread about the new advertising through suggested tabs.
Or do this:
1. in the address bar type about:config, press return
2. search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled
3. change the value to true
4. all done
1. Because they always have. The precedence was set a long time ago.
2. Because Apple doesn't give a fuck what other people think.
They just have a blacklist of sites that they block, it's not much more sophisticated than that from what I read. All of the localstorage, cookies, and other tracking across domains goes away if you filter requests like that. I'm sure they are doing more things, but they have to make sure it doesn't break a large number of sites, and if a site is broken it seems like an "all or nothing" allow/deny system, which is not ideal.
I use uMatrix and it defaults to blocking all 3rd party scripts unless they're globally trusted or have been trusted in the past. This creates lots of problems for many websites. Most new websites I visit I have to enable some 3rd party scripts, refresh, make sure there are not any critical javascript errors in the console, then I can properly use the site. Normal users cannot be expected to do this, they must have it work the first time or they will freak out.
For ads or trackers that are embedded as img or iframe elements, I think this is also viable and could speed up page load time.
For ads or trackers that use inline scripts or non-"async" script tags to load content, the web browser has to block while loading/running the script, or risk breaking the page. Otherwise things like document.write() would have incorrect results when the script runs later.
Rather than "ga is undefined" the ga.whatever function would just return without sending any data.
Do any third-party script blocking systems do this?
We implement an API based on Google Safe Browsing, a
mechanism for efficient URL-based blocklist updates and
lookups [9]. We use a subset of approximately 1500 domains
from Disconnect’s privacy-oriented blocklist to identify
these unsafe origins [10]. We update the blocklist every 45
minutes to minimize the effects of incorrect blocklist
entries.
Another open challenge is applying Tracking Protection only
to third-party content. We can avoiding cross-site tracking
by blocking content from high-volume sites such as
facebook.com without breaking them when visited directly.
Heuristics such as the Public Suffix List4 can help better
determine the set of domains that are considered first-
party.
While they usually come hand in hand, Facebook ads (eg: while on facebook) don't add additional tracking.
"uBlock Origin (or uBlock₀) is not an ad blocker; it's a general-purpose blocker."
It will report everything to the user -- including behind-the-scene network requests [2].
---
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Behind-the-scene-netw...
BTW, thanks for ublock.
I would argue that with Dynamic filtering (enabled for advanced users) the goal of uBlock is not limited to ads, but to any undesired content on the internet. I guess you could say the same about Adblock, though, so I guess YMMV.
[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger#faq-How-does-Privacy-Badge...? Thanks for this EFF.
And the part where I couldn't manually manipulate what was being blocked. Since apparently multiple pop-up adds on-click were not violating the user principle of consent...
pages might load faster, but not every page loads. Ironically, the linked article is one of them.
Deleted comment
Advertising only makes content free monetarily; there's no money exchanged with the viewer. It instead costs you time, attention, memory. And sanity.
> $1000 per year seems like a reasonable charge for being able to search the web with the power of Google's search.
This shows the power of advertising in abusing our brain's ability to put realistic costs on our time and attention. Google has $50 billion in revenue minus profit, and there's a billion people in just the US and Europe, so more like $50 per year for everything Google does, not just search. If you are only using search and not Android or gmail or youtube or docs the cost would be far less.
Advertising is so insidious because its entire purpose is to prey on our foibles and weaknesses, and convincing us that our time is worth less... and that cigarettes are cool. Smoking pollutes your lungs with toxins, advertising pollutes your mind with jingles.
There are times and places where advertising is necessary, but it's never free.
Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party
uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous
aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google
Analytics setup that most people use on other websites.
Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anonymize flag in the Google
Analytics request [...] and don't do any cross-domain cookies within Google
Analytics.
in any case, the analytics data is anonymised and as such cannot be used to identify you. google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment.
edit: an explanation for downvoting is customary.
> google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment
You're mixing different products and people here. That may be true of Google Analytics data (I don't know either way), but it's not true for their advertising services. Google purposely tracks individual people in a non-anonymous way in order to sell remarketing products, to e.g. show a banner of items currently in your Amazon shopping cart alongside an article you're reading at CNN through their AdSense/DoubleClick platforms.
http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=5160028011
i don't how that is google tracking you individually. can you please elaborate?
What is your suggestion, that they should abandon all analytics, or that they should build their own, or do you not have one? Are you willing to acknowledge that GA solves a real problem and provides valuable information?
In my judgement, it makes a lot of sense that Mozilla would use GA. I want them to use it because I believe in their mission, and I'm sure in the balance of things, it helps them maintain a stronger position as an organization.
Ideally, yes. Or at the very least don't use Google for it. Use something like Pwiki instead. Or perhaps try actually allowing your users to decide what if any information they feel comfortable sharing with you.
There are other non-profits like the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive whose websites still somehow manage to function despite not triggering any of the multitude of filter rules that plugins like uBlock ship with.
It's easy to bash someone for hypocrisy when they're trying trying to do the right thing. It's a bit weird seeing this consternation at Mozilla considering just how scummy the other companies are.
Google wants to know what web pages you visit, when, and how often, and a GA beacon that phones home that information placed on every web page is the easiest way for them to do it.
EDIT: there are either a lot of angry GA users in this thread or Google apologists. Either was, I do believe Google is now or will soon use GA for clickstream tracking. I also believe this is why they offer to host frequently requested assets like JQuery.
Let's not forget the Google Fonts, which exist to "make web beautiful". How adorable and altruistic. Yay! /throws-confetti
"We do log records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is on a need-to-know basis and kept secure."
Just like every other Google Privacy Policy, it's insultingly disingenuous, couched in terms of protecting your privacy while actually reserving for themselves the right to violate it by collecting enough information on you for you to be uniquely identified and storing that information indefinitely.
Your constant projecting of ulterior motives, absent any evidence, on a throwaway account, is the very definition of worthless, gratuitously negative content. The guy upthread is complaining that requests are cached for a day.
I'm sorry, would y'all prefer that they not be cached?
> Requests for CSS assets are cached for 1 day
Tracking font request "only" once per day is still spying.
Also, regarding your jump from Google's attack on our privacy to a larger to that "New World Order" reference is highly offensive. You're building a straw-man that was not stated, and perpetuating the belief that someone who complains about their privacy being attack must be some sort of "conspiracy theory nutter".
And all that doesn't even begin to touch "panopticlick" style entropy gathering.
In case you are interested in learning what how Google works, instead only looking at the facade they show you, I suggest watching the presentation[1] Aral Balkan gave at the same event that hosted djb's recent talk (which is also recommended). You won't like it - possibly violently - but maybe you can learn a bit about how the world actually works..
[1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...
On a mobile OS level, however, you cannot: There is probably not a single mobile app that does not connect to at least one ad, tracking etc. server. I hope that at least Apple will offer solutions on an OS level.
Despite ironically being owned by an advertising company.
The website is a trader, the visitor is a customer. The trader is agreeing to sell the content to the customer if the customer pays the price - view ads (or pay subscription). The visitor agrees with this and receives the content. If the visitor (with the help of the third party tool - browser or extension) disable ads, the visitor is violating the user agreement.
If this option "Disable Ads" is OK, and is accepted by all browsers, this mean there will be nobody willing to write content, because ads are main source of revenue of most of the websites.
I simply cannot understand how this could work.
For me, it's clear that Mozilla will negotiate with Google and other Ad providers to receive some money to remove this feature.
I'm sorry, on most websites, if I come from HN or IRC or whatever, I don't recall being forced to agree to shit before being able to read the content. Unless your site is Quora.
Mozilla is going to remove ads (tracking - all ads use tracking) from web pages and display ads before that, in new browser window.
Content publishers recieve nothing, cos they have to work for free. This is Internet - it's free.
nice :)
My understanding is that the content of a typical Web news site is assembled from a number of different servers and the advertising content depends on the browsing history from one particular client as detected by scripts that are served from an advert server - the 'tracking' mentioned in the OA.
My point is that deciding what the 'content' was that was protected might be difficult under those circumstances. Also which legal entity is going to do the 'protecting'? Suppose I'm reading The Verge: I'm sitting in the UK, and a lot of our internet traffic goes through a large interchange in Amsterdam. The Verge is based in US. See my point?
As a content provider, my content is "what the broadcast transmitter sent", this is a code sent from my server to the browser of the client. Now Mozilla and AdBlock extensions are modifying my code. It's very clear what I wish to send - my code, but this program is modifying my code. Superfish and other injection malware replace parts of my code with theirs, while ad blockers and Mozilla, just remove some of my code.
As a content provider, ads or subscription (ad free) are my only ways to monetize.
It's very hypocritical to disable ads and in the same time to make 97% of your money from Ad company.
Almost all of Mozilla's revenue for 2013, the last year for which it has reported financials, came from search deals that make various providers, notably Google, the default in Firefox. Of the $314 million in revenue for 2013, $306 million, or 97%, came from the search deals. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2862717/mozilla-were-no...
They are abusing their dominate positions and basically stealing from websites. The product "Mozilla" will be very popular because of the feature "Disable Ads and Track". They could make tons of donations because of that. And websites, that actually create content will serve content for free.
I'm aware with ambitions of ISPs in Europe to disable ads for mobile, in the same way as Mozilla. They hope to milk Google, just like Mozilla and AdBlock. http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7963577/google-ads-get-thro... http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboo... http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/15/8610741/mobile-carriers-eu...
I don't like tracking, bad ads and so on, but I don't believe some guys from Mozilla can decide what is good and what is not.
No they are not modifying your code at all. They are taking the content you provide to the public network and presenting it according to the choices of the person who wants to read your content. I believe that adverts on your pages are served from servers other than your own and I think that in general (perhaps not on your sites) people in different parts of the world will see different adverts when viewing the same page.
If I am having a slow Internet day (don't ask) I ssh into my shell account and use the links text mode browser. Am I modifying your code then? No, just using a rather odd way of viewing Web pages.
Mate, I'm really sorry to participate this discussion. I never had such bad experience. So many downvotes, make me feel really bad.
I see here most people are "users". I was expecting here to find people that actually work in tech, make their money from internet.
I can't understand how you do you see the world, without payment for your work.
It's very easy to talk about privacy rights, bandwidth issues, but the problem here is pure business.
The people who make content, don't receive payment, while people who consume content - consume it.
You must block whole page, if you do not agree with the terms.
But you want to read the content, without payment.
There are no free lunch, guys.
If this model is accepted by all browsers, please, explain to me who will pay salaries?
C'mon ppl, so many downvotes, please, explain to me, who will pay, IF all browsers remove ads?
I'm using Mozilla, since version phoenix 0.3... I'm fan of open-source.. I'm a freelancer.. My only revenue stream is my websites.
Forgive me I want to support my family.
p.s. I'm really disappointed from the community here. I'd expected more from you guys. Really sad.
What I'm trying to probe is the extent to which you expect international legal protection for your right to protect the totality of one of your Web sites including algorithmically defined advertising.
An example of your work might focus the discussion.
If your content is valuable, why not just pop it behind a pay-wall and charge $1 per month for access?
It's doesn't matter on what network you are, on what device.
I'm on desktop dual Xeon, with high bandwidth, and this feature disables Adsense ads. It's not disable some other Ad networks, for which Mozilla never heard of, but most of the Ads are disabled.
"No they are not modifying your code at all."
Content is modified, some ads are stripped away.