Attribution is how advertisers know if their advertising campaigns are working. Attribution generates metrics that allow advertisers to understand how their advertising campaigns are performing. Related measurement techniques also help publishers understand how they are helping advertisers. Though attribution is crucial to advertising, current attribution practices have terrible privacy properties.
For the last few months we have been working with a team from Meta (formerly Facebook) on a new proposal that aims to enable conversion measurement – or attribution – for advertising called Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA.
Mozilla working together with Facebook on a privacy feature. How desperate is Mozilla, exactly?
Thom Holwerda,
That was my first thought as well. I imagine there’s nothing nefarious, but joining teams with facebook on user pricacy has terrible optics, haha.
Alfman,
I don’t personally know the end goal of Meta/Facebook. However looking at what happened with video games in 1990s, and them being able to keep freedom from government intervention, this seems to make sense.
A single game, Mortal Kombat caused a panic that led to formation of ESRB. And now, any occasional outrage is handled within. (I think, those graphics are considered cartoonish by today’s standards.)
Similarly Internet industry needs to come together to fix the house. And this might be a step in the right direction. (I would also include modern operating systems, all of which collect some sort of diagnostics information).
Super desperate. LOL Of course, working with Facebook is going to accelerate their downward spiral because their core demographic is misanthropes who dislike Facebook and others.
I give them two years as a viable entity.
Also, Aral Balkan is a good follow. He’s been hammering Mozilla for a while now, and advocating for the small web.
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/107784166745213698
My person opinion is the web is done, even before we start talking about Web3. It’s trash owned by surveillance companies. The standards committees are filled with companies who are user hostile.
I’d hardly think being suspicious of Facebook, a company that has proven in the past that it doesn’t give a damn about user privacy rights, could be called misanthropic lol. Mozilla are questionable too, and not just for this. There was the forced Pocket integration, their attempt to control which extensions you could install, the Disney Mr. Robot promo that was activated even if you didn’t want it, and then there’s the occasional reenabling of Firefox “studies” even when you turn them off. Now, there’s a collaboration with a known privacy rights violator.
I’d certainly call that questionable, and I’m being generous.
d hardly think being suspicious of Facebook, a company that has proven in the past that it doesn’t give a damn about user privacy rights, could be called misanthropic lol.
Fair enough. XD
I hate it that people thought building FB was a good idea, and there have been many hours and much money sunk into FB that could have been used for something else. Something which improved society. Anyway, Mozilla.
“We don’t like surveillance capitalism, and we’re going to take back the web!” was part of Mozilla’s selling point though. Today: “Surveillance is a critical component of the web, and we’re going to do everything to help FAANG companies spy on people.”
The extension thing is understandable. Web browsers are a big attack vector on the desktop, and FF is already considered to be less secure then Chrome/Chromium.
I’m not disagreeing at all. It is now blatantly obvious Mozilla is just another scummy SV company. Mozilla has failed. They are desperate for money, and I now have to find a new browser.
Although i use Firefox and recommend it to other people this indeed is something that needs to be said occasionally. That is none of the current players in this area will do anything meaningful to harm a system such as the surveillance capitalism. They all benefit from it. Including Mozilla. Right down to an average individual that still strongly believes in the concept of free lunch. More or less all parties involved are happy with the current system and that is why no real changes in regards to regaining higher levels of privacy are possible.
Geck,
Interestingly I agree with your conclusion, but I disagree with your reasoning. So many people are unhappy with the current system, however I think most people don’t have much representation for their grievances. By and large it’s the wealthy individuals and corporations that have the most representation both in capitalism and in government. It’s relatively rare to get consumer policies to triumph over corporate ones. Even the wins can be short lived like net neutrality.
So go build something better rather than wishing people’s self-interest (part of human nature) will change. And yes, it’s going to be a slow start since you need to build your own infrastructure. I don’t use social media, but the Gab vs Parler situation sums up the need for your own infrastructure regardless of what you think of the people involved with the services.
Forget representation. Stop wishing. Start doing.
It’s not that easy. As if you want to really compete then you basically need billions in revenue. And at the same time you can directly charge your customers exactly 0. And if you manage to do it and once you are there. Billions of people will in some form share their personal data with you …
People don’t have to have billions; they need to get 25% mindshare.
The Fediverse is thriving without billions, and that’s where we need to go.
darknexus,
Believe it or not, I do practice what I preach…however I don’t have the influence or money to change much. There are cases when running your own infrastructure can be effective, but social networking is not one of them (unless you want to remain isolated from the rest of humanity). I challenge you to run your own matrix/sip/etc servers and invite your friends and family to use them to talk to you…it doesn’t usually work out (*).
Even my kids who want to talk to their friends have been pressured into the social networking giants, and unless I want to deprive them of talking to their friends (I don’t), then the reality is that there isn’t much I can do about it. I can change what I do, but I can’t change what everyone else does. It is hard to accept this. Building infrastructure is the fun part! Seriously many of us here are good at it. Apart from the difficulty of convincing users to abandon incumbent providers, another real world barrier is financial. Most of us are not independently wealthy and and aren’t able to compete with free, which many people have come to expect. I really do admire those who can give and give, but I for one cannot afford to take on regular losses providing free services.
This is why companies including mozilla are precariously balancing between idealism and their financial realities. They can do a lot of good, but not to the point where their own existence is compromised due to lack of revenue. I don’t blame them for this, but some people do…I really don’t have an answer.
*EDIT: To the extent that I am wrong, how many people here are willing to fund our own independent social network for us to use? How many would sign up? Honest question.
I’m already on the Fediverse, so I would sign up.
The question would be which package?
– Lemmy (Reddit like)
– Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey (Birdsite like)
– Hubzilla/Friendica (FB like)
Presumably not Pixelfed, Peertube, or Matrix.
More packages: https://fediverse.party/
Personally i don’t believe Mozilla is balancing all that much anymore in this regard. When they take the money they sign a contract. And likely the terms detailed in that contract don’t leave much room for idealism regarding privacy.
@Geck
I don’t think they are either. The company is failing, and the C-suite is looking to keep their cushy salaries.
Geck,
Flatland_Spider,
I haven’t been completely happy with them either, but I haven’t seen anyone really provide a strong alternative to keep the doors open for alternative browsers. I think the industry would (or will?) be worse off if mozilla ends up failing leaving chrome with a nearly complete monopoly.
Some FOSS projects like operating systems can be subsidized through enterprise server support, but it’s a hard case to make for a browser as most enterprise customers don’t buy independent browsers.
People are already doing that. There is the Fediverse, Matrix, Gemini, the Gopher resurgence, and the Small Web movement.
It’s being worked on. People are pushing back and building new tech with the knowledge of the web’s failure.
Aral Balkan “What is the small web?”: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
Ah, yes, the idealists building tools for the average people to take over the web. Let me go sit in the corner and chuckle cynically. This approach has been tried for decades and it has failed for decades. Build it and they will come with these solutions, doesn’t work for the common person. How many FOSS IM solutions have come and gone? How many decentralised platforms are still waiting to get beyond the initial gaggle of geeks? It’s not for a lack of proselytizing.
The idea of the average Jane running her own server 24/7 and managing her own flock of people and data is a pipedream conjured up by the tech savvy. No one I know wants to sysadmin anything, let alone a private 24/7 server. The current big names offer everything Joe and Jane need from it. That it does insidious things with personal privacy is largely invisible and mostly ignored if it is mentioned.
I used to think that an open and self-empowered web was a possibility, but at every turn the people I care about half-heartedly humored me from time to time, to very quickly dropping the solution I asked them to check out. Most cited complaint? No use case. The people they care about are elsewhere and not willing to move and they don’t want to have multiple apps which do the same thing. User empowerment isn’t a concern.
To solve the current conundrum we don’t need a better mousetrap. The current mousetraps are highly appreciated. What we need are good political solutions, whereby the balance between proprietor and end user is more equitable. As far as I can see, that is the best achievable outcome.
r_a_trip,
I don’t think this is a completely fair representation of the idea. While the public can run servers, not everyone has to. The point is you can choose providers, which gives us a choice of providers that are best for us. The private networks with proprietary clients offer no such choice, The point being you don’t have to run your own servers if you don’t want to. So to your point that end users won’t run their own servers, that doesn’t matter because it’s not necessary. It’s a similar idea behind email and telephones where end users are not generally running their own infrastructure.
I agree it is a problem. However I would add that this is NOT the fault of open networks and FOSS, it is 100% the fault of proprietary networks run by corporations. Regardless of who’s at fault, the end result is that it is difficult to reach a wider user base on alternative open networks and that’s the way our dominant corporations want it. This is going to continue to be a major obstacle for ordinary users until there is enough of a critical mass to push adoption using network effects.
I agree, we don’t need a better mousetrap, we need users. What do you mean by political solutions though? I do see merit in a plethora of providers competing with each other over federated networks, but none of the dominant corporations today want to do this. For them competition is bad. I don’t think there will be much public agreement for government regulation either. Even if there were I don’t think politicians would actually do what is needed.
I don’t necessarily think it’s likely, but hypothetically I think a path with a better chance of success could be someone with philanthropic ambitions like Mark Shuttleworth coming in and using tons of money to fight the giants and build up the market for an open network for the people to the point where it reaches a critical mass of ordinary users. After this kickstart it would become self-sustaining via the network effect.
How many? As if there would be that many. Then the current system would have never work.
Geck,
Go tell that to congress and our political parties! Massive numbers of people being unhappy does not imply the system will change to their liking.
But my point is currently we don’t have massive number of people demanding higher level of privacy.
Geck,
Millions of users are leaving facebook though, which I would call massive. I think it is in part due to increasing social awareness, which is progress.
Millions are still somewhere in tenth of a percent range. And if they wouldn’t be migrating to TikTok and would actually result to self hosting or some distributed network. That would still be negligible.
Geck,
The losses are higher than that in the US and canada.
https://www.engadget.com/facebook-q3-2020-earnings-204642328.html
I’ve seen higher estimates as well but with that said I already agreed with your conclusion from the start as I stated. Replacing incumbents is difficult and the odds are slim. What I disagreed with was your reasoning…people using facebook to connect to friends/relatives/etc does not automatically imply that they are all “happy with the current system”. I think you are wrong about that. This is the problem with oligopolies in general, their dominance does not automatically imply people are happy with them.
Lets look at it from another perspective. In 2022 market share for Firefox is at a couple of percents and for Chrome it is over 70 percents. Everything needed for people to make an inform decision and to take a stand regarding increasing their privacy on the internet is already there. And more or less you don’t need to sacrifice anything to get that. As most people use Windows they only need to make a choice. To install Firefox or Chrome. And they go ahead and opt-in for Chrome. If there wouldn’t be Apple then Chrome would likely be over 90 percents!
Geck,
Regardless of what browser you think users ought to be using, you cannot overlook just how dominant google is at marketing. It’s what google does. They have the #1 site on the internet. Google’s marketing empire is far vaster than mozilla’s. Guess which browser they prominently recommend? No surprise here…
https://ibb.co/dBwCrd2
If you do a search for browsers, their own ads are at the top, bumping mozilla down to #5.
https://ibb.co/4TTWJ2P
I’ve seen manufacturers preinstall chrome, but I’ve never seen them preinstall firefox. For their part, manufacturers will literally go with whoever pays them the most, and since microsoft got in big trouble for that kind of bundling arrangement, that leaves google. Mozilla certainly can’t compete with google money.
I think mozilla could do better on a level playing field, but that’s a luxury they’re not going to get. The marketing asymmetry is a fact of life and I don’t know that there’s anything they can do to defeat google that doesn’t require loads of money. Not to mention that marketing on dominant platforms (google, facebook, etc) kind of rewards the very same practices that are encroaching on user privacy.
So I don’t know there’s much mozilla can do to improve it’s odds against tech giants. Mozilla could raise more money by getting in bed with more unscrupulous advertisers, but then what’s the point? I don’t see a healthy business model for firefox short of having users pay, which they’re not going to do.
I am not convinced by your reasoning. There is more then enough common knowledge available to make an inform decision. In regards to when choosing your preferred web browser and knowing for what it stands for. And most people opt-in for Chrome. As for what Mozilla could do? Not much they can do about it. Going against the system. Like they did in the past and were successful at it. That would nowadays only make them insolvent. And nobody would particularly care. As if people would in general care about the aspects we discussed. Then there would be no way Firefox would be at such low market share numbers in 2022.
Geck,
That’s fair, I am not convinced by your reasoning either.
I don’t think non-tech users are well informed to be honest, but feel free to disagree.
I still think you’re assuming they have more experience than they do and you’re overlooking the marketing advantages to being the default. Most users leave things as they are. If they’re prompted by google to install chrome, they may just follow the prompts. I wouldn’t be surprised if this describes the vast majority of users.
If people don’t feel competent enough to use Linux on desktop. I can up to a point understand that. If people don’t self host web applications. Due to among other things the fear of getting hacked. Up to a point i can understand that too. It’s a valid concern. If people don’t want to use a federated or distributed network. Due to lets say not being prepared to be online 24/7. For the message to eventually get through. And for their mobile phone battery not to drain out before that. Yes. There is some merit in that too. But if people do let a project, such as the Firefox, to reach marginal market share by the 2022. And choose to opt-in for Chrome. That in my honest opinion tells me and you and everybody with a grain of reason something about the people too. It’s just inexcusable.
Geck,
“If”? To be honest I think it’s already happened…
https://techjury.net/blog/web-browser-market-share/
Also “choose to opt-in” seems a bit misleading for a group comprised of people who generally leave things at their defaults and have not explicitly chosen to “opt-in” to anything. Most probably wouldn’t even know what browser they’re using if you asked. On the one hand you could accuse them of being dumb but considering that browsers these days don’t display their name or even have a titlebar, it’s not entirely their fault IMHO.
Now you are trying to convince me that Firefox has a marginal market share? Arguing for the sake of arguing? Anyway. I am sure that we all got the point of the debate.
Geck,
I think the reason you keep bringing up market share (and yes I’d say firefox is marginal already) is to say that people are happy about how dominant corporations are handling privacy matters, and that is the reason the status quo around privacy won’t change. But I’m still not convinced that market share has a direct correlation to user happiness around privacy issues. It’s possible for people to be happy under a monopoly but it shouldn’t be assumed. Monopolies do exist where users are unhappy too. So in my mind we need to look deeper than simple market share numbers.
Alfman,
> So many people are unhappy with the current system, however I think most people don’t have much representation for their grievances.
but would a substantial amount of these people really look out to change this, for example by paying for a more privacy-friendly alternative? Regarding open-source, experience shows the Fediverse stays a niche and let’s not deny it, it isn’t easy. Facebook is now more than 18 years old, Diaspora as one of the most public alternatives is 11 years old and as a decentralised network _still_ does not support pod migration in the current release! Yes, there is Friendica where this seems to work.
I’m afraid Facebook has become one more of those things people use, complain about, yet are not that motivated to look for other solutions.
People are leaving FB. FB was negative people recently, and most are moving to TikTok, which is just as bad as/worse then FB about sharing data.
The Birdsite clones (Mastodon/Pleroma) are the ones which have gained the most traction. Peertube and Funkwhale are probably the next two.
There hasn’t been a credible FB clone yet, but people may not want that. Birdsite clones may be the Social Media everyone wants.
Flatland_Spider,
I’d like to get away from all centralized providers and return to an emphasis on federated services where your free to choose your own provider(s). No single provider should have exclusive access to your contacts. I know that you get this, but most people aren’t educated about the the ways dominant corporations are using users as pawns to block off competing services.
cato_minor,
I think the answer is a resounding “no”, based on my experience.
I agree.
The network effect helps keep the popular services popular at the expense of alternatives. This phenomenon applies to nearly everything, services, software, hardware, operating systems, etc. I go out of my way to use lineageOS, and yet I’m constantly plagued by the network effect. So many companies keep trying to force everyone towards google & apple. Things like mobile banking can be blocked elsewhere. At work I lost the ability to log in after they installed Watchguard authentication, the developer refuses to support me and I was literally forced to get an android phone with google services just to log in at work (and no they wouldn’t buy me a phone, I had to pay).
Anyways the point being outside of one’s group of geeky friends, things can become quite impractical… And it doesn’t even necessarily imply anything is technically wrong with an alternative product/service, but it really sucks when you get left out from the rest of the world. I so despise monopolies/duopolies/etc, but if anything the market forces behind them seems to be increasing with dominant corporations getting an ever larger share of the pie.
Am I the only one seeing an opportunity here? Mozilla and Meta are at odds so there’s a chance to work out a solution that to some degree satisfies both sides.
Also keep in mind that they are competing with Google and their FLoC.
flecht,
I don’t think any of the the tech giants are going to stop collecting personal data because it’s too valuable to their business models. At best I see them anonymizing the data in their possession only when distributing it to 3rd parties. Some companies are already doing this but it hasn’t stopped them from buying up personal user data and installing trackers everywhere so they can spy on everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a case of “do as I say and not as I do” and not anonymizing data internally.
Furthermore there’s a trust problem. Because nearly all the tech giants are working with unencrypted user data, there’s no way to prove how they’re using the data in private. For example osnews.com is hosted from google, and while we’re probably not on their radar, osnews data logs and personally identifying information is technically in their possession already along with millions of other sites (even before counting google analytics and adsense/doubleclick/etc). So if they wanted to out somebody’s private identity they technically could by pulling the data directly from their own servers.
For the sake of argument say a company was sharing user information without user consent using the justification that the data is anonymized. It turns out that some people are ok with this, but others find it offensive that their data is being used without explicitly obtaining permission first.
Google runs their own networks, and I wouldn’t be surprised it they’re data mining the network traffic, like every other large ISP. You know, for science.
I think the Interoperable Private Attribution proposal is for a different problem.
Essentially there’s 4 groups. Let’s call them advertisers (e.g. someone trying to sell lawn mowers), spammers (Google, Facebook, etc), publishers (e.g. OS news) and victims (e.g. us).
Spammers violate privacy (tracking victims, building up a database of their habits and preferences) for the purpose of increasing profit (via. targeted advertising). The Interoperable Private Attribution proposal has nothing to do with this.
Spammers also need to convince advertisers to pay them (e.g. that the advertiser’s adverts weren’t merely blocked by the victims and/or clicked on by bots) and work out how much, and figure out how much to pay publishers to entice them to be complicit. The Interoperable Private Attribution proposal is purely about helping spammers do this.