So, read up on the #Firefox "better ad tracking" (#PPA) feature.
I'm ... not outraged? I'm a little annoyed by having it turned on by default, but I can see what Mozilla is doing here, and it's not a bad thing. If we can give advertisers what they want without losing privacy, win.
I just think that Mozilla could have sold this to the users a lot better, but that's nothing new.
@fuzzychef I'm with you on this (while reserving the right to change my mind as I learn more). I've read a bit of technical info about the #Firefox #PPA feature and I do see their case for how it could be a privacy benefit compared to typical user tracking.
In my mind, the biggest misstep #Mozilla made here was opting people in by default. Though I actually will be opting in to the PPA feature once I get access to it (again, reserving the right to change my mind as I learn more) but it does seem like a repudiation of Mozilla's principles to have this new, experimental feature enabled by default.
@diazona It only works to persuade site owners if it's on by default.
I think they should have done what they did, they just should have publicized it better. Announcing it in a Reddit thread was just dumb (and mozilla-typical)
@fuzzychef Was the goal to persuade site owners of anything though? Because that's not my understanding, I thought it was to test the feature at a technical level.
Also I thought this was being talked about long before there was the Reddit thread, at least if it's the one I'm thinking of (which was more Q&A than announcement). Definitely agreed that making an initial announcement (only) on Reddit is not cool.
@diazona What persuades site owners is their metrics.
One thing that FF struggles with is that, due to the number of FF users with ad blocking and privacy plugins FF counts get underrepresented in site stats. Which means that site owners stop caring about supporting FF, especially when Chrome is giving them the ad tracking features they think they want.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@fuzzychef @diazona site owners already don't care for FF.
the only way FF could keep any share is by catering to it's userbase, and doubling down on what these people like. everything else is bullshit appeasement to nonexisting people.
it's the same as dumbing down interfaces to make them more easy for the mysterious unicorn user who installed a software on purpose but is expecting the same ui the monopolist has. It doesn't work AND kills the existing user base.
vivaldi does this right imho. it's proprietary, but they don't do one change after another that the users hate.
