How we’re moving forward to make ads and privacy coexist

[Jon]

Let’s talk about advertising—more specifically, how Mozilla should participate in it while staying true to our core values.  

Earlier today, Mozilla President Mark Surman published a blog post on the topic. And Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers also shared her thoughts. 

We want to hear your thoughts too. 

We are committed to doing a better job engaging with our community and keeping you informed of the work we’re doing and why we believe in it. Mozilla wouldn’t be where we are today without the support of our community members, and we want to continue working together to build a better internet for all. That’s what we hope to use this space for.  

To kick off the discussion, here are a few important points from the blog posts:

• Advertising on Mozilla products, including Firefox will remain focused on respecting user privacy. That’s table stakes for us. 
• By deploying and iterating on new technologies, we aim to improve our standardization efforts and prove that advertising can support online ecosystems without eroding individual privacy. 
• Our focus is on technologies and methods like differential privacy, encryption, aggregation, and multiparty computation, which allow advertisers and publishers to derive insights about advertising performance without sharing user data with each other.

Please check out the above blog posts and share your feedback here. Or if you have any questions, let us know. We’ll be actively monitoring the discussion and plan to share our takeaways in a follow-up post.

[onequest]

Thanks for starting a conversation about this. Honestly I don't mind having ads and sometimes even appreciate them. What I don't like is when my web experience is cluttered and poorly designed because of those ads. This is actually the primary reason I stopped using Chrome last year and switched to back Firefox after so many years without it. I use an Android device as my primary computer and was fed up with basically every single web experience feeling like a claustrophobic and trashy experience. I didn't want to read blog posts anymore, I didn't want to find recipes anymore, I didn't want to browse wiki articles about my favorite games. Literally everything was unenjoyable and I had pushed through it for years and got fed up!

Switching to Firefox has been a dream though!! I actually enjoy browsing the web again, and I never thought I would. There's nothing cluttering up the experience and getting in the way of what I want to enjoy. 😌 Thank you! All I ask is that if you're going to get into advertising that you figure out a really polished and premium way of doing it that so far I haven't seen on the web. What does that mean? Idk but it's an interesting design experiment to refine isn't it? If you can do this, I'm totally up for supporting Mozilla through an evolution like this. ✌🏼

[doodlemancy]

It really seems like you guys are just trying to do things that are inherently sort of anti-privacy (targeted advertising, AI integration) and then claiming that you're committed to doing them in a privacy-focused way, which is a bit like saying you're going to shoot yourself in the foot safely.

I get that it's tempting to stray from your core values when it'd be much more profitable to just give in and do what everyone else is doing. I don't think it's going to work out for you.

[Jon]

Hey all,

We’ve been reading your responses on how Mozilla can approach advertising while staying true to our core values of privacy and user control. The feedback we’ve received after sharing our perspectives has been honest, passionate, and incredibly helpful. So, let’s break down a few key takeaways and where we’re headed next:

• Respecting privacy is non-negotiable: You’ve made it clear – privacy is why you’re here. You only want to share data when necessary, and to have control over the data you share. 

• Choice matters: A lot of you emphasized that choice is key. We hear you. We are exploring ways to improve the experience – whether it’s blocking certain types of ads (e.g., videos) or having more customizable options.

• Transparency is vital: We will keep you informed about the decisions we’re making and why. Whether it’s a trial of privacy-preserving ad technology or a new revenue experiment, we’ll communicate openly and make it easy for you to opt out.

• Supporting Mozilla’s mission: Keeping Mozilla and Firefox strong requires funding. Some of you have said that ads aren’t the way to go, while others understand that it’s part of sustaining our mission. We’ll continue to explore ways to support our work without losing sight of what makes Firefox special – putting users first. 

• Mobile experience still has room to grow: We’ve heard feedback about mobile browsers, particularly on iPhones. While there are limitations due to Apple’s policies, we’re working hard to enhance Firefox on mobile and bring more ad-blocking and privacy features to your devices.

Keep sharing your thoughts, and helping make Firefox better. 

[Chris-Winters]

I'm going to structure this reply in bullet point form with each point responding directly to the corresponding point in your comment.

• I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we would prefer to not have to share ANY data with anyone. Unless you are going to force data brokers to profit share with us, any data collection is ethically and morally evil. We get to watch or read one piece of content once, and they get our personal data which they can sell multiple times, in multiple data blocks to multiple ad agencies and other "interested" parties. Talk about being bent over a barrel.
  
  
• We don't want ANY ads. What do you not understand about "malvertising evil". It's not a specific MEDIUM of advertising like "videos" or "banners"... it's any ad can be a scam or a link to malware.
  
  
• A key part of that "transparency" is telling your users about new "features" that may impact their privacy and security, and keeping them OFF by default so they are OPT-IN. You can start by not silently introducing new experiments and having them turned on.
  
  
• Ads are not the way to go. Despite all your talk about working with advertisers, with less than 3% market share in the browser space nobody will be inclined to take any of this seriously. They are more likely to smile and take your "less intrusive" data blocks in addition to the "big brother" data blocks they are already buying. This initiative changes nothing, except it gives Mozilla the opportunity to step into the data broker market.
  
  
• How can you possibly say you are working hard to bring more ad blocking and privacy features on mobile when more ad blocking features is directly antithetical to your stated goal of "privacy oriented advertising"? You'll need your users to see ads before you can build your data blocks to sell to advertisers. Working to make ad blocking easier and more widely available would be a self imposed obstacle making it harder for you to achieve your stated goal. I don't believe you on this one.
  
  I opened my original comment with a remark about a general respect for our intelligence being missing from this discourse and your comment proved it. My god, you really think we're a bunch of blithering idiots don't you? Did you really think nobody would see through your obvious attempt at PR spin? Your comment suggests that any feedback which cannot be worked around to still get you what you want was completely discarded. You're not looking for other options, you're just looking for a way to dress it up so it doesn't look so bad.

[doodlemancy]

LOL, the word "passionate" is a fav corpo expression for "we really wish we could do this without you guys getting mad at us." Interesting that you're actually sort of addressing this anger while completely ignoring the avalanche of rage about AI features, though.

Anyway: you've said nothing here. All you've done is restated the same vague information in a different way in hopes that it looks like you care, and you clearly don't.

[lackey]

I don't think anyone who has addressed criticisms feels heard. As others have said, this is just a restatement of the original post. If I am wrong, I would love to hear concrete changes that are going to be made. Here are a couple suggestions:

Collecting extra data should not be enabled by default. If you want to collect the data, show the user a notice and allow them to choose whether they want to send extra telemetry to advertisers, the same way Brave does. Or, if you must make it "opt out," then show a notice the same way Google does. 

The setting is also unclear and hard to understand. People may believe that disabling it could harm their privacy, when it is clear to people who have dug into your documentation that this is not the case. You should rename the option to something like "Send Data to Advertisers" or "Send Telemetry to Advertisers" and put promises regarding Mozilla's responsibility under that.

[wutongtaiwan]

I repeat, I don't want any ads, it's actually very simple and doesn't require much effort. All you need is the built-in Adguard extension. Adguard is an open-source ad blocker, which is easier to use than ublock origin, and it can be more convenient to feedback when you find that there are ads that have not been blocked, and it can be processed quickly, so I recommend Adguard. As long as you have this ad filter, you can salvage your reputation, which is equivalent to declaring war on advertisers. I recommend that you work with Adguard to optimize performance when you build Adguard.

[emberfiend]

I wish you'd treat us like adults and be clear about why you're doing this. Google holds the purse-strings. Are you trying to establish a non-Google revenue stream? Are you trying to appease them by crippling adblocking on FF? Why are you pushing pro-ad anything?

The linked blog posts are deeply disingenuous. Patreon and co have established that directly handing over money is how we support one another on the internet in a sane manner. Nobody alive wants to look at ads.

If you're seeking financial independence from Google, please just say so and launch Firefox Pro. There will be handwringing but I for one would gladly pay 20€/mo for a quality browser that isn't user-hostile. Use fair regional pricing and don't put any of the critical stuff behind the paywall. This is the only honest way to operate - ask (loudly) for cash from your users for the value you add. Extracting value from us via en****tification just makes everything worse for everyone. (Mozilla might also need to learn to run leaner without Google's money, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

The fact that you won't be clear makes me think it's option two, Google attaching strings to the cheque.

If you continue down this path and dry up all the goodwill, what's the endgame? Another undifferentiated Chrome clone in all but engine? Google gets the lion's share of the userbase (the non-tech-savvy), and the rest of us go to a fork? Is that what you want?

Your entire moat is being anti-ad (thanks to gorhill). What on earth are you doing?

...

On second thought, if you alienate enough of us, the open source forks will get more contributors. Maybe this is for the best.

[emberfiend]

This is an interesting read. I unfortunately don't understand enough about company structuring, looking up public financing etc to do more up-to-date research myself. I happen to be in favour of the spending on lefty political objectives, but wow does this look like people with too much money looking for stuff to spend it on.

The C-suite compensation is the existential issue. It sounds like a Wikipedia situation, where the C-suite ends up wanting to protect their hilariously disproportionate paychecks - at the cost of long-term sustainability or sane ethics.