Improving online advertising through product and infrastructure | The Mozilla Blog
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LAURA CHAMBERS, CEO, MOZILLA CORPORATION As Mark shared in his blog, Mozilla is going to be more active in digital advertising. Our hypothesis is that we n

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    1·
    7 hours ago

    You haven’t heard about the Brave ads that let you slowly accumulate tokens that you can then use to tip creators or websites? I’m not saying it was a good plan, or an ethical plan, but it was… You know, something.

    Unlike what Mozilla did, Brave didn’t enable this by default, but they heavily marketed it as a feature.

    If Mozilla implemented some kind of tipping system, that could be interesting. Apparently, such a system already could exist under GNU Taler too.

    • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      brave also used it to scam people by taking tips for creators who weren’t on the platform. if the creator never signed up, they kept that money.

      and they had an adblocker that replaced ads with their own, making the browser money instead of the site.

      they have actively contributed to making the web worse. saying “at least they’re doing something” is like praising the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of a mugger.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 hours ago

        You’re 100% right about Brave being scummy.

        And I hope my point didn’t come across as a defensd of Brave, but rather, “how is it that Mozilla is doing this thing in a worse way than a company that is infamously disreputable?”