ahal

Cool makes sense, thanks for the reply! And yeah, I don't think I'm quite there yet.

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of splitting those?

I've been meaning to try Caddy, but I just can't even imagine something simpler than NginxProxyManager.

So.. You want the default to be more tracking instead and then people need to opt in to get their privacy? 🤔

You're absolutely correct.

Some folks here just want to ban ads outright, but don't stop to think what that would mean. The one that frightens me is what happens to the already crumbling news industry when they additionally lose all advertising revenue? And don't say subscriptions, because those won't come close to cutting it. Maybe a couple outlets like the Times could survive, but all the others are going under.

It's a template to help set all the security and privacy hardening features that Firefox already ships with but are disabled by default.

They didn't sell your data before

Firefox has been funded by ads from the beginning, and has had sponsored tiles (aka ads) since around 2014 I think?

I personally think there's a difference between selling ads and selling your data too. I'm going to go on a limb and say you see no distinction.

This was not about "making things better for people on the Internet," it was about a few individuals enriching themselves.

Mozilla Corp is fully owned by a non profit, so there's no owners getting rich off of any excess profits.

Saying ads are here to stay so you have to accept them or die, is an absurd false dichotomy

I'd love for nothing more than for there to be a viable alternative!

Because Firefox is funded by ads, whether it's the PPA ads outlined in this post, or search referrals from Google. Default adblocking would kill the revenue stream. Maybe Firefox could continue on with volunteers and donations, but not anywhere near its current staffing level. Eventually the engine would fall further and further behind and fewer and fewer people would use it.

To clarify.. Making a browser is relatively easy and there's lots of successful projects that do so without significant revenue. But making a rendering engine is really fucking hard and requires a ton of money to maintain.

Let's be real, there's no way PPA is going to be as valuable as the data that can be gathered by state of the art ad tech. So the ad companies that adopt this will be making a compromise to do so. How is this tech making their lives easier?

Also they have no incentive to develop this tech, so why would they? It's not like Mozilla is doing work for them that they would have done anyway. If anything they're probably worried that the tech will take off and then legislation will follow to force them to use it.

Telling advertisers to fuck off works if your goal is to create a niche product tailored to people who care deeply about privacy already. But Mozilla is very much all about trying to make things better for everyone on the internet, regardless about their opinions (or lack thereof) on privacy and ads.

Mozilla has recognised that advertising isn't going anywhere, so there's two options:

1. Reject ads wholesale and become irrelevant.
2. Push for a better alternative that can improve privacy while still keeping the engine that drives the internet intact.

What other major player would ever push for privacy preserving attribution? Hint: no one. While I get that many people here want 0 ads (myself included), PPA is a great step in the right direction, and could have a huge positive impact if it's shown to work and other companies start adopting it.

And guess what? You can still turn it off, or use adblockers. Unlike Chrome, Firefox won't restrict you in that regard.

If you're plugging a USB drive into my home server, then I have bigger problems than malware.