If I get this right, facebook needs mozilla to get into a browser. I mean this is just a proposal how that all works but why shouldn’t mozilla work with the devil to get money, if they are already getting paid by the Beelzebub. Facebook has the ad network and mozilla has the browser.
Third party cookies will be gone in a year or so and now google and facebook are looking into different forms of advertising/tracking. Brave already tracks their users on the browser level and to me the proposals look like facebook and google want to do the same as brave. Observing all internet traffic and categorize the visited websites and creating a profile of the user to “serve relevant ads”. This means not only those sites that have third party cookies embedded but all sites are then considered to profile you.
How is google’s floc or facebook’s way privacy respecting? (Sorry mozilla, I only speak of facebook, because if you don’t play along, they’ll just create their own browser. you have no power here) The exact implementation doesn’t actually matter here. Let’s say I browse a lot of dog websites, and hence I am in the group of dog lovers, hence I’ll be served dog food ads. I don’t visit radical right wing sites, so I don’t get ads for a steel helmet. If I don’t get ads for a steel helmet, and I am not part of that group. Blabla … based on the recent 100 ads they served to me, they can categorize me and make a very good profile of me. I browse books? I must be an intellectual or whatever. They don’t get the exact website I visit, but they still keep on profiling me. They still get the relevant information. How is that any better? I think all those “intelligent” content algorithms are dangerous to our society. Profiling for ads is just the same as filtering the content of your news based on your interests. You’ll only be shown what you already like, you’ll live inside your bubble and read/see only the stuff you want to see.
Apple recently changed their privacy policy which leads to a crack in facebook’s earnings. Does apple care about the users privacy? No, but apple’s earnings aren’t affected. Apple gets more power over their users by reducing facebook’s power, nothing more.
Back to facebook. Facebook and other advertisers didn’t know I was browsing the archwiki, because there are no bloody trackers. Facebook didn’t even had me in their database. websites can opt out of floc but do all website owners know this? Facebook didn’t know that I was browsing xy websites because there were no facebook trackers. And now they are all over the place.
This all sounds hell to me. Yes I can just use a different browser, I can use librewolf. But can anyone who is not interested in IT just use another browser? No. Someone else probably doesn’t even know about librewolf and will use the first “privacy browser” that pops up.
If everything is stored on my device, the computation is done on my device, what does facebook need to do? Company “DogCo” requests facebook to show ads, and the user requests and ad for dogs. Facebook just brings them together. How does my browser actually know that dogwiki.co is about dogs? Hell, I browse on r/dogs, so facebook doesn’t even need to intercept SSL encryption to know that I am visiting dog sites. They just scan it client side and the result which would otherwise be computed on their server is done at my end. That sounds just like apple’s csam scanning in a different form. Facebook gets more information about me, can profile me much better, and reduces its own costs significantly. How genius is that?
Sorry that this is not a very polished post, I just want to know if I am on the wrong path of thinking here. Sorry for the english I am not a native and some links might not be the best sources but serve the purpose for anyone that didn’t know about it to have a quick look.
Tldr: i think that client side scanning and profiling is more privacy invasive than third party cookies.
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These concerns seem very well thought out.
I think, and have thought for a while, that the web is simply a sinking ship. Even using librewolf might not cut it in the future if they stop being able to keep up with the effort of maintaining a browser fork, or if mozilla gives up on firefox upstream. That’s something I’ve been fearing for a while, after seeing microsoft give up (which i assume was because of custom elements), and seeing Google throw in more features of a similar caliber (CSS Houdini).
My opinion is that we ultimately need to abandon the web and replace it with simpler protocols with more specific purposes such as Gemini for publishing documents.
I am not technical enough to understand some of what you said but you hit on one of the biggest reasons I hate these targeted ads and I don’t hear it a lot, but the “only be shown…already like…bubble” bit, this. I don’t always want ads for shit in my bubble, sometimes I want to learn about new shit ffs! That is of course but one reason, along with the general creepy factor, and the minority report 1984 ass feel of the whole concept.
It boggles my goddamn mind that “normal” people will see this shit and say “Well it sucks but I have nothing to hide anyway.” But think about if back in the day your towns general store’s owner was on your party line and would listen to everyone’s calls to try and use that info to sell you shit. Sure, it is innocuous enough, and you know that line isn’t private so you don’t discuss secret embarrassing things there, but you’d be a little mad. Well turns out he steams open your letters(PMs), too, when you post them from his store. You’d be fucking pissed, the town might get the damn pitchforks and torches! But no, it is fine when facebook/google/apple/whatever colludes and it to the entire world because “I don’t have anything to hide bro.” FUCK that, push back! Use shit that respects you!
I know I’m ranting to the choir here but goddamn I don’t get how these people are fine with all this shit.
Another thing that came to my mind. I visit frequently archwiki and other tech oriented websites. None of them contain (facebook) trackers. But they’ll contribute to the algorithm that decides which ad i’ll see.
The problem is the whole model of collecting and using data to control us. Our interests become liabilities when we are shown what we like plus a little bit of fear, comedy, and outrage.
You make some good points. I say let the FBs and Apples fight it out and let us go on with what we’re truly interested in. Use Tor and try to create the free, privacy-respecting life that you want for yourself and loved ones.
Fully agree! :)
The problem is that many people are not aware of the problem and just letting them do what they do will lead to an even darker future. China shows us for years how our future will be shaped if we don’t start fighting against it.
“Letting people do what they do” mostly translates to “let the majority of people be manipulated by those with power.” They have learned to maintain their wealth by using their influence to get people to support them more, letting them do so unchecked can not lead to any future without such gross overreach
AFAIK, in Brave data analysis is done on the client, but data never go to Brave’s servers. That’s hardly “tracking”. And it’s opt-in, if one wants pennies for reading ads.
Firefox also ships with tons of telemetry enabled by default (and default matters)
Still a disgrace.
(Case in point: any telemetry is bad)
but don’t you reveal information about your locally-generated profile via the ads you end up fetching? i think this is OP’s concern.
(iirc brave was at one time talking about maybe routing the ad fetches over tor for this reason; i’m not sure if they ever actually did that.)