this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Copy/pasting my comment from the earlier thread on this that got deleted for misinformation
After reading about the actual feature (more), this seems like an absolutely gigantic non-issue. Like most anti-Mozilla stories end up being.
The whole thing is an experimental feature intended to replace the current privacy nightmare that is cross-site tracking cookies. As-implemented it's a way for advertisers to figure out things like "How many people who went to our site and purchased this product saw this ad we placed on another site?", but done in such a way that neither the website with the ad, nor the website with the product, nor Mozilla itself knows what any one specific user was doing.
The only thing I looked for but could not find an answer on one way or the other is if Mozilla is making any sort of profit from this system. I would guess no but actually have no idea.
There are definitely things that can be said about this feature, like "Fuck ad companies, it should be off by default" (my personal take), or "It's a pointless feature that's doomed to failure because it'll never provide ad companies with information as valuable as tracking cookies, so it'll never succeed in its goal to replace tracking cookies" (also my take). But the feature itself has virtually no privacy consequences whatsoever for anybody.
I'm absolutely convinced there's a coordinated anti-Firefox astroturfing campaign going on lately.
Edit: I did a stupid. Anonym made PPA and that was part of the acquisition.
Mozilla bought an ad company (Anonym) shortly after implementing PPA. Their goal appears to be to pivot their revenue plan to (in part) being an ad company.
I cannot know for sure whether that's true or not, but a lot of very bad decisions have happened at Mozilla over the last six months and I think they've been the straw that's broken the camel's back.
Their acquisition of Anonym was all about acquiring the feature this article is about, PPA. Anonym created PPA. In fact Anonym seems to have been created for the explicit purpose of creating this privacy-respecting system as an alternative to cross-site tracking cookies. I see no reason to doubt Mozilla's intentions here.
Sorry I thought they were a separate thing. Thanks for bringing it up.