this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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Another day, more Mozilla FUD. I just saw the switched on Linux guy posted some too. They arent a perfect company, but lets not pretend they're exactly like google or a mini google. It feels almost coordinated to get you to feel like all companies are compromised, so you should just use the popular thing and forget about privacy and security.
People are criticizing Mozilla for the ads, tracking, and AI stuff. The stuff Google does. Criticizing Mozilla is not an endorsement of Google, in fact quite the opposite.
Their ad metrics thing is 100% private. Nobody, not even Mozilla, can tie the data back to you. Each data point is packaged separately (so that you can't get all of it and easily work out who it is). Mozilla created an effective way to have genuinely privacy-respecting and metrics and they're hated for it.
I don't like ads, I use an adblock, but the internet runs on ads. Ads unfortunately have to exist if we still want all this online content, and if they do exist, they should be private.
With any hope, the likes of the EU will push for this over the kinds of ad systems that Google and Meta push.
As for the AI integration in Firefox - it runs locally and does stuff like offline translation (i.e not sending the contents of the page to Google translate), as well as enhanced screen reader functionality for blind people. Stop trying to equate it to the likes of ChatGPT.
I DON'T want all this online content. I'm not on instagram/facebook/tiktok/whatever two-word website/app the next generation will worship. I don't tweet. I don't follow influencers. The media I consume is mostly youtube, and even that's been recently decreasing. The internet can die tomorrow and I won't miss anything that ran on ads, the biggest impact would be that now I can't buy things online so I'd need to physically purchase some items.
Fuck this version of the internet. If there's ever a moment that adblockers stop fighting the good fight, I'm cutting costs and just not paying for internet anymore. It's not worth it.
Ok. But that is just you personally, and the internet carers to far more than just you.
Which is ad-based, even if you and I likely use ublock.
You won't miss any YouTube content? Really? There's not a single YouTube channel you like? You won't miss hundreds of news websites? Game mod websites? Sites with Old game archives? Etc etc.
Ok whatever, let's assume that's right. It still doesn't change anything. You feeling that way doesn't mean ads will no longer exist.
Ads will exist regardless of your feelings on the matter, because so much of the internet is reliant on it. With that in mind, surely you'd rather ads not be the privacy nightmare they are right now, no?
I feel like people are shitting on a real improvement to the way things currently are in order to fawn over a completely unrealistic change. In other words, letting perfect be the enemy of good.