Princess Pixel LightPSA when you update to Firefox 128 you might want to uncheck this
#Firefox
#Firefox
Maxi 12x 💉@pixellight Wait, what?!
Found this discussion about the 'feature': https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1dqngjy/privacypreserving_ad_measurement_concerns/
Christian Pietsch 🍑@frumble
@Privacymatters
@pixellight
I started a discussion and suggested hashtags here: https://suma-ev.social/@christian/112761712837712799
Christian Pietsch 🍑 (@[email protected])
#Firefox 128 is here. With it comes a new section in the privacy and security settings called "Website Advertising Preferences" containing a ticked box labeled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement". The help text linked there sounds promising: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution #Mozilla to provide a surveillance-free alternative to #tracking? Technical explainer: https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment What do #privacy experts think? #ppa #dap #privateAttribution #privacyPreservingAttribution
Hedders@pixellight Huh. Thing is, it isn’t an inherently horrible idea; attribution at the moment is incredibly invasive, and this alternative approach to it is much, much less so. Still, it shouldn’t be on by default, let alone without flagging it to the user first. Plus the fact that it’s something they’re working on with Meta makes me uneasy.
I Thought I Saw A 2 
@hedders @pixellight The Learn More link doesn't explain the implications of turning it off. Do I get Non-privacy-preserving attribution, or do I get no attribution at all?
Jeff Noxon@ithoughtisawa2 @hedders @pixellight And does the setting matter at all when blocking ads and trackers?
@jeff @ithoughtisawa2 @pixellight These are indeed things that they need to explain much better than they have so far!
ShadowInTheVoid@pixellight I'm torn between wanting to go back to Web1 and browsers that were designed to just display websites and just wanting to go full Butlarian at this point.
Kévin ⏚@ShadowInTheVoid @pixellight I'm tempted to just use a Commodore 64 from now on. Switch it off and computer forgets everything
Tofu Musubi@pixellight
Thanks for the heads-up!
Thanks for the heads-up!
aa@pixellight whyyy did they implement that 😭
David@aa @pixellight Mozilla just purchased their own “privacy preserving” ad company. I’m sure this is no coincidence.
mike805@pixellight Just install uBlock Origin. No idea why anyone does not have that installed.
@mike805 @pixellight I don’t have it installed because every time I’ve installed it in Firefox it’s made the browser completely unusable.
(Not looking for help, I’m not going to try again today)
Kevin P. Fleming@pixellight Thanks, and even worse: if you open Settings and type 'advertising' in the search box to find the setting, you get... no hits. Even though it's clearly there and includes that word.
@pixellight After more testing I learned that this happens because the 'search' function only looks at the names of the settings, not the names of the sections containing the settings. Since 'advertising' doesn't appear in the setting name, it isn't found. "measurement" and "preserving" do find it, but I suspect most users trying to find it would searching for 'advertising'.
Sterling@pixellight My love for Firefox is slowly waning. What a shame that most everything else well-supported is Chromium-based.
Xerz 💗@pixellight the new Mozilla CEO and her consequences have been a disaster for the human race
bluestarultor@pixellight What ads? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shinryu@bluestarultor @pixellight Right? I couldn't care less about that new option. Still have ublock origin active.
@LazyMoogle @pixellight Seriously, people can bitch about this all they want, but Firefox is going to be the only browser that still lets you block them. The Web is basically unusable without an ad blocker. I turned mine off once months ago and everything slowed to a crawl, there was barely any room for the pages, and now Google Ads is running outright viruses. Firefox can handle hundreds if not thousands of tabs with an ad blocker, but my PC would probably crash before Firefox did without one.
Jes Moved to @@pixellight this got me to reinstall librewolf again and not be a whiny bitch about default settings
JackTLadd@Privacymatters 👆 might want to have a look?
ari 
@pixellight what a weird feature to both have and make opt-out
wonder how much they've been paid to do this
wonder how much they've been paid to do this
Yoshi's Story 🦖💚@pixellight well that's annoying. thanks!
Kathy Reid@pixellight ugh such cringe
:spinny_cat_inderix:@pixellight oh neat more bullshit in a once-good browser
thank fuck Firefox forks exist
thank fuck Firefox forks exist
Wyatt (🏳️⚧️♀?)@pixellight i keep dreading having to make a new firefox build with all my patches more and more as mozilla keeps throwing more wrenches in my face
Reid 
@pixellight is this fucking FLoC?
luna the doggie 
@lunareclipse @pixellight that sounds one heck of a lot like legally distinct FLoC tbh
but by far the most concerning thing is there's few details on how it actually works and a lot of "trust us, this respects your privacy"
but by far the most concerning thing is there's few details on how it actually works and a lot of "trust us, this respects your privacy"
Kevin Karhan 
@pixellight how bad is it, how much data does it collect, is it really privacy invasive despite them claming it's not?
Seirdy@pixellight …I don't think this is a bad thing though …?
They're absolutely right in that it'll reduce tracking, and I don't mind anonymized analytics. I don't see why anyone would.
I feel like this is just another piece of needless fearmongering. What am I supposed to do, use chrome? Or one of the endless Firefox forks that amount to nothing more than changing some settings?
They're absolutely right in that it'll reduce tracking, and I don't mind anonymized analytics. I don't see why anyone would.
I feel like this is just another piece of needless fearmongering. What am I supposed to do, use chrome? Or one of the endless Firefox forks that amount to nothing more than changing some settings?
@pixellight although I do appreciate you telling people this change is coming, I'm moreso annoyed at all the comments pretending this is some sort of apocalypse. Especially the drama 
@Riedler then why did you direct that at me?
@pixellight alternative would be pinging everyone in the comments, seems like a bad idea. You just happen to have made the top post
@Riedler you don't have to @ me when you reply, your first response looks like you put words in my mouth. I don't completely agree this is not a bad thing, but it's a point I don't really want to argue, just trying to make this more visible for the folks who care because it felt buried in the change notes.
tea 
@[email protected] i haven't looked into this specifically, but most of the time “anonymized” stuff doesn't stay anonymized or never was.
@pixellight
@pixellight
ferricoxide@[email protected] @pixellight
"Anonymized" is trivially overcome with ML and large enough datasets (which most large advertising platforms have).
"Anonymized" is trivially overcome with ML and large enough datasets (which most large advertising platforms have).
@ferricoxide @pixellight I believe that to be a myth. And fingerprinting has been a thing before ML, that’s nothing to do with it.
@[email protected] @pixellight
My mention of ML is that it makes sifting through large datasets to find correlations easier than prior methods. But, believe what you want: that seems to be de rigueur for a lot of people lately.
My mention of ML is that it makes sifting through large datasets to find correlations easier than prior methods. But, believe what you want: that seems to be de rigueur for a lot of people lately.
vv221I expect that to be automatically disabled on Debian, but I will carefully double-check once Firefox 128 enters Debian repositories.
mirabilos@vv221 @pixellight Debian’s overrides have not been working for some 70+ Firefox versions, and I reported the bug but nobody cared.
I don’t get it, here they seem to work nicely. Keeping in mind that I am using Firefox ESR from the Debian Sid repositories, not the regular non-ESR Firefox releases.
Do you have an URL to share to this bug report? Maybe I can reproduce that on one of my systems, and bump the report with more details.
CC: @[email protected]
Do you have an URL to share to this bug report? Maybe I can reproduce that on one of my systems, and bump the report with more details.
CC: @[email protected]
Thanks, now that I read that I remember that I get similar problems with the search engines.
On the other hand the telemetry disabling does work, it might be done through a compilation flag rather than a runtime preference.
CC: @[email protected]
On the other hand the telemetry disabling does work, it might be done through a compilation flag rather than a runtime preference.
CC: @[email protected]
@vv221 @pixellight must be so, also given the strace; this means all other overrides from there won’t work either though
Linux and praxis: part of the resistance 🇵🇸 ☮️@vv221 @mirabilos @pixellight Using Trisquel, so have Abrowser. I assume that Trisquel will delete this 'feature'.
initOnezoh no
For I am CJ 
@pixellight
Thanks for the heads up!
Thanks for the heads up!
Mikael Gramont@pixellight I see so few people engaging in explaining why this is bad or even why this is ok. Everyone seems to be moaning and cursing, but I suspect 99% of us don't understand what this is, how it works, how it will fail if it does or why it is bad for privacy.
Also, it says they're "prototyping" so we're not quite there yet anyway.
I'm all for protecting users, but come on, this isn't helping.
Also, it says they're "prototyping" so we're not quite there yet anyway.
I'm all for protecting users, but come on, this isn't helping.
K~@pixellight
I'm still pretty happy with Firefox. But I do hope that 'Ladybird' makes good progress; just to add another independent force so that Firefox doesn't lose its moral compass.
Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄
@pixellight What the hell, Mozilla???
meisterluk
Maronno Winchester 
Graham Downs@pixellight Why would you want to deny sites the ability to see how their ads are performing without collecting data about you? That seems a bit spiteful, if you ask me. :P
Or maybe it's that they will always have that ability, but if you uncheck that box, it implies that they WILL be collecting data about you? :?
ra-φ@pixellight Why would I disable something that provides an incentive for advertisers NOT to track me?
Jure Repinc 
@pixellight That's why I switched to using #LibreWolf, It is #Firefox with all #privacy preserving features turned on by default
https://librewolf.net/
https://librewolf.net/
sotolf@pixellight Thank you :) it's done, I hate these kind of opt out things, it's really not a great thing to do to the users :/