Jonathan Kamens: "It has come to my attention that many of the people complaining about Firefox's PPA experiment don't actually understand what PPA is…" - federate.social
It has come to my attention that many of the people complaining about #Firefox's #PPA experiment don't actually understand what PPA is, what it does, and what Firefox is trying to accomplish with it, so an explainer 🧵 is in order.
1/?
#privacy #advertising
Original toot:
It has come to my attention that many of the people complaining about #Firefox's #PPA experiment don't actually understand what PPA is, what it does, and what Firefox is trying to accomplish with it, so an explainer 🧵 is in order.
Targeted advertising sucks. It is invasive and privacy-violating, it enables populations to be manipulated by bad actors in democracy-endangering ways, and it doesn't actually sell products.
Nevertheless, commercial advertisers are addicted to the data they get from targeted advertising. They aren't going to stop using it until someone convinces them there's something else that will work better.
"Contextual advertising works better."
Yes, it does!
But, again, advertisers are addicted to the data, and contextual advertising provides much less data, so they don't trust it.
What PPA says is, "Suppose we give you anonymized, aggregated data about which of your ads on which sites resulted in sales or other significant commitments from users?"
The data that the browser collects under PPA are sent to a third-party (in Firefox's case, the third party is the same organization that runs Let's Encrypt; does anybody think they're not trustworthy?) and aggregated and anonymized there. Noise is introduced into the data to prevent de-anonymization.
This allows advertisers to "target" which sites they put their ads on. It doesn't allow them to target individuals.
In Days Of Yore, advertisers would do things like ask people to bring newspapers ads into the store or mention a certain phrase to get deals. These were for collecting conversion statistics on paper ads. Ditto for coupons.
PPA is a way to do this online.
Is there a potential for abuse? Sure, which is why the data need to be aggregated and anonymized by a trusted third party. If at some point they discover they're doing insufficient aggregation or anonymization, then they can fix that all in one place.
And if the work they're doing is transparent, as compared to the entirely opaque adtech industry, the entire internet can weigh in on any bugs in their algorithms.
Is this a utopia? No.
Would it be better than what we have now? Indisputably.
Is there a clear path right now to anything better? Not that I can see.
We can keep fighting for something better while still accepting this as an improvement over what we have now.
And what is the advertising industry doing to earn back the trust that they've eroded with their incessant, relentless abuse over the entire life of the Internet?
Completely facile argument, right there in the last sentence.
We can keep fighting for something better while still accepting this as an improvement over what we have now.
YOU BUILT THE FUCKING THING. Just turn it off and go away. Tada, we now have something better: no privacy-violating data at all.
Who's forcing you to make advertisers happy? Don't answer that, because I don't care. You can't pretend to be about privacy and then build things that help advertisers violate it.
This one's also pretty funny btw:
If at some point they discover they’re doing insufficient aggregation or anonymization, then they can fix that all in one place.
Advertisers don't give a shit. They have zero motivation to fix anonymization. They're not going to HELP us get rid of privacy violations.
This is bullshit. The total amount of advertising I want is zero. The total amount I want of tracking is zero. The total amount of experiments I want run on my data without consent is, guess, zero.
Man alive, I thought that Mozilla had been doing their own Personal Package Archives so that we didn't have to deal with Ubuntu packaging it as a Snap anymore. And this is doubly disappointing.
The data that the browser collects under PPA are sent to a third-party (in Firefox’s case, the third party is the same organization that runs Let’s Encrypt; does anybody think they’re not trustworthy?)
I wouldn't trust anyone with data this valuable, and even assuming they're trustworthy now, who knows if they'll be in a year; especially with how much "interest" they gain by now handling this data.
and aggregated and anonymized there.
I'm just supposed to believe and trust that they will do that?
Is there a potential for abuse? Sure, which is why the data need to be aggregated and anonymized by a trusted third party.
A "trusted third party" does not exist, and will never exist.
Is this a utopia? No. Would it be better than what we have now? Indisputably. Is there a clear path right now to anything better? Not that I can see. We can keep fighting for something better while still accepting this as an improvement over what we have now.
Or I can tell advertisers to eat shit and give them nothing, like I've been doing my whole life. Has been working well so far.
What the heck Mozilla? The people complaining are the ones who understand it. Anyone who thinks this is ok is either a die hard Mozilla fan or doesn't understand what it does. This is targeted advertising. You know how companies target vulnerable minorities? That's what this enables. It isn't just about "privacy" as targeted advertising is dark in many other ways.
Why wouldn't you bring all this up before you shove it into the browser to be discovered later, and make it the default? Whoever thought this was a good idea should be shot with a ball of their own shit.
Well maybe if you had been fucking transparent about what you were doing, this wouldn't be an issue, you condescending, prevaricating, hubristic jackass.
They keep saying many words waving hands frantically and people still don’t like it. I bet if they explain 10th time with colourful diagrams and 3 minute whiteboard explainer video people still won’t like it. Such an ungrateful crowd
You need hands on workshops, we will organise them with foundation budget. That will surely explain things sufficiently. We will also give out informational flyers in small communities to foster local enlightenment.
It has come to my attention that many of the people complaining about #Firefox's #PPA experiment don't actually understand what PPA is, what it does, and what Firefox is trying to accomplish with it
The documentation under the "Learn more" link next to the "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement" checkbox in Firefox preferences explains very clearly what it is and how it works. Asserting that people who read that and are indignant about it being enabled by default just... "don't actually understand" it is absurdly insulting and basically gaslighting.