Mozilla acquires privacy-focused ad tech company Anonym
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
How about an open and free Internet where anyone can right click a folder and choose "share on the web"? Nginx hasn't had a security vulnerability in 10+ years that affects a basic, static http 1 site.
How about a wysiwyg editor for blog posts with some basic themes and RSS?
How about browsers with built in RSS (oops they removed that) driving a start page?
How about a browser with built in torrent/magnet link support to share videos? Have the wysiwyg editor generate magnets by default when dropping a video.
If you want to be real counter-culture, how about p2p overlay comment systems like dissenter (oops they banned that)?
They've obviously been Google's thrall/controlled opposition for at least a decade. Instead of building infrastructure to give people autonomy to share and interact directly without the control and influence of the web's Owners, the say things like
> digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free content, services and experiences.
i.e. "you need your owners". Meanwhile there are threads about how $200 mini-pcs have enough horsepower to easily serve 10s of thousands of web requests/second and you can buy 1 TB of flash for $50.
Computers are so incredibly cheap and powerful today that it is obvious that there is no vision in that organization for a "free and open Internet". Anyone familiar with tech knows mega corporations aren't needed to fund it. It's entirely about making it easy/normie friendly to self-host, which Mozilla is somewhere between uninterested and hostile toward.
There's already lots of great solutions for RSS. Ditto for torrents. You can't build a wysiwyg editor that will work across the entire web, there's countless formats which are specific to each website.
They just need to focus on building a top-notch web browser, no unnecessary bells or whistles.
If your goal is to let people self publish something like Twitter/Facebook/Substack posts with embedded video, you don't need much more than a basic rich text editor with some CSS themes (and ability to edit/share custom CSS for advanced users). No JavaScript needed (it's not like those sites let you use it).
Torrenting should have built in support. Torrent support is needed to be able to use magnet links as a src for media. RSS is less necessary, but built in support would be one component of a decent home page like iGoogle tried to build back in the day.
When i try to consider what that really means, it leads me to think it actually encompasses a large and ever-increasing scope of features that have just become the norm. Browsers are becoming almost a general purpose OS.
Also, some of those features clearly require network effect to function which entails having it officially supported and suggested to the users (or even making it default).
Presumably this "performance" refers to profits.
It's astounding that this organisation can advertise itself as a "non-profit" to create an "open and free internet". It is more like an internet advertising trade group. Making sure web browser features align with online ad services.
> By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology
I can't think of a time when any company got into the ad business without it seriously damaging that company's reputation.
I think there’s a need for a business to let customers know they exist. I’m not against ads per se, but certainly against tracking and poorly integrated and over-stuffing of ads into content. And at times I’ve wished there was a non-tracking, “tasteful” ad company.
The spying is evil. The actual messages delivered are evil. The entire industry is rotten to the core.
> The entire industry is rotten to the core.
I tend to agree.
... but isn't a search engine's response basically a pull? You've explicitly stated that you're interested in X by searching for it. "An x" vs "The x" is of course relevant, but you can't reliably infer that.
Or do you mean that the difference is whether you're looking in advertising-focused places? Like having a dedicated "include ads" option on search or something.
There are other issues but not so much privacy. For example a self-hosted ad platform which offers to run ads based on internal browsing profile would be let through at this site at least. In reasonable amount, bandwidth overhead and annoyance to the human. The issue currently is that there seems to be much more money in selling all the data outright - and that gets a sharp no.
if it's 100% private (e.g.: users are not at all identifiable) then it's probably ok... but i'm not sure it will be 100% private...
Google at least shows lengthy detail about their cookie approach; this Anonym has nothing on their website.
"privacy-focused", "ad tech company". Chose one. /s
Mozilla has become a bunch of ad supported grifters. Time to fund a real replacement.