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Comment by CrendKing | Hacker News Reader

This gives me impression like what happens to the nuclear weapon proliferation. At beginning, it is an arms race, between US and USSR, between users and advertisers. Either side thinks they can't survive without vanquishing the other. Eventually they realize it is stupid to continue, and reach a point to both step back.

I think Mozilla is at the point where they realize it is no longer beneficial to continue the race against advertisers. It is time to collaborate. This way both users, advertisers, and maybe Mozilla themselves can all benefit from stepping back one foot.

I personally support this move. Morally speaking, content creators I consume deserve income from my visit, as long as my privacy is preserved. Seems a good compromise if it works.

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> Either side thinks they can't survive without vanquishing the other.

Except, it actually is not a two way street. It's purely one way. Without users, the content sellers can't survive. But if users stop consuming ads and eliminate content revenue streams, the users will be just fine. So what if TikTok goes out of business or something?

All the failure of online advertising would mean would be regressing to a time when the internet was not very commercialized yet, which was an amazing awesome time when we had pretty much all the positives of today with few of the negatives.

They need us, but we don't need them. Big Content is a parasite.

> content creators I consume deserve income from my visit, as long as my privacy is preserved

I doubt that most people in these discussions wouldn't agree with that point. The problem lies in the details. Advertisers don't take anything less that complete personalized targeting. We are not in the 2000s era of buying ad space on related websites/forums anymore. The problem is there are misalignment between targeted ads and privacy. And I didn't find all the proposal for anonymity successful, it is always possible to de-anonmize the data.

If a website uses targeted ads and track users, they won't use the PPA feature Mozilla introduces here. So the setting won't affect user. On the other hand, if a website is not evil and willing to sacrifice revenue for better user privacy, and use non-targeted ads, PPA gives them tool to do so. In contrast, the current adblocking methods are blunt forces. They don't distinguish the nature of specific ads.

>Morally speaking, content creators I consume deserve income from my visit, as long as my privacy is preserved.

sad for the content creators (I do actievely try to donate and subscribe to quality content when apt), but I simply don't tryst my privacy being preserved any longer. So opt out of this setting and keep Adblock extension on. The well has long been poisoned for me.

But I'm also in the minority and it seems there's still enough adrev going that I'm barely an atom in the market.

> Morally speaking, content creators I consume deserve income from my visit, as long as my privacy is preserved.

For me, tracking is not my primary concern with ads: I use an ad blocker as an accessibility tool to allow me to even exist on the internet at all. I have ADHD. Nearly all content on the internet is flanked by ads that make it impossible for me to actually read or watch it—they're intentionally distracting enough to draw the eye of a neurotypical person, and it's hopeless for me.

I dread a world where even Mozilla embraces advertising and the false idea that the only thing to solve is privacy. Ads are a problem for many, many reasons, and we need to find alternative answers for funding.

I might consider it when advertisers stop using malware and spyware in their ads. There's absolutely no reason that an ad would need to run a script, contact a third-party system, or track anything about the viewer.

So far though, they show no intentions of doing non-hostile advertising. Instead they're constantly striving to make it even worse.

So I'll keep the adblocking as it remains a reasonable and necessary defense measure.

I often hear an argument along the lines "content creators should be paid for their work". I think it should be "content creators _can_ be paid for their work". "Should" implies they are automatically entitled to it.

Put content out there, if I like it, I'll pay. If it's not good enough for enough people to pay for it _consciously_, then it's not good enough, and you stop doing that. You move on to better things and so does everyone else, with the added benefit of the content pool being a little less diluted.

Coupon codes have existed before the Internet as a privacy-preserving way for businesses to track conversions for advertising. If a buyer quotes "MAGAZINE5" when purchasing to obtain a 5% discount, the seller knows the magazine advert is working. In modern times, there is nothing technologically preventing a business placing online ads with frequently changing coupon codes "HAPPY15" vs "HAPPY22" to gauge effectiveness of particular ad formats in more granular ways.

Television and radio advertising exists and has existed long before the Internet without any need for detailed conversion tracking. Brief "To help us improve our business, could you please tell us how you heard about our brand?" questions in order forms has sufficed. A/B testing of billboard placements have sufficed.

Put simply, "Privacy Sandbox" is presented as a solution to a "problem" that doesn't exist.

Coupons worked, but they can't really work now in the way they used to. People exchange codes in other information channels. Especially in the current, always-connected, high speed internet era.

Doesn't that simply turn the "other information channels" into another advertising channel? If you are putting out codes to bring in customers, and customers arrive with the code, um, mission accomplished?

Maybe, but not necessarily. These channels, like the Honey browser extension, alert users who are likely going to pay anyways, that they can use a coupon to pay less. This I think is a loss for the company, and a misrepresentation of the campaign statistics, if looking at the effectiveness of the coupon code.

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