Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> I'm holding out hope that Mozilla and others can succeed in developing a truly privacy protecting solution

You're holding out for the feature built by former Facebook ad executives, who started the company Mozilla bought [1] to help advertisers get around Apple's ATT [2], to develop a privacy-respecting standard?

What you describe can be done. But it would need to happen at a public-interest group, e.g. Wikimedia or noyb. Not an ad seller.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-facebook-execs-launch-st...

View on HN

I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group. It's understandable that Meta's involvement is seen as a red flag, but if you want it to actually happen, part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers. In the end any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors.

> part of this process will involve cooperating with advertisers

There is a massive difference between cooperating with an advertiser and buying one.

> any proposal should be judged primarily on its merits rather than its authors

Sure. But when we're discussing hypothetical proposals, track record is all we've got.

The evidence of Google's history shows that when you buy an advertiser, you're being reverse-acquired.

> I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group

It should be but it is in bed with Google and founded by dirty money.

I mean, there seem to be some resistance internally, but the leadership seem to be bought.

Being a public interest group doesn't mean they have my interests in mind. Consider that both the National Right to Life Committee and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund are public interest group, even though they have strongly different views of what best benefits the public.

Why should we cooperate when advertisers and others didn't cooperate and respect the Do Not Track (DNT) header?

I want zero tracking and zero user profiling. I'm okay with context advertising. If the internet can't survive without profiling, then it's got a worse business model than broadcast TV.

Mozilla should be a public interest group, but it serves a mess of conflicting interests because of its structure and leadership.

A public interest group would give no quarter to advertisers.

> I consider Mozilla to be a public interest group.

It's not longer the case. It was a few years ago, but not nowadays.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com