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Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

I've changed the term "advertising" for "being racist" in one of their paragraphs to better highlight how the disconnections in this article makes me feel:

"We started [being racist] because the way the industry works today is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t put people first, it’s not privacy-respecting, and it’s increasingly anti-competitive. There have to be better options. Mozilla can play a key role in creating these better options not just by advocating for them, but also by actually building them. We can’t just ignore [being racist] — it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded. We need to stare it straight in the eyes and try to fix it. For those reasons, Mozilla has become more active in [being racist] over the past few years."

You don't fix a problem by becoming part of it. "Those who fight monsters should see to it that in the process they do not become monsters".

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You can play the same thing with 'being an saint' and the idea still works. But does the exact opposite of what you are trying to do.

it would just some more tongue in cheek ironic to be honest.

> We can’t just ignore [being racist] — it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded. We need to stare it straight in the eyes and try to fix it. For those reasons, Mozilla has become more active in [being racist] over the past few years.

You know, the websites where I was insulted and mistreated the most were also websites where memes were the funniest and advice the most effective. These are two sides of free speech; you can't have creativity and originality if you ban all posts that break certain culture's decorum.

To play the monster's advocate: There could be a hypothetical version of advertising that benefits society, the companies and the customers simultaneously. A sort of match-making between people having problems/searching for something and the solutions to them that are cost-efficient and in their interest. The thing that people do casually when someone mentions a problem/wanting a book or whatever and someone else recommending a solution, but more professional in that it also helps them picking somewhere between the cheapest and luxury options that they'll want.

But even if such a thing existed (independent product review agencies are the closest I guess) and they reaped a significant fraction of the gains from trade there'd still be the question how those gains would then end up funding other free content.

> To play the monster's advocate: There could be a hypothetical version of advertising that benefits society, the companies and the customers simultaneously.

That only would happen if Mozilla plan was to bring the ad revenue to the developers, not to Google (or themselves). There is no benefit to society to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars to Google, Facebook and the likes.

Well ideally everyone should gain from this 4-way arrangement: the producer making a transaction they would otherwise not have made, the consumer covering their need efficiently/wasting less time on something/consumer surplus, the site operator participating in allowing the advertiser to gather the data necessary to make the recommendation and the advertisier getting a commission for for coordinating all that.

Of course in the real world we get more of a mexican standoff than enlightened tradepartners coming mutually beneficial agreements.

If it results in a net reduction in [being racist] I support it.

Moz partnered with one of the most [racist groups] to produce it, and it looks very similar to what another huge [racist group] was doing, except that [group] got criticized because we already knew it was [racist].

If it results in a net reduction of [being racist] I support it.

The "if" in your statement is doing some heavy implication that this will somehow be the case.

Can you provide your opinion and some backing for it, rather than simply saying "if"?

If more [racists] move over from the [fully racist KKK] to [the half-racist new organization] than [non-racists] move from [not being racist] to [the half-racist new organization] it is a net reduction.

If the existence of [the half-racist new organization] provides [political] impetus to [outlaw the fully racist KKK] then that's very good.

Thomas Robb's KKK was literally that, since you bring it up... https://web.archive.org/web/20080515112306/http://www.jonron...

Can you please concretely say whether you support Mozilla's actual ad tracking, and your reasons? That's better than alleging something is true by repeating "if" over and over.

That's conditional on it causing a net reduction in [being racist].

You have decades of information to make an informed decision on Thomas Robb's KKK. To say something like "I support Thomas Robb if he reduced racism" is to float the idea that the Grand wizard of the Klan can be instrumental in reducing racism.

I would also appreciate if you did not keep repeating "if [baseless assertion]" over and over. It doesn't help move the conversation forward, and you might unintentionally be invoking the illusory truth effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

Fighting fire with fire?

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