So you agree with #1 but are upset I have not provided specifics…

No; I have claimed that it doesn’t collect personal data. You’re disputing that claim, but if you can’t mention a single piece of data, then I’m not inclined to believe you. (Fakespot and Anonym are completely unrelated to PPA. I’m not necessarily interested in branching out to discussing those as well, though I expect that we’re more aligned on them anyway.)

Regarding the claim that Mozilla is good and Google is bad, that’s based on a presumption.

No, I’m claiming that Google’s actions in the past have been worse than Mozilla’s, and I have named concrete actions that Google has done that Mozilla has not.

But go on, keep on telling people to avoid Mozilla, and see if that’ll bring us a better world.

The main difference between Mozilla and Google is that Google is actually sucking up your data. For example, I can specifically mention that they’ve got stored where you log in often, what age they think you are, what gender, how rich you likely are, etc. Even if they’re completely honest about it, that’s not good. You can’t make such a list about Mozilla, and Mozilla doesn’t actively try to hide what they are doing (non-invasive measurement of ad performance).

Of course, the average user doesn’t read the release notes. (I’d go even further: the average user doesn’t read anything.) But the only reason you know about PPA, is because Mozilla explicitly called it out in the release notes, after which some bloggers decided to make a stink.

You’ve accused Mozilla of two separate things:

1. Collecting personal data (but can’t say what data)
2. Being sneaky about it (but they could just as well not have mentioned it in the release notes and you wouldn’t have known)

Of course whoever make my browser had the capability to siphon it all off. But nothing in the PPA news has given me reason to believe that is happening: nobody has pointed out the source code that does it, or intercepted network requests in which they see it happening, or even just been able to name a single piece of personal data that is apparently being sold to advertising companies. You have not done so either.

I also think that if Mozilla was trying to be sneaky, they could have done a better job than literally mentioning it in the release notes.

I’m saying it’s not collecting new personal data. It will be helping advertisers know how many of the clicks on a particular button were preceded by seeing a particular ad, but they won’t know a single thing about the people that did that.

If your argument is that nothing new is being collected, then there is no reason for Mozilla Corp to collect it and you agree with me that they should roll these changes back.

I’ll also argue that no new data is being collected for vertical tabs, but I don’t see why that should mean that vertical tabs should be rolled back.

Here’s a question for you: in what universe do corporations somehow implement Mozilla’s proprietary technology and actually increase privacy?

Hopefully in this universe, a couple of years down the road, when legislators have become confident that they can legislate away the most invasive practices without putting lots of potential voters out of a job.

Sorry, I meant: what data does anyone get through this new capability? Mozilla could always get your IP address and other connection data when e.g. Firefox checks for updates, or add-ons, or safebrowsing lists, etc. Could you name one or two things that are part of “all the advertisement telemetry” that is new?

Because advertisers already have better options.

Better in the sense that they provide the same information with privacy guarantees that are just as good?

Also, why do you need a guaranteed privacy increase? Why would we want to miss “opportunity to get us a future with improved privacy for everyone”?

Tell me, what data about you does anyone get? And why is there no benefit to legitimate advertisers who will be able to know which of their ads have resulted in sales, even if they don’t know anything about you specifically?

The draw for privacy-invasive ones indeed needs a couple of extra steps, which requires being able to see the long-term vision: having a privacy-friendly alternative available enables both legislators to enact stricter legislation, as well as decrease the incentive to keep engaging in the cat-and-mouse game with browsers, trying to find new way to violate people’s privacy.

There’s a bit in the technical explainer here. But there’s really no way for you to add details; the whole point is to share nothing about you specifically.

Mozilla doesn’t monetise this; the whole point is to change the ecosystem to enable more privacy. It’s not a moneygrab.

I see only two data leak risks mentioned:

1. The user leaks their data themselves.
2. The aggregators (one of which is Firefox, I believe) can collude to compromise your privacy.

The first doesn’t need PPA. As for the second, Firefox can already conspire to compromise your privacy, if you’re using it.

All your examples are at a way smaller scale, or rely on corporate cooperation (and we already have that in Chromium). With the exception of VLC, which is a treasure, but also has way fewer adversaries/things that will break because they don’t care about VLC.

We have adblockers. Websites keep finding ways to track us still, and/or to block people who are using them :/

My issue was with that type of sarcasm, which is why I responded with a similarly dismissive sarcastic remark.

That’s fair enough.

Sidebery is fantastic, but I do feel like it’s making things a bit slow. I might be prepared to give up on panels and nesting if I can get better performance. (And possibly the Tab Groups work can replace my use of panels.)

That’s coming: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/firefox-sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-try-them-out-in-nightly/m-p/64263/highlight/true#M22608

That’ll give you about twenty-five engineers, give or take.

OK cool, let’s conservatively say every C-suite member gets 10 million. I don’t know how many of those there are, but let’s conservatively say 10. That only leaves us with a funding gap of 400 million. Any idea how to close that?

I’d absolutely be in favour of that, preferably funding from several states. But I’d prefer getting that in place before losing the main source of income.

You’re saying Firefox could exist, and keep up with security updates and website compatibility, without being backed by money? (Or based on a couple of donations?) Any convincing evidence that could make us trust that that’s possible too?

I mean, go ahead, rethink our digital economics. While we wait for that, what do we do in the meantime?

(And of note: Mozilla itself has launched several initiatives there as well (example), but none have panned out so far.)