They are presumably referring to SimpleX. Although I don’t actually see anyone blaming it for the existence of Nazis.
Recovering skooma addict.
They are presumably referring to SimpleX. Although I don’t actually see anyone blaming it for the existence of Nazis.
You’d be correct to point out that not all of them waste energy like Ethereum did until later in 2022 and Bitcoin still does, but wrong to pick Monero as an example of one that doesn’t.
Whether or not Mozilla chooses to issue some kind of meaningful statement about what happened beyond the boilerplate “oops, it was an error” is not up to Gorhill.
AI seems like a possibility. I find it slightly easier to believe that someone in management was stupid enough to replace human reviewers with bots than that someone in a position to decide what gets accepted had never heard of UBO and didn’t realize that it’s an important one.
Either way they really ought to explain themselves.
It’s not “handy.” It’s badly-written arrant clickbaity tendentious anti-Firefox garbage. Mozilla does plenty of stupid things. I do not understand this desire some people have to invent more. It appears that many of them have simply decided based on Mozilla’s now-discontinued efforts to improve social media that Mozilla is too “woke” and therefore the enemy, or something like that.
Wait, what? You think they’re not planning on getting paid for providing this data to advertisers?
P.S. It looks like Mozilla’s Data Privacy FAQ is going to need updating. It doesn’t even mention this stuff. As the noyb complaint points out:
- The Respondent does not provide any information at all in its privacy policy with regard to “PPA”. Neither in the general privacy policy (enclosure 9) nor in the privacy information for Firefox (enclosure 10) is any relevant information apparent.
- The last update of the Firefox privacy policy took place on May 13, 2024.
I would say it’s more of a desperate attempt to continue the current paradigm of online advertising which deems indispensable the kind of data about conversion rates to which the industry has become accustomed, despite the recognition that their current means of collecting it must come to an end.
But either way, it’s incompatible with the principles of free software. Users are not meant to put up with features that are there for the sole benefit of someone else; someone they might normally consider an adversary. The only incentive we’re given to participate in this scheme is one that resembles blackmail. Except it isn’t even advertisers saying “do this, or we’ll spy on you like usual” — it’s Mozilla saying “do this, and maybe we can persuade a few of them not to spy on you as much, and to give us a cut.”
They are selling behavioural data about their users to advertisers. People are not going to be happy with that no matter how they try to spin it.
They added a feature to track conversions among Firefox users for online advertisers. Selling it as a “paradigm-shifting boost to online privacy” while accusing others of pushing a misleading narrative is absurd.
There certainly are many people who seem suspiciously eager to find fault with Firefox. But it’s not really a surprise when its authors do things like this. They chose not to make this feature opt-in because they know that nobody in their right mind would opt into it. There is no benefit to the user in it, only risk. Mozilla seems to be leaving us to go off and join the advertising industry instead. People feel betrayed, and it feeds the cynical nihilism that comes so easily to social media users under the conditions of late capitalism.
The consequences for users of this thing in itself are fairly minimal for now. It’s the consequences for Mozilla which are something of a disaster.
I am fine with that.
Okay, but I imagine that you being fine with it will have very little bearing on the decision of the Data Protection Authority as to whether or not it violates articles 5, 6, 12, and 13 of the GDPR.
Dogshit, yes. Authoritarian, no. Word choice matters.
Self-censorship working a little too well.
I would certainly advise everyone to choose a phone with that in mind.
The desktop client is not great, but it works. There certainly are things Signal could do better. Its phone-centric nature is ridiculous and I have no idea why they cling to it. But it’s easier than trying to get everyone to use Matrix or whatever — mainly because more people have heard of it.
Be paranoid in your estimation of how much privacy you have, but diligent in your efforts to get more of it for everyone.
Yeah, Signal is good enough. If people use shitty operating systems like iOS or Google’s version of Android that’s another problem and not really one that it’s my job to care about that much. What matters is the network effect and every user who moves moves from Whatsapp to Signal is one more person who gains the freedom to easily improve their digital lives further if they someday choose to do so without it costing them the ability to chat with all their friends.
What they need to do: Ban the practice of showing ads to people based on surveillance data, for a start.
What they will do: Demand that more data be collected to determine which users are children and therefore worthy of protection.
If most pirates are the kind who sail around drinking rum and chasing booty, patent trolls are the kind of pirates who blow a big hole in the side of a supertanker to steal a few barrels of oil and let the rest drain into the ocean.
It might contribute in some small aesthetic way to deterring them, which seems a much better ambition.
That’s generous of you. If I’d mistakenly bought one that wouldn’t work without ever having a network connection, I’d be returning it and demanding my money back. Hasn’t happened yet, though.