
Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history - jumpwah
http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/22/firefox-will-show-ads-based-on-your-browsing-history/
======
Confiks
Maybe the more relevant page is Mozilla's own announcement, instead of some
random site. See [https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-
test...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-test-changes-
to-new-tab-in-firefox-beta/)

I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking
involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information
on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear
specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply
downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The
ad may then of course not 'phone home'.

They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be
disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of
all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at
the new tab screen.

Still, I don't really like this development.

~~~
thristian
A better blog-post to link to would be
[https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providi...](https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providing-
a-valuable-platform-for-advertisers-content-publishers-and-users/) which links
to an infographic describing how user privacy is protected:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-
data-is-protected-Infographic1.pdf)

For people who don't like infographics, there's also a textual description:
[https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-
data...](https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data-privacy-
principles-into-action/)

~~~
ama729
From your first link:

> This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state
> of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for
> advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all,
> greater control for Firefox users.

At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think
anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.

~~~
sayhello
Hi, I'm an engineer on the team working on Tiles at Mozilla.

It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change
the ad industry.

The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't
make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful
technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can
be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a
bit in need of a change.

We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that
matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is
what they need to do to achieve their goals.

We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many
people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is
important and is here to stay.

That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about
how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech.

Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove
that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the
old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of
middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built.

Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less
annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same
way they are now. They don't need to be creepy. And you know what? They may
not even be ads as you know them today.

We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would
cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being
honest?

~~~
cpeterso
> We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many
> people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is
> important and is here to stay.

How are ads in the browser relevant to websites that depend on ads for their
revenue?

~~~
rfk
It's not hard to imagine how this concept could expand to the web at large.
Rather than deciding what ad to display by consulting a user profile built on
cross-site history tracking, a site could simply ask the browser for advice on
what to show, without the site having to learn anything in particular about
the user.

Good for the site because they get better advice; good for the user because
they get more privacy and control.

(I've nothing to do with the team behind this at Mozilla, and have no idea
what their roadmap actually is. But it's pretty clear that this is just a
first step in a broader version of re-inventing advertising on the web, not a
stand-alone attempt to generate a bit more revenue).

~~~
cpeterso
Back in 2013, Mozilla Labs had been experimenting with a similar idea, a
feature called "User Personalization" (UP). It was an API that get web content
access to (user-controlled) user interest keywords, but AFAIK nothing came of
the project.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/07/25/up-with-
people/](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/07/25/up-with-people/)

EDIT: Looks like the "Firefox Interest Dashboard" add-on is a more recent
exploration of this idea, letting you explore the categorization of your own
local browsing history:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-
inter...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-interest-
dashboard/)

------
realusername
I had nothing against the sponsoring in the new tab screen but this is a bit
different. There is so much potential for backfire if they don't do it
properly. But at the end, how is that different from Google who is also
putting ads by analyzing your entire web history. The main problem is that
it's quite hard to finance their business, they are trying to do new stuff in
every direction to depend less on Google (new search partners, Read-it-later,
Firefox OS...) but it's not an easy task.

~~~
sayhello
Engineer on the Tiles team at Mozilla here.

We're trying to create a new way for ads to be targeted. In the classical
model, the server tracks wherever you've been on the internet.

Basically, to show you relevant ads, at least one entity needs to know where
you've been.

What we're trying to achieve is similar, except there is no tracking. Most of
the decisioning (e.g. which sites similar to the target group have you been on
before?) is made in Firefox.

The ad server will send many ads based on a user's geo (as determined by IP
address) and locale (browser language, e.g. en-US). This package will include
more Tiles (some are sponsored, some are not) than Firefox will decide to
show.

While we do get data based on the impressions and other interactions with the
Tile, we only get the strict minimum needed to compute our counts.

And on the topic of IP addresses, we consider that sensitive information. We
only keep the raw data for a very short while (7 days).

The only thing that is kept for longer is the aggregate data, e.g. how many
impressions tile X did on day Y.

~~~
storrgie
Can I simply ask 'why'? It seems like if Firefox has no method of guaranteeing
that an add will be placed, there is no financial gain for the mozilla
foundation.

Why would you even perceptually compromise user privacy. You have to realize
there are many using your browser with expectations of privacy. If you
perceptually damage this notion, you're going to loose mind share.

If this goes into firefox, I'll be looking for an alternative.

------
vdaniuk
Good. Non-profits with proven track records such as Mozilla are the only
entities I trust to run an ethical ad network. While I care about privacy and
have ghostery, ublock and eff privacy badger installed, I'll be making an
exception for Mozilla.

As usual, I am disappointed with the HN hive-mind myopia regarding web ads,
privacy and non-profits efforts to compete.

Also, Mozilla is respecting Do Not Track setting of Firefox users:

"* Note: if you set DNT=1, it is possible that you may not be receiving
Suggested Tiles. You can very simply enable them on the new tab page with the
cogwheel. We made the decision to opt users out of all sponsored Tiles
experiences if they have DNT=1 quite early on, as we believe that most DNT
early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences. However,
it’s important to understand that no tracking is involved in delivering
Tiles."

------
anilgulecha
You can look at it thisway -- Firefox was funding it's own development by off-
shoring it's ads to Google/Bing in exchange for funds. Maybe the world becomes
better with Mozilla directly serving ads than it's partners.

Of course, I'll be going with the adblocked community version which will be
released, with or without Mozilla's backing.

------
hsivonen
Relevant: [http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-
tile...](http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-tiles)

Key quote: "to summarize, Firefox makes generic encrypted cookieless requests
to get enough data to decide locally in Firefox whether content should be
added to the new tab page."

------
romanovcode
The problem is that nobody is funding Firefox and they need money to continue
development.

If any of you "goodbye firefox" have a better idea feel free to speak up.
Also, you can leave firefox for google, but it collects way more data anyway.

Maybe Microsoft Edge will be good so Windows users can just use default
browser.

~~~
bad_user
You're joking, right? Windows now phones home even with your "encryption"
keys, Bing search is integrated into the start panel and you're somehow hoping
that a still closed source IExplorer will better respect your privacy. My
sarcasm detector must be malfunctioning.

------
lmorchard
FWIW, I work at Mozilla, but I don't work on this particular project. But, I
care because I <3 the web.

What I think a lot of folks are missing here is that this is an attempt to
change how ads are done. Whether you like it or not, ads are how most of the
web gets funded right now.

Yes, funding Mozilla would be nice. Even better would be if ads on the web in
general were less intrusive and better respected privacy.

One of the things this _does not_ do is send your browsing history to remote
servers. Instead, the remote server sends you a pile of ads roughly based on
your location & language. The browser decides locally what to show. That's a
big change, shifting the bulk of the sensitive stuff to your own computer
instead of black boxes in the cloud.

This isn't just your usual "slap a banner on it" ad network used in all the
free mobile apps. And, if the model works in the browser, it might work on the
web too.

~~~
_up
Why not go further and give the money earned with ads in firefox to the user.
Who can then use this to directly buy webservices. This could also automaticly
be brokered by the browser. This could make webservices a comodity and give
back power to the user.

------
RobertoG
Are we sure they will be collecting data?

You could get personalize advertisements without collecting the data: the
browser has your history, it made some kind of profiling (categorize you), and
then it request advertisement for your profile.

~~~
rfk
Indeed, the whole point of this (and all the verbiage about "respecting user
privacy") is that the browser will do the analysis locally without sending
history data back to Mozilla.

------
kropotkinlives
For once, it appears Microsoft are the only browser vendor moving in the right
direction and that is scary.

~~~
kibibu
It's happened in the past. I still have positive memories of IE4 - at least
compared to the horror of Netscape 4

~~~
kropotkinlives
Fair point! I'd forgotten about Netscape 4 and eternal Bus Errors on the
SPARCstation 20 I had back then :(

------
uzero
It's not about where the processing happens or what data is actually
transmitted, it's about them pulling this type of shit without clearly asking
my permission. And it's not an excuse that Google and others are doing similar
things. If you try to win users by publicly saying you're "fighting for
privacy", you will be held against higher standards.

Mozilla failed really badly here and honestly I'm not sure if they can ever
win back my trust after this. Even though I've read through the tech docs
released and I know it's not like they are sending your history all over, it's
the way they decided to do this that undermined all their efforts so far.

~~~
RobAley
Could you be more specific about the particular aspects of the "way they
decided to do this" that you are objecting to? As a privacy advocate, I can't
see anything particuarly objectionable in their methodology.

------
kozukumi
Sigh. I was worried this would happen. I know Mozilla need to make money and
with their market share shrinking that is getting harder but these kind of
"features" put me off wanting to use Firefox all together. I would rather use
Chromium over a version of Firefox with targeted advertising built in.

For now at least it looks like being able to disable it is still possible but
I cannot find any mention if disabling this also disables the whole analysing
my history bit?

~~~
icebraining
There's no real analysis of your history, it's just selecting the top visited
links (using existing code, which is used to show you the current tiles of
visited sites).

------
raziel2p
The article says Mozilla are "doing a Google" with this, but I can't remember
ever seeing this sort of thing in Chrome or Chromium.

------
binarymax
I hate ads. I love Mozilla. I understand Mozilla needs the money. I don't mind
supporting them with cash. Why not have a freemium option for folks to
subscribe to Firefox and hide the ads?

~~~
kozukumi
Freemium wouldn't work. There will be unofficial builds available with this
kind of stuff removed available for free within hours of the official release.

They could charge for services such as sync but again that is going to be
difficult Chrome does it for free.

I think Mozilla need to seriously look at how they are spending their money as
it seems to be pretty insane some of their outgoings.

I know they are trying to diverge from just being a browser with things like
Firefox OS but we all know that isn't going to ever be a real competitor to
iOS and Android. Even in developing nations I think people are more likely to
go with a dirt cheap Windows Phone when Windows 10 is out over a Firefox
phone. One thing Windows Phone does really well is run great on very low
powered devices. I can't ever see Firefox OS getting above 0.x market share.

Perhaps Mozilla is just too big now? Do they need to scale back to save money?
Can they survive on a donations alone?

~~~
cJ0th
> Freemium wouldn't work. There will be unofficial builds available with this
> kind of stuff removed available for free within hours of the official
> release.

But how is "Firefox with ads" going to work then? Firefox is still open source
after all. Someone will remove the bit of code enabling ads, gives it a fancy
new name and eventually a critical mass will switch to this browser.

~~~
Manishearth
Firefox already has market share and momentum; a fork won't hurt it that much
unless it gives a lot of improvements.

"Firefox with ads" lets one turn off the ads. The control offered is the same
when you're allowed to download a fork. I don't see why a fork would hurt Fx
so much if it just turns a feature off by default -- a feature that Firefox
lets you turn off anyway.

------
visarga
Bad idea. I hate even the website icons from the new tab page. They sometimes
show sites I don't want to advertise (xxx). They make "new tab" work slower
and I never feel inclined to click on them.

Now they are trying to stuff even more slowness inducing ads in the new tab -
that means - exactly the moment you wan to to something ELSE.

That's the problem - when you open a tab, you don't really want to see the
ads. When you search on Google, you might want to see the ads.

------
digitalzombie
I'm okay with this.

I love firefox and was the first few when netscape open Mozilla and I jumped
on board and ditch IE5.

So far I trust Mozilla more so than Google or Microsoft on browser software.

------
learnstats2
Is there a project to make a decent browser that doesn't have any intention of
making a profit or selling out its users, and has governance appropriate to
make that a reality?

It seems like this is necessary. If I can contribute to that, pre-existing or
not, I will start today.

There are 3 billion web users: between us we must have enough altruism and
skill to compete with this.

~~~
icebraining
I'm pretty sure the browsers by suckless won't ever show ads; not sure if you
consider them decent, though.

[http://surf.suckless.org/](http://surf.suckless.org/)

------
nodata
Bye Firefox.

Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What
else do you want for the Web?" \--
[https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512](https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512)

Don't _collect_ my personal data.

~~~
icebraining
The data is collected in the browser, same as it ever was. The history is not
sent to Mozilla's servers - it's the browser that locally chooses and fetches
the tiles.

The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser
requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually
visited.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311)

~~~
nodata
Mozilla has done a disastrous job of communicating this, I hope they post
something soon.

Their last blog entry is from 18 May:
[https://blog.mozilla.org/](https://blog.mozilla.org/)

Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it:
[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/)

~~~
AaronMT
Agreed. It’s posted on a /privacy/ section of the blog
[https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/](https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/)

------
impostervt
Cached page:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/22/firefox-
will-show-ads-based-on-your-browsing-history/)

------
TheLoneWolfling
And FF forks will gain traction, and so the cycle continues.

I personally switched over to Pale Moon when the whole UI "update" happened,
and it's looking more and more as though I made the right choice.

------
belorn
Couldn't iceweasel just change the default so the ads are not shown? It is
free software and they already got experience to do changes to the code in
order to change the name and icon.

------
ama729
Who in their right mind would push such a thing? How can they think it'll will
win them any user? I have no words.

~~~
FooBarWidget
This isn't about winning users. It's about not dying. Web browsers are one of
the most complicated pieces of software in human history. Skilled developers
cost money, lots of money.

~~~
sfink
I doubt it. I'm guessing this won't bring in significant money for a while at
least, and it'll lose users in the short term. Monetizing search, as with the
Google now Yahoo deal, is where the money for developers comes from. This only
makes sense if the goal is to shake things up. What its chances of success
there are, and how positive that outcome would be, is still an unknown in my
head. But Mozilla only exists to have an impact on the Web, so it kind of
makes sense.

(I work for Mozilla, but have no special insight into this initiative.)

------
octatoan
I think we need a Firefox Edge similar to what happened with ABP.

------
nnrocks
Finally, I got someone who is respecting privacy instead of moneybag.

------
oliv__
...and I'm done with Firefox.

------
davout
Bye FF

------
mmcru
what a terrible change. i've spent the last week developing two firefox
addons; now i regret that, because i'll never use a browser with embedded
advertising.

~~~
sfink
Ok, then turn off the embedded advertising. Your users are going to continue
seeing ads all over the web no matter what browser they use, and in fact will
be tracked by advertisers (less so if they take steps to avoid it, but that's
up to them.)

------
vegancap
They're a business, just like anyone else. Unless we all start throwing
thousands of donations at them, they have to find ways to monetise to keep up
the awesome work they do. If it's both relevant and intuitive, then no harm
done. Remember, your browsing history isn't exactly a big secret. That's why
incognito modes exist in most browsers.

~~~
dannypgh
Firefox isn't a business, it's an open source/free software project. Mozilla
is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. This is an
important distinction, no?

~~~
vegancap
Not particularly, they still have to gain some form of revenue to keep their
core ventures. Their revenue in 2012 for example was $311 million.

~~~
vdaniuk
An organization being for-profit or non-profit is not particularly important
distinction? Elaborate please.

~~~
maxerickson
It's literally just a tax status.

Part of that is that no one owns the Mozilla Foundation, but, for example, the
people controlling it can still extract money by paying themselves salary.
This is how family foundations can be a tax dodge, the huge legacy is dumped
into a non profit and grows without incurring much taxes, meanwhile the family
has some meetings and draws comfortable salaries for it.

------
cmdrfred
I stopped using firefox about 5 years ago. Adblock + Chrome is the best
browser I've ever used.

~~~
mukundmr
That doesn't stop Google from reading your URL history.

~~~
cmdrfred
I don't particularly care, If I need anonymity i use tor. P.S. Are you so sure
Firefox won't be doing any tracking for 'advertising purposes'?

