
Mozilla Presses Pause on Facebook Advertising - doppp
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/03/21/mozilla-presses-pause-facebook-advertising/
======
tardygrad
One of the first things you see on that page (on mobile), even above the
headline of the article, is a Facebook share button.

Facebook has its claws in deep. De-Facebooking the Web isn't going to be a
simple task.

Bit of hypocrisy to say 'we're not advertising on Facebook anymore' while
leaving those buttons in place. Would be ironic if people shared this article
on Facebook.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Is there a way to put a "Follow us on Facebook" button without a FB tracker
script?

~~~
gkoberger
<a
href="[http://facebook.com/yourpagename">Follow](http://facebook.com/yourpagename">Follow)
us on Facebook!</a>

~~~
sundvor
Gold. :-)

Should probably be [https://](https://) though!

~~~
gkoberger
Why bother? They're gonna just share your info with everyone anyway ;)

------
jey
But wasn't it obvious to everyone who glanced at the Facebook API back in 2014
that it was trivial to gather tons of information, and all they asked you to
do was to clickwrap promise that you'll be a good boy/girl?

~~~
milankovic
Yes, exactly. Really shocked, shocked to learn that there was some web
scraping going on..

~~~
smsm42
In light of articles like [https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-
director-f...](https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/)
the quote is even more appropriate.

------
jakecopp
I find the danger with ad blockers is they hide the true extent of the
tracking from me, because I never see the results.

I've now sandboxed Facebook (and others) in container tabs in Firefox so no
cookies go in or out, along with uBlock Origin to whitelist JS per site.

~~~
akkat
Can you elaborate how you sandboxed tabs in Firefox? I use incognito when
using Google or sites that use Facebook commenting on order to lower the
tracking ability, but sandboxing sounds better.

~~~
jakecopp
I make one "Container" per account, and then visit the page in question and
tick "Always open in $CONTAINER_NAME. Then when you sign into Facebook, any
other domain won't get the cookie.

Then get Cookie AutoDelete, tick "Enable Support for Firefox's Container
Tabs", and whitelist the cookies you need to sign into those sites.

Combined with uBlock Origin it's the best setup I've found so far, though
Firefox Quantum destroys my MacBook's battery.

I used to have Safari and Safari Technology Preview to keep good battery life,
with only one browser signed into Google, FB and others but I still noticed
some searches into the non-signed in browser leaking to FB - I have a feeling
the two browsers share some state.

If anybody knows an improvement for Firefox's battery usage on macOS I'd love
to hear!

------
dahdum
Didn’t Mozilla side load a Mr Robots extension ad and silently install Cliqz
adware onto German users? IIRC the Cliqz extension sends all your browsing
history to them.

~~~
kuschku
Yes, they did, and it caused Mozilla to lose almost a quarter of their German
marketshare in a few months.

The CliqZ debacle was insanity, considering that Burda, the parent company of
CliqZ, is mostly known for its ad and tracking networks, and its clickbait
tabloids.

------
rdiddly
With advertisers pulling out, this is officially turning into a shitstorm. But
it's surprisingly frustrating watching everyone slowly catch on to what I had
already figured out 8 years ago about the nature of Facebook. Even more so
when I think about all the people who'll just go right back when the outrage
dies down.

~~~
adventured
It's really not turning into a shitstorm. People are comforting themselves by
telling themselves that.

Here's what is going to happen.

\- Facebook's finances won't be meaningfully impacted at all. Advertisers are
not going to abandon FB in any consequential numbers. They'll spit off ~$21
billion in net income in 2018 and end the year with around $50 billion in
cash. One of the richest corporations in world history, at the age of 15.
Comparable to the income production of Microsoft, a juggernaut that is 40
years old.

\- Zuckerberg and Facebook will go to Washington, so to speak. They'll bow
down as the powers want them to, pledge changes, blah blah blah. We're so very
sorry we helped Donald Trump to get elected, we promise it won't happen again.

\- Some new monster US Government bureaucracy will be crafted. It'll
simultaneously be claimed to protect privacy while assisting the government in
further abusing it. The Digital Protection Agency. It will also make
compliance increasingly costly and difficult, benefiting the existing tech
giants, entrenching their positions against start-up competition. This will
increase stagnation. [1]

\- A very tiny, entirely meaningless, portion of Facebook users will quit. It
will be 1% or less. Most people don't care. Even the ones that do, will
overwhelmingly continue using the platform to broadcast their opinions or
photos or just to communicate with friends & family generally.

\- Political speech and political advertising will be further restricted
online. The big tech platforms will become regulated stand-in government &
political party censorship systems, as with traditional broadcast media of
past generations. This is aggressively being put into place now, across every
major social network. They're all going to comply willingly.

\- Political power, and the power of these tech giants, will be more
entrenched than ever before. It will become even harder to unseat those
already in power. The duopoly politcal party system in the US, will ensure its
survival at the top of the food chain and will regulate the platforms to their
benefit, as was the case with traditional media. Again, this is taking place
right now. Nothing will prevent it.

As the tech giants increasingly pledge fealty - while on their knees begging
forgiveness - to the existing political system in DC - the two parties - their
survival will be guaranteed and protected through regulation and favors. This
is tradition at this point, going back nearly a century. The powers that be in
Washington don't care who wins in tech, or how much money the winners make,
they care about obedience to their agenda of maintaing control & power.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/paul-
ford...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/paul-ford-
facebook-is-why-we-need-a-digital-protection-agency)

~~~
smsm42
> It will be 1% or less.

1% is like 10 million. More like 0.001% or less. I know many non-tech people
using FB. I don't know any of them who considered quitting FB because of such
concerns and it's unlikely they would. I mean, they can feel concerned or even
outraged about FB shenanigans - just like when they hear yet another
politician has been caught stealing millions or harassing employees or selling
his vote to the highest bidder - but they don't move to another country
because of that.

Otherwise, your bleak picture seems to be entirely correct.

------
pimmen
Initiatives like this is what really makes the big tech giants change. Google
and Facebook sees you as the product, when you switch services it's not really
the end of the world. Keeping you on their platform is a cost.

To cover this cost and profit off of you, they need advertising dollars. Those
entities are the real customers and Facebook and Google _must_ keep them on.
And this relationship is one of the reasons I think Google and Facebook are
overvalued because Wall Street doesn't see the parallel with other industries
and how their brand has suffered from lack oversight.

When H&M was found to be using child labor in Pakistan we didn't allow them to
get away with excuses about "oh, we produce so much clothes, we can't just
switch" they had to promptly tell us what their exit strategy was from that
textile provider. Imagine Wells Fargo is found to have bought adds from Google
that was featured on an site for Holocaust denial or ISIS recruitment, really
bad stuff. Imagine the reporter asking if Wells Fargo supports ISIS and they
would answer "of course not, we have no idea where Google will feature our
ads, we only know what target demographic we bought" to which the reporter
could reply "so, will you make Google guarantee you won't be funding Islamic
extremism? Or will you be moving off of Google soon and start buying ads from
local newspapers where you know for a fact they won't publish ISIS recruitment
or Holocaust denial pieces?".

When it starts sinking in for the Fortune 500s what they're really buying
Google and Facebook will find that quality control is a lot more important and
expensive than they previously thought.

------
goombastic
Not sure how many of you run pihole and check the logs. The number of sites
tracking people is crazy. To top it, devices and android phones in particular,
seem to be doing it a little too much as well. I tried using mi phones for a
while and decided to stop after looking at my logs.

~~~
abtom
This is why I always buy phones that allow me to flash my own ROM.

That way you only have Google (and whatever apps you decide to give access to)
tracking you and not your OEM.

------
jakecopp
Is this purely a symbolic move?

Do you think other people will follow or is this a statement of position?

~~~
JeremyBanks
I see a lot of Mozilla ads on Facebook, for what it's worth. Enough that I'd
assume this is a somewhat significant move for them.

~~~
z3t4
What kinds of ads do Mozilla have ? Ḯ'm a bit surprised that they advertise
at all.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Mostly they focus on their privacy initiatives and features. Not just Firefox
directly, but other projects to build brand affinity or something.

I'm afraid I can't go check what ads I saw, since I just jumped on the
bandwagon and deactivated my account.

~~~
z3t4
Before you deactivate, set a unique password so it doesn't get hacked. One day
I got asked if I had re-joined Facebook supposedly I was making posts about
food supplements ...

~~~
JeremyBanks
Prudent advice. Thankfully, I already had, and it's nicely locked up in
1Password. :)

------
_Codemonkeyism
I always wondered why Facebook did not buy Opera.

~~~
Method-X
And thank god they didn't.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Yes.

------
bwang29
Would it be possible to have "parental ratings" on ads for adults? The problem
with advertising is once you've seen it, there is few methods to unsee it (you
could probably argue some hypnotherapy can do).

By forcing someone to see an ad without a prior approval of the viewer, it's
also forcing someone to passively memorize some sort of information. And in
some maybe not-too-distance-altered-carbon future, violate their right to
forget the ad (as there is no such method you can pay for forget seeing an
ad).

What if instead of having a button on an ad to say "Do not show me ad like
this", instead having all ads start with a button/muted dialog such as "We
like to show an ad of this sort, and it will likely create light memorization,
strong persuasion with heavy text but little colorful graphics".

I'm really thinking the events going on right now can create some new
opportunity to reimagine how the relationship between ads and viewers could
work out.

~~~
jakecopp
If this did happen Facebook would quickly figure out exactly what ads you
like/make an impression on you, which is just more ammunition for adtech.

------
dingo_bat
Mozilla is funded by Google, who desperately wants to dethrone fb. So it's not
surprising.

~~~
roryisok
Is that still true? I thought Google stopped funding Mozilla recently.

Edit: Just checked, they had a deal with Google until 2014 when they signed
with yahoo instead. As of 2017 they switched back to Google as the fault
search engine but there's no info on Wikipedia at least about whether or not
they get money this time around

~~~
dingo_bat
Of course they get money. Otherwise why would they set google as default.

~~~
isomorphic
Absolutely. You can see Mozilla attribution in the Google URLs. (Unless you've
modified your search engines--which Mozilla has made harder to modify.)

~~~
dingo_bat
They have indeed made it a lot harder to modify. And even harder to set it to
Bing! Earlier it was just a dropdown in settings.

~~~
roryisok
Uh, i thought it was easier? All the options for search engines are in the
results in quantum

