
An Open Letter To Mozilla Corporation - wh-uws
http://www.iab.net/mozilla_petition/
======
elehack
It doesn't speak well that the first item of their FAQ is patently false.

> Q. What is Mozilla doing that is causing concern?

> A. On February 25, 2013, Mozilla announced intentions to block all third-
> party cookies by default in upcoming releases of its Firefox browser. Only
> first-party cookies would be allowed.

No, they are not blocking all third-party cookies by default. They are
blocking all third-party cookies from non-visited sites. google.com can track,
doubleclick.net likely can't.

There is an interesting discussion to be had about tracking, cookie policy,
defaults, etc., but making false representations about what is actually being
proposed is not a good way to have that discussion.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
That FAQ is full of misinformation and poor writing. The second point ("What
is a cookie?") includes:

"To personalize your web browsing experience and to make the Internet work
operationally,"

Make it work 'operationally' as opposed to ...? Anyway, as we all know,
cookies aren't a requirement for the Web to work, let alone the Internet.

"websites you visit"

Correction: _some_ websites ...

"place (or allow their approved partners to place)"

No mention that 'approved partner' is utterly meaningless

"a small harmless file, called a "cookie", in your browser."

Congratulations - apart from the slightly strange use of the word 'in', this
is correct

"Cookies contain numbers and letters that identify your web browser, but not
you personally."

Just utterly wrong

It does not contain your name, address phone, email or other information that
can personally identify you."

Well, 'it' could, of course, so another meaningless statement

"Companies use cookies to learn more about user interests through users’ web
browsing activities and to remember the preferences you set on their sites,
such as the language you like to read, the last items you purchased, and the
resolution at which you likes (sic) to watch videos."

"you likes" - seriously? Is this organisation just a kid in his bedroom?

"For example, a cookie can tell a website that you’re a repeat visitor, and
then can let the site fill in your username for you."

As, of course, can your browser.

The fact that these people obviously have very little understanding of the
issues they're talking about just convinces me we need responsible
organisations like Mozilla to help prevent them from exposing us to privacy
and security risks.

~~~
subpixel
"The fact that these people obviously have very little understanding of the
issues they're talking about just convinces me we need responsible
organisations like Mozilla to help prevent them from exposing us to privacy
and security risks."

Amen.

------
babarock
It seems to me that this letter seems to care about everyone ("ad-supported
small businesses", "advertisers", "website owners", "Ad networks", "small
publishers") except for the one who matters the most: The User.

I'm not going to say what Mozilla should or shouldn't do in this case. They
know better, and more importantly, they are free to do what they want. I just
want to point out to IAB, whoever they are, that if they want to make an
appealing argument, maybe put the user forward?

~~~
thirdstation
They _did_ include you:

> and the millions of consumers who enjoy the diversity of content and
> services the internet provides

(Ignore the small-i internet typo).

Do they mean to suggest that millions of consumers enjoy advertising? Thank
you for thinking of me IAB!

~~~
amitparikh
I don't think they mean to suggest that all users "enjoy" advertising, but it
IS a reality of the current state of Internet monetization economics that
advertising plays a large role in allowing, in IAB's words, the "long tail" of
the web to operate in the near-term and grow in the long-term.

~~~
thirdstation
> I don't think they mean to suggest that all users "enjoy" advertising,

I don't think so either :-) I was merely poking fun at the way they co-opted
the entire Internet in an attempt to make Mozilla seem like they are on the
wrong side of the issue.

They would be more genuine if they wrote an open letter to the Internet
instructing how to re-enable third-party cookies in Mozilla and why they are
good (according to the IAB).

------
Millennium
Even a 1% success rate is considered phenomenal in the advertising world, and
as annoying as the ads became, it is true that tracking and targeting
increased the value of ad impressions significantly when they were first
introduced. The same is true of annoyances: popups, audio, and such: they
simply worked.

But the people are speaking out. They don't want to be tracked by marketers,
and they have been putting considerable effort into blocking the tracking
efforts. Some estimates claim that as many as half the browsers on the Web now
have some form of ad-blocking installed, and while the actual numbers probably
aren't THAT high, it's not unreasonable to think that maybe one-quarter, or
even one-third, of people may be blocking ads because of the annoying and
tracking behaviors that advertisers have come to rely on.

When one takes this into consideration, surely it must be the case that
annoying and tracking are now hurting advertising revenue far more than they
help. It is, perhaps, time for advertisers to buck that trend: a return to the
mass-marketing model that built media empires as recently as fifteen years
ago. Or perhaps it is time to turn to a new kind of targeting: rather than
going after individual users, target the sites themselves, directing
advertisements to users based on the common interests that drive them to the
places they go.

Imagine an advertiser that used such a model or something like it, and in
return, pledged not to track or annoy the people who see its ads: a sort of
"DuckDuckGo of advertising." Would you whitelist that advertiser in your ad-
blocker? I would, and I doubt that I'm alone. I don't block ads just to stick
it to the advertising agencies; I block them to make the Web usable and safe.
Many people do. I wonder if a business model could be built on those people.
Maybe even one that, on account of its wider viewer base, could eclipse the
current tracking/annoyance models.

~~~
rgbrgb
The unfortunate truth is that tracking and individual targeting improves CTR.
Advertisers pay for clicks. Until someone comes up with a more profitable
metric, they're not going to stop tracking.

~~~
Millennium
Certainly those behaviors improve CTR, but they do so at the cost of a
shrinking viewer base: drastically shrinking, in fact, and it's about to
shrink even more. Is the current point in the market still at a point where
the improvement in CTR outweighs the decrease in audience?

~~~
rgbrgb
If you can put numbers to that argument, then advertisers will stop tracking
tomorrow. There's nothing malicious going on, just business.

------
jeena
We need an open letter to mozilla in which we support their decision to block
all third party cookies.

~~~
jf
You should do this and post it to Hacker News.

~~~
jeena
I feel I'm not that familiar with the matter so I would be able to make a real
case.

------
eykanal
If your business model is built on a widely disliked revenue stream (read:
online ads), perhaps it would be wiser to revisit your business model than to
write open letters asking the disliked behavior to be continued.

------
orillian
Out of curiosity, the company that I work for uses a cookie inside an iframe
as part of an embedded version of our web application that users can drop into
their website. Our Safari users is less than half of one percent and we had
not received any feedback about this until just recently.

In our searching we came across this change to third party cookies from
Mozilla. We have a much higher 15% of our user base that uses Mozilla and this
is now a bit of a concern.

We use php for our backend code and need to come up with an alternate solution
to this since blocking the cookie effectively breaks our user seasons.

Would anyone have any suggestions as to what our best course of action would
be to mitigate this problem prior to Mozilla pushing this change live?

~~~
cpeterso
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags>

------
jccalhoun
"Mozilla, if you act on your plan to block third-party cookies in your Firefox
browser, thousands of ad-supported small businesses like us may be forced to
close."

Yes, small businesses. Like the ones the people on your board of directors
work for: <https://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/iab_board> like IDG, NBC
Universal, Ziff Davis, Microsoft, New York Times, Weather Channel, Facebook,
Forbes, Conde Nast, AOL, and pretty much all the most popular sites in the
english-speaking part of the internet...

------
richardwhiuk
Safari already does this in desktop and mobile browsers - what's the big deal?

~~~
khuey
The big deal is that Safari desktop has no users, and people are still
struggling to monetize ads on mobile where Safari has users.

~~~
cpeterso
Are advertisers struggling to monetize mobile ads because they don't realize
iOS is blocking their third-party cookies?

------
brownbat
I browsed for years before ads were practical, and most of my traffic today
goes to Wikipedia, HN, or Netflix. When did we take it as a given that NOTHING
GOOD happens online without advertising?

Sure, people want to build a business using advertising, I don't want to stop
them. But packets are fickle. Some people will ignore, block, or just never
get your ad. You have to accept that as a cost of your model, not a flaw in
the network. We shouldn't drop everything to support your model, because some
of us are actually using this network for other things.

There's another assumption at play, that advertising networks simply can't
operate without third party cookies (from previously unvisited domains). I'm
sure we'll find, rather than simply leaving all those dollars and eyeballs on
the table, someone will come up with _something._

------
laurencerowe
I predict that this will just encourage advertisers use other means to persist
user data. E-tags should be an almost drop in replacement.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags>

~~~
lukifer
Not to mention evercookies: <http://samy.pl/evercookie/>

(I'm still surprised that those don't show up often in the wild as it is...)

------
tptacek
Here is the IAB's leadership. Note company affiliations.

<http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/iab_board>

------
artificialidiot
Dear small online ad businesses,

Forward your thanks to the intrusive ad networks, spammers and other cretin
who've been treating users badly for the last few decades, attracting hostile
attention to the advertising practices.

People woke up to the fact that they are in control of the content coming
through their wires thanks to the versatility of the contemporary computers.
There is no return.

You should embrace current realities of the market you so love to invoke for
every other subject and start innovating and distrupting. Failing that, stick
with the proven ad channels such as iDevices, other locked down devices,
social stalking services, local tv and radio channels and papers.

You won't be missed.

Sincerely, Internet users

------
gluxon
I fail to understand how blocking cookies on websites you have never visited
before is harmful to "innovation", "education", "entertainment",
"entrepreneurship", and "millions of consumers". Cookies exist as a mechanism
for websites to store data. They're used to keep you logged into your
Facebook, Google, Twitter accounts. They've have gotten bad reputation over
the years due to the ability for arbitrary websites to set them as tracking
information. Mozilla's decision here helps retain the original purpose of
cookies. Sites you have never visited before have no business leaving session
data on your computer. It is just illogical.

Additionally, blocking arbitrary cookies doesn't hinder advertising at all.
Nothing in iab's entire letter even made the slightest bit of sense. The
entire thing is filled with awkward phrases and confusing reasons that don't
tie together. It wouldn't be a stretch to say the entire thing is written to
confuse the reader. I'm disappointing this is on the front page. :(

------
hackernewbie
The most interesting part of this article is how entirely openly it's
indicating that a default setting that can easily be changed in a web browser
will be left by virtually all users permanently. Of course it's true, it's
just so odd to see written down so explicitly. To an extent I kind of feel
that if people seriously won't investigate the option themselves then upon
their own head be it. But at the same time it ahouldn't be opt out, this kind
of thing should never be opt out.

------
RRRA
So advertisers get upset and want Mozilla to support user spying for better
targeted ads?! That doesn't sound cool, only advertisers are signing this.
Can't they have ads targeted by clientele of the site? No need to track people
for that.

------
alistair77
some of the faqs are ridiculous; apparently blocking some 3rd party cookies by
default goes against users freedom of choice yet enabling them by default is
great for user choice!

------
l0c0b0x
"Oh, would somebody PLEASE think of the advertisers!"

Hmm... building the internet _not_ particularly thinking about the ads on a
website sounds good to me.

------
webwanderings
I disabled third party cookies in Chrome on my own and I don't see nothing
wrong with my experience of web browsing.

------
Shamharoth
Less advertisers ? Good riddance.

------
laurentoget
This is the most orwellian thing i have read in a long time.

------
general_failure
Obligatory obvious question: What is a 3rd party cookie?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
A cookie that is sent from a domain via a page hosted on a different domain.

