Mozilla proposes that browsers may share user interests with websites
The web browser knows a lot about your activities. While those information are usually kept locally available only, for instance in form of the visited site history or local Internet cache, it is fairly certain that some of the information are snagged away by companies interested in these kinds of data, for instance in form of third party cookies.
A recent article on Mozilla Labs by Justin Scott proposes a system where the web browser, Firefox for example, could share information about your interests with websites that you visit so that content can be personalized for you.
What this could look like? You select to share interests with a website, say in technology or mechanics, and that website will provide you with content tailored to those interests. The technical side of the approach may work well depending on the granularity of options and how those websites make the content available.
For example, let’s say Firefox recognizes within the browser client, without any browsing history leaving my computer, that I’m interested in gadgets, comedy films, hockey and cooking. As I browse around the Web, I could choose when to share those interests with specific websites for a personalized experience. Those websites could then prioritize articles on the latest gadgets and make hockey scores more visible. Destinations like the Firefox Marketplace could recommend recipe and movie apps, even if it’s my first time visiting that site
I can hear some alarm bells going off right now and that is also one of my main concerns in regards to the proposal. While Mozilla promises that users will be in full control over their interests and what they share and with which website, it is likely something that at least part of Firefox's user base does not want to see implemented at all.
Mozilla notes that some Firefox users have already taken part in an experiment that tested the concept, and that this interest shows that at least part of the user base craves for these personalized experiences.
I do not think that you can link interest in the experiment and interest in running the feature in your browser that easily, considering that users who have participated in the experiment may have been curious about it more than anything else. This does not mean that they are not in favor of such an implementation on the other hand.
I have several concerns when it comes to the proposal.
- I do not want this natively implemented in Firefox. I do not mind if it is offered as an add-on, but a native implementation means that additional code is added to Firefox that may not be wanted or used by the majority of users. I assume it will be turned off by default if it is really implemented.
- It is not clear from the proposal alone if companies may be able to use the feature for tracking or advertisement purposes.
- Mozilla at its core is a browser developer and this type of feature falls more in the line of something that is pleasing companies and advertisers but not necessarily end users. This assumes that users can reach any content on the websites they visit on their own.
- I dislike personalization. I do not like it when Google tries to convince me that I wanted to search for something else, or displays different results to me than to my next door neighbor when we use the same query.
While the approach may be better than what we currently have on the Internet, its existence does not necessarily mean that other forms of personalization will just go away magically.
You can join the discussion over at Google Groups to voice your opinion on the matter.
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.