This might be a bit controversial, given the large amount of "F Mozilla" comments already present. The problem is the advertising industry, not advertising. Run a thought experiment quickly, let's say you wanted to start a pro-privacy/anti-malvertising/anti-flashing-bullshit advertising service (the tasteful ads that the likes of daringfireball sometimes features):
There's a thousand obvious things you can do: text-only, having the author select "adwords," etc. The problem you'll face no matter what is click-harvesting, how do you know that a real person has clicked the ad?
Facebook was the wrong fucking partner here, but maybe attacking or deliberating on the technical aspects of the specification would be a better discussion. If this thing isn't supposed to track us, then we should probably figure out if it actually achieves that, instead of frothing at the mouth. Browsers are going to implement it one way or another.
> The problem is the advertising industry, not advertising.
Mmm, I guess we just can't agree on that.
> Run a thought experiment quickly, let's say you wanted to start a pro-privacy/anti-malvertising/anti-flashing-bullshit advertising service (the tasteful ads that the likes of daringfireball sometimes features)
It's very difficult to run that thought experiment because it is so antithetical to my views on advertising. It's akin to asking me to imagine running a pro-faithful-monogamous-marriage whorehouse. Ads create a perverse incentive to fill the web with garbage. It's destroying the web. It's ruining search, it's making it hard to find the actually valuable information online. 99% of crap on the internet is there because ads enable people to make a quick buck out of it. Advertising not only supports that crap, but directly encourages it.
> The problem you'll face no matter what is click-harvesting, how do you know that a real person has clicked the ad?
Like, why am I supposed to give a shit? How do the advertisers who put a billboard next street or the ones who advertise in the local newspaper know I tapped the printed ad? They don't, and they don't need to know. They can try to figure out but they're not entitled to that knowledge and I'm not interested in helping them out.
And I don't see why Mozilla should be helping advertisers with this either. If Mozilla wants to help destroy advertising, undo the damage it's caused to the web, and make the web better, they should rather include an adblocker and help us find out ways to make it impossible for advertisers to tell if there's a real person behind the screen. Or if there's a screen at all.
> If this thing isn't supposed to track us, then we should probably figure out if it actually achieves that
That is something I can definitely agree on, and I was really hoping the top voted comment here would've been an analysis of the proposal.
This. I didn't quite understand the multiparty computation thing, so I came here for someone to explain it without bias (since of course the authors would claim it's the best thing since sliced bread or, more recently, https).
Well, I found bias and no explanations. I'm getting to various comments without any replies so I think I'm almost at the bottom, from here it's only downvoted comments to go...
Likewise, I don't firmly understand the technology behind this, or its privacy implications, and almost the entirety of this thread is just generic anti-ad sentiments, with some arguments about billboards, Mozilla's CEO compensation, ads being psychologically invasive, and people hoping we can bring the 2003-2004 web back (have they forgotten what Month is it? "the Web" didn't change, the audience did.)
There are some solid comments here. I just wish people (who talk about advertisement ruining the web's signal-to-noise ratio) would recognize the importance of minimizing chronically-rehashed arguments and talk more coldly about techs and implications.
I really empathize with any Mozilla employee browsing this; I criticize the Mozz every now and then, but this seems like a well-meaning proposal, that's beneficial for the web (my opinion, obviously people can argue otherwise) and advances Mozilla's mission, and they're getting shredded.
There's a thousand obvious things you can do: text-only, having the author select "adwords," etc. The problem you'll face no matter what is click-harvesting, how do you know that a real person has clicked the ad?
Facebook was the wrong fucking partner here, but maybe attacking or deliberating on the technical aspects of the specification would be a better discussion. If this thing isn't supposed to track us, then we should probably figure out if it actually achieves that, instead of frothing at the mouth. Browsers are going to implement it one way or another.