Mozilla and Meta (Formerly Facebook) Propose New Privacy-Preserving Ad Technolog...
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/02/12/1823215/mozilla-and-meta-formerly-facebook-propose-new-privacy-preserving-ad-technology
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Mozilla and Meta (Formerly Facebook) Propose New Privacy-Preserving Ad Technology
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Mozilla engineer Martin Thomson reveals they've been collaborating with Meta (formerly Facebook) on new technology that can measure "conversions" from advertising while still preserving privacy.
The proposed new technology is called Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA.
IPA has two key privacy-preserving features. First, it uses Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to avoid allowing any single entity — websites, browser makers, or advertisers — to learn about user behavior. Mozilla has some experience with MPC systems as we've deployed Prio for privacy-preserving telemetry. Second, it is an aggregated system, which means that it produces results that cannot be linked to individual users. Together these features mean that IPA cannot be used to track or profile users.
IPA is designed to provide a lot of flexibility for advertising businesses in terms of how they use the system. Cross-device and cross-browser attribution options in IPA enable new and more robust attribution capabilities, while maintaining privacy. The IPA proposal aims to ensure that all sites benefit from these features with the match key concept, which allows smaller players to access the greater reach of entities to cross-device attribution.
"Advertising provides critical support for the Web," the blog post argues — and they've now proposed IPA to the World Wide Web Consortium's dedicated Private Advertising Technology Community Group, while calling their idea "still a work in progress."
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by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday February 12, 2022 @04:35PM (#62262643) Journal
"Advertising provides critical support for the Web," the blog post argues
It doesn't. Anything valuable on the web is something people are willing to pay for (see for example, Wikipedia).
Without advertising, we don't get those click-bait websites.
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How to word this response so it doesn't sound like I disagree with you? If you are accepting services that are paid for on the basis of advertising that makes those services appear to be free, then I think you have received value and you are even in a sense morally obligated to accept the advertising. Even if you are technically adroit and want to cut the ads out.
But I wish we had other alternatives to cover the costs for services shared with and among many people. There are several aspects of the alternati
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There are so many methods of compensation now that there's no longer any excuse. We don't need to rely on advertising.
That said, any new methods of shared compensation are definitely welcome.
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But I wish we had other alternatives to cover the costs for services shared with and among many people.
There are so many methods of compensation now that there's no longer any excuse.
Yes, but people don't use them.
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There are a lot that people use. From subscriptions, to Patreon, to begging for money (like Wikipedia), to bonus stuff, to "text-to-speech" donos, there are a lot of ways that people are using.
Advertising supports the worst content on the internet, the stuff that would be better off deleted.
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Good point there, but I think there are two complications. Both of them are related to control over the choices that essentially make the other economic alternatives nonviable. The first is the network effect that creates unfair advantages for the largest players. The second is the adverse competition where the leaders use their advantaged position to deliberately destroy the competing options. (I include absorption as a form of destruction.)
I think the the underlying and "ultimate" rules of the game should
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Doesn't matter, advertizing is dead. At least, it should be.
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In theory, advertising should be dead. It already smells that way.
In practice, not so much.
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It does indeed smell like it.
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> From subscriptions, to Patreon, to begging for money (like Wikipedia), to bonus stuff, to "text-to-speech" donos, there are a lot of ways that people are using.
> Advertising supports the worst content on the internet, the stuff that would be better off deleted.This site, that comment you made, is supported by advertising. You say this is "the stuff that would be better off deleted."
We can read your comment only because of this advertising-supported service, Slashdot. I find it interesting that you s
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His comment, like yours, is utterly worthless. As is this one.
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So make a paywall. Charge $1.00 per month. If, as another user posted, the pay rate for showing ads is $0.10 per thousand views, then I'd have to view 10,000 ads per month on Slashdot to equal that rate of income. I don't know how many I see, but it's nowhere near that. And I certainly never click on one.
People I've spoken to in the ad industry are truly delusional. They believe that their products "create value" for the people who have to see them. But they're leaches. Everything they touch just gets worse
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Yeah, every single one of them has some kind of justification they tell themselves to feel better about working at a job that annoys people (marketers on the other hand, don't care). I used to do that, until I ran out of believable justifications then I left the industry.
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I'm willing to pay a subscription for Slashdot, should that feature ever be developed.
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If Slashdot was a subscription service, I'd want a refund.
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The price is too high. Online distribution is extremely cheap. I have had at least one web site ever since before most people knew the internet existed, and the cost has always been negligible, even with substantial traffic. A single piece of information can be distributed to more people than ever before and you can choose from more sources of information than ever before. Supply and demand is a harsh rule in a world of abundance.
Ad impressions aren't a dime a dozen. They're a dime a thousand. But then you
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That's true, for static content, it doesn't take a lot of servers. If you have video, it's a bit more.
And dynamic content isn't much more if you write your code well.
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You are getting confused between ads and targeted ads. They can show me whatever ads they like based on learning from what I do on their websites. I don't want Slashdot to show me ads based on how I interact with my colleagues on LinkedIn. Is that too much to ask?
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Can you clarify how this applies to my comment? Or did you intend to reply to someone else or to some other part of the discussion? Or were you requesting clarification about something?
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Dude quiet down, you'll ruin free services for people that use adblock
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Yet here you are reading and commenting on a site paid for by ads. If you don't find any value why are you here? Probably be cause you do find value
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I'm willing to pay for here if that option ever becomes available. I don't see ads.
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Do you think Slashdot would exist without ads?
That said, I think they should concentrate on finding other ways for sites to make money. No targeting at the minimum, ideally no ads at all.
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As I said earlier, I would absolutely subscribe to Slashdot if it were an option.
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You appear to be alone there. That's the problem with website subscriptions.
Let's face it, the only value that was ever here was the comments, and those have really taken dive over the last 10 years. I'm not going to pay for access to the Nazi-themed ascii art or the same uninformed/outdated opinions that have been repeated endlessly for the last 20 years.
What is it that you're willing to pay for? The antique news? The endless duplicates? The occasional Cowboy Neil reference?
I'm here out of habit more
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That's what happens when they kicked the kooks off Parler.
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No, at least two people [slashdot.org].
Nonsense. Plenty of websites and people make money with subscriptions. I'm not saying we need a pay wall.
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So would I, but I doubt enough people would to keep it going.
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Well, make it an option and let's see.
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They are going about it the wrong way, but of course if Facebook is involved at all then it's going to be all wrong. Mozilla is just limping into the deal. How do you limp with desperation?
From OUR side, the side of the people whose personal information is being exploited for profit, it should be completely different. Any money a company makes from harvesting and selling MY personal information should be shared with me. Yes, that means I should know exactly how the company is making money off of me, how much money, and most importantly, I should be free to seek a different deal if I don't like your company. (And Facebook is quite high on the list of companies I do not like.)
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Boiling the real stuff down from the subjective:
Once upon a time, advertisements were sold on a media-source basis. You put an ad in a specific newspaper, in a specific section, or you paid to show a commercial during the airing of a specific television show or movie in a specific city.
But on the web, what Google evolved it into and everyone else is doing, is now ads are sold on a media-destination basis. You buy an advertisement for a specific demographic. A specific sub-demographic. You want your ad t-
> You want your ad to be shown to people with red hair named Sean? done.
The problem is they want to sell things that Sean doesn't actually need. They right way to do it is to show ads or products when Sean wants to buy something. Right time, right product. How many online ads are like that?-
I'd be happier if I wasn't swamped with ads for something I bought 3 days ago
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I remember when Some years back, I was looking at Tire Rack at some tires. I then left after purchasing some. All the rest of the day, most of the sites I visited had the exact same Tire Rack ad, usually on multiple places on the page.
That's when I started on my journey to put digital condoms on my computer.
It could be worse though. Modern Television ads have gone woke to the point that they aren't selling anything other than how woke they are.
A very few are interesting like the White lad eating Pr
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I actually find it sort of reassuring when all of my ads march in rows like that. It indicates that I've mostly starved the beast of data to target me more intelligently. But sometimes the marching moronic ads become quite offensive in pursuing some obvious analytic failure.
Or maybe I've become such a black hole that they sometimes throw shite ads at me just to placate the shite companies running the shite ads? "We're showing your [shite] ads and have no idea why your sales have gone to shite."
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FUCK ALL, I mean, FULL ACK.
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Wolf proposes new safe space for sheep inside lair.
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Wolf also claims it's a win-win, as no longer needed wool will be collected and sold to a nearby factory, while bodies of sheep dying from natural causes will be properly disposed of, for free!
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by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday February 12, 2022 @04:47PM (#62262657)
If you want to show me an advertisement then show me a hyperlink or a linked image that goes to a page. If you do anything beyond that then you have violated my privacy and you can fuck off.
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In the fuck-off cases, and considering that most advertising executives are already fucked-up-beyond-further-offing, would you possibly settle for a deep "Why?" button that deeply explained where the ad came from, exactly how your personal information was used to select the ad for you, and even explored the motivations of the advertiser?
Asking for a friend?
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No. I don't like advertisements because in my opinion they are pollution. I go to websites to get information and advertisements are like oil in a lake: they do not belong and spoil the environment. I do not care about the motivations of advertisers because I know what their motivations are: to sell a product, even if people die from it. How do I know this? Simple... THERE IS AN OPIOID EPIDEMIC THAT HAS KILLED HALF A MILLION PEOPLE BECAUSE OF ADVERTISERS.
If everyone that ever worked at an advertising a
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Now you're wandering into economics and sounding quite confused. For-profit medicine is a different problem. Also reminding me of the comedian who had the strong attacks on advertisers. Tough websearch finally led me to Bill Hicks.
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If your ads only serve you at my expense they are not good enough, even if you explain the "why". Sell me things I'm looking to buy, when I am actively searching for them. Advertisers have inventory for millions of things people don't need or want, that's why they have such abysmal conversion. On the other hand the search experience is bust, making it hard to decide on a product. Reviews are gamed. Can't trust the web. Third party sellers are fly-by-night, appear and con people with fakes, then come back u
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Your points seem valid, but that's why I think we need better economic models. And why I don't see any path to get there since today's economic models are basically defined by the most cheaply bribed politicians.
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> would you possibly settle for a deep "Why?" button that deeply explained where the ad came from, exactly how your personal information was used to select the ad for you, and even explored the motivations of the advertiser?
Why should I even want to waste my time looking up why I saw an ad? It's not like I am browsing the web for the ads.
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Because you might want to understand what they think your personal information means. When I say deep I mean with access to the same levels of analysis they use to figure out your interests and dislikes. I might use some of that information as feedback to improve myself, but I'd also be tempted to deliberately poison the well.
I also think that knowing why the advertiser thinks the ad might work on me (or you) is a kind of armor against that company and even against similar companies who haven't yet figured
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by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Saturday February 12, 2022 @04:57PM (#62262671)
Worked perfectly well before tracking.-
by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Saturday February 12, 2022 @06:02PM (#62262753)
I would argue that it was a different kind of advertising for a different kind of internet. You went to a forum about gardening and the forum had ads about gardening because the companies and the forum owners had a deal. The internet was full of little hobby corners where people with common interests gathered.
Nowadays, for most users the internet is 5 or 6 websites where they will find whatever they want. Joe Six-Pack who loves his Humvee more than he loves his wife, and Jane Doe who wants to become a better teacher and is looking for lesson tips, will both go to youtube for videos about their specific interests, will go to facebook and reddit to join relevant interest groups, and they will buy everything related to their interests from Amazon.Tracking became necessary because, for most people, the list of websites they visit is limited to about less than 10.
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Those interest groups on Reddit and Facebook are topic oriented. That by itself is topic targettable without a single form of tracking involved. Youtube might need more selective control on ads but again, the posted vids are topic based as well so who actually views isn't needed at all. Just the telly is enough.
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Those videos don't have enough views to satisfy the sellers, so they spam unrelated pages and annoy people with their unneeded ads. It's disrespectful to pester people like that, we don't trust this system at all. It's possible and even preferable to use the net for decades without clicking a single ad.
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That's entirely off topic.:P
Seriously, all ads are spam by nature. The topic thing is pointing out the obvious advantage for advertisers to get some value. Not for my benefit.As long as they aren't tracking me, and that applies to all activities, I'll put up with whatever else.
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So, why do you need a targeted ad on Facebook instead of booking a ad in a specific group? Sell your lawn mower in the gardening facebook group and you're fine.
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And we're not going to stop bitching until you stop using the word that they tried to use to disguise who they are. Facebook is Facebook and always will be Facebook.
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If you believe Facebook to be involved with something privacy preserving, I would like to introduce you to my friend the Nigerian prince.
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...and i know someone from Microsoft that thinks your PC needs urgent repair.
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... and we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.
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And nothing is off limits to them.
https://cdn.acidcow.com/pics/2... [acidcow.com]
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Bad Mozilla! Stop!
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You prefer systems that don't protect your privacy? Because that's the alternative here.
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No. An adblocker is the alternative.
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Facebook's entire business model is capturing private information and packaging it for resale. It is not possible for Facebook to use any "privacy preserving" technology without imploding. Really sad that the Mozilla Foundation seems bent on destroying the entire purpose for the existence of Firefox.
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Facebook largely doesn't sell your private information. They want to keep it for themselves.
If advertisers get that information, then they won't need to use Facebook for targeting anymore.
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Again, an excellent point and true, but I suspect you haven't read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Facebook is also creating a kind of real value by combining and analyzing our personal data but quite deliberately NOT sharing any of that added value with the people who are being harvested and exploited in secrecy. Permission is probably included in the ToS, and certainly protection against corporate liability, but there is no existing intelligent entity capable of figuring out the T
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It is not very surprising considering that they apparently get 95% of their funding from ads.
https://www.investopedia.com/a... [investopedia.com]
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Advertisers have screwed the pooch as far as I'm concerned. Their invasive tactics over the years have made sure that no matter what technology they come up with I will continue to block it. How can you trust a new ad tracking technique coming from FaceBook of all places? Nope, nope, nope.
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Then you are probably not a good Target for advertisers. They're more than happy to let you exclude yourself.
It's sort of why the Nigerian prince scams are as ridiculous as they are. They need to be ridiculous to weed out people who aren't going to fall for it or the scammers just waste all their time on people who are just dumb enough to contact them but not dumb enough to give over the bank details. -
>"Advertisers have screwed the pooch as far as I'm concerned. Their invasive tactics over the years have made sure that no matter what technology they come up with I will continue to block it. "
And in addition to that, it is just the sheer annoyance of the ads that made them so unacceptable. I never had any problems with small, static ads. I only started blocking ads when they became intolerable, which includes ANY of these "innovations":
* Animation or video
* Changing in any way
* Sound
* Unreasonable si-
Don't forget attached malware as well.
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If Firefox aligns with the book of faces, shit, what are my options? I might actually have to use Edge.
I want nothing to do with Meta/FB/whatever they want to call themselves. I want nothing to do with Chrome and Google. I really don't want to use Microsoft's Edge. I might need to look into Opera, Brave, and other obscure browsers.
Which means I'm basically fucked when it comes to privacy, and I'm glad I'm old enough I'll be dead in 10-20 years because I don't want to live in that world.-
>"I want nothing to do with Meta/FB/whatever they want to call themselves. I want nothing to do with Chrome and Google. I really don't want to use Microsoft's Edge. I might need to look into Opera, Brave, and other obscure browsers. "
Edge, Opera, Brave, and most other obscure browsers *ARE* Chrom* and Google. Even if they are not reporting metrics back to Google, it is still Google-controlled guts, hell-bent on completely controlling the Internet (either directly or through controlling the "standards").
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Don't forget that Firefox still gets 400M/year from big-G. https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/mozilla-firefox/239104/google-deal-should-keep-mozilla-afloat-for-years
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Palemoon is an option,it was forked from Firefox ages ago and even support plugins.
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Firefox does support plugins. Even on mobile. I have the same plugins on my desktop and my phone. It's pretty great.
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No, it stopped supporting plugins. You are thinking of addons. That's a whole different thing.
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Nope. You're making what we call "a distinction without a difference".
Mozilla divides addons into extensions, themes, and plugins, but that's completely arbitrary. You can shuffle the terms 'addon', 'extension', and 'plugin' without altering the meaning in any way. (e.g. "Mozilla divided extensions into addons, themes, and plugins.")
You're actually complaining about them dropping NPAPI support, you just didn't know it. I guess now you do.
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Newspapers managed to sell lots of (expensive) advertising for a few hundred years before the www came along to eat their lunch.
I don't recall any newspaper tracking whether I read the advertisement in the bottom panel on page B2 or not.
So... what's the difference here?
We can track you so now we must track you? Suddenly an untracked ad is worthless, even though that's all that was available in the newspapers before?
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The biggest change is Advertising majors took "Statistics for Business" and deluded themselves into thinking they understood statistics. Now all of these advertising droids want quantified results.
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I recall, way back in the early days (before Google had started buying out pretty much every competitor), people would argue along the lines of "it's not a problem that Google collects information from one side, and Double-Click from the other, since they are separate entities. An individual can't be directly tied to the clicks."
If one entity manages to acquire control over all the stages involved in a transaction, "multi-party" and "distributed" become meaningless. And I have to believe that's what's going through Facebook's dirty little mind right now, since they've repeatedly demonstrated that they can't be trusted. There's simply no way they are okay with preserving anyone's privacy - they are lying if they say otherwise.
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facebook (I refuse to allow the company's name swap to succeed) does nothing to protect end-user privacy, their business model depends on exploiting it to the fullest. They've probably designed this scheme with built-in flaws that they've withheld from Mozilla.
Mozilla needs to walk away from this before Robotbot's stink can't be washed off.
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You'll get these "privacy-preserving ad" for a low monthly subscription fee. But wait... there's more... if you call before midnight tonight...
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I want a frame that renders HTML content fast and without getting in the way.
I don't want a gatekeeper deciding what sites I should visit and what sites I shouldn't. I don't want an online service to store my bookmarks. I don't want my browser to inspect my shopping habits and give me suggestions. I don't want it to be a VPN provider. I don't want my browser to try making me happy, or to teach me about the problems of society. I don't want my browser to change its user interface every two weeks in order to catch my attention.
And the last thing I want from my browser is for it to spy on me on behalf of Facebook. Advertising provides critical support for the web, you say? Spying is never "critical" for the spied person: if anything, others might benefit from it. -
"the World Wide Web Consortium's dedicated Private Advertising Technology Community Group"
I think I've seen the end of the world (wide web).
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by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Saturday February 12, 2022 @06:33PM (#62262817)
The IPA comments in github are priceless...
"Presumably because the internet is currently extremely angry about this?"
"The document was completely defaced, fully deleted with "suggestions" and replaced with vulgarities. As such, the document is now "read-only" access."
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Google, Facebook, probably amazon and twitter will all soon need new ways to preserve ad performance and targeting to maintain their rates. The "solution" seems to be the browser. There will probably be more effort in this space as litigation becomes more of a concern. Current browsers are mostly owned by companies that seem to have a vested interest in this kind of tracking though. Brave seems to be the "best" option even though they don't seem to be very well run, will multiple weird miss steps and a cryp
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.. sounds like a human rights preserving death penalty.
#Impossible
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All this does is hide the loss of privacy. All the information about you is still there in web logs etc for a bad actor to harvest if they wanted.
Privacy isn't lost when someone does the analysis to find out what you liked. Privacy is lost when the information is transmitted to third parties you don't trust. Given what fraction of those companies use large CDNs, run their websites on google/amazon clouds (not to mention the fact that your DNS provider likely knows every domain you visit) you've just chan
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First, I thought it may be okay. Some privacy preserving attribution... if someone wants to know if an ad worked, it may be okay.
But then the document detailed that they want to correlate click across devices. This isn't attribution, this is tracking.So... fuck them!
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FB wants to preserve privacy? Give me a break!
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