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Firefox Advertising Mozilla

Firefox Begins Testing Sponsors on Some Users' Default Home Page/New Tab Pages (mozilla.org) 134

Earlier this year a new support page appeared at support.Mozilla.org describing sponsored shortcuts (or sponsored tiles), "an experimental feature currently being tested by a small percentage of Firefox users in a limited number of markets." Mozilla works with advertising partners to place sponsored tiles on the Firefox default home page (or New Tab page) that would be useful to Firefox users. Mozilla is paid when users click on sponsored tiles.... [W]e only work with advertising partners that meet our privacy standards for Firefox.

When you click on a sponsored tile, Firefox sends anonymized technical data to our partner through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The code for this proxy service is available on GitHub for interested technical audiences. This data does not include any personally identifying information and is only shared when you click on a Sponsored shortcut....

You can disable a specific Sponsored tile... You can also disable Sponsored shortcuts altogether.

Describing the as-yet-experimental feature, Engadget wrote a story headlined "Don't freak out: Firefox is testing advertisements in new tabs." These are just the tests, still mainly aimed at fresh installs of the Firefox web browser and always to beta users, before the rollout of sponsored tiles.

It does sound like adverts are in the pipe, but it depends on the reaction to Mozilla's initial tests. Mozilla's Jonathan Nightingale says that, last time around, the reaction wasn't as positive as his company hoped. "It didn't go over well," he states. Further, he insists that Firefox won't become "a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit."

Long-time Slashdot reader angryargus says they spotted the feature when they noticed an Ebay advertisement, but appreciated the ability to opt out, and suggested the feature is "an annoying tradeoff off using a browser that's not as directly funded by a search engine."
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Firefox Begins Testing Sponsors on Some Users' Default Home Page/New Tab Pages

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  • by gmack ( 197796 ) <<gmack> <at> <innerfire.net>> on Saturday June 19, 2021 @11:18PM (#61503056) Homepage Journal

    If they are that hard up for money. They should consider a membership fee with voting rights. I'd pay up in an instant. They could also kill off some of their less useful non browser related projects.

    • You'd just be giving money to their millionaire execs.
      I guess if that's what you want to do...
    • by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @12:47AM (#61503202)

      While I agree with the wish, to be sure...

      I somewhat doubt even a large group could pay enough to be worth as much as Google is paying them to sabotage their own product as hard as they have been doing these past few years.

      They've been going out of their way to offer anything BUT any kind of a feature that would appear appealing compared to Chrome, instead dutifully playing catch-up with things they'll never really perform better at.

      Like a fox knowing it won't outrun a fast dog refusing to ever jump off the path before it, to use its advantages for any actual purpose.

      But oh - they sure do like to repaint their interface. Over and over, just stripping off the paint, then applying it again in a new pattern. Such bravery in challenging user expectations too - yes, they're really showing... their user base who's in charge, by following such a path.

      Fortunately, there are other forks of the same code. I look forward to seeing what emerges after the 'wisdom' of sticking with Firefox as the most active fork fades.

      Just ... I'd suggest nothing with a stock market connection, or that can be invested in for control. Maybe a few such groups to keep eachother a bit more honest and active in open collaboration.

      Ryan Fenton

    • I can't imagine anything I'd want less than a product designed by public committee. Though it would be a great way to get a geek browser which never changes, because god knows you'll never get any actual work done when you're trying to please voters.

    • They pretty much killed all their non-browser projects. I mean didn't you notice the lack of stories about them? Yeah I know there's a few kicking around but they have so few resources they're basically dead. If I had the guess people are working on them in their spare time, similar to how Capcom got mega Man made.

      As for a membership fee with voting rights it's pretty obvious why they wouldn't want that. It likely wouldn't draw all that many people and the decisions made might end up being extremely lop
  • unticked (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @11:25PM (#61503066) Homepage
    Noticed this abomination yesterday and immediately disabled. Also lost a bunch of regularly used links on my newtab page with the latest update. Fuck the fucking fuckers, today's internet IS broken.
    • Just stop running their browser. At least run a sanitized version of it if you must.
      • Also, dont allow your browser to update itself without notice. In fact dont let any program do that.
        • Re: unticked (Score:5, Insightful)

          by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @07:39AM (#61503646)

          >"Also, dont allow your browser to update itself without notice. In fact dont let any program do that."

          Mozilla essentially removed the ability to do that quite a while ago in Firefox. Now you are "not allowed" to tell the browser to stop the constant nagging. It won't update without your consent, but it will still attempt to download the code, and it will put a nag on the screen that can't be permanently dismissed. We used to be able to have a setting in preferences to turn all that behavior off. Then they removed that and made it an about:config setting. Then they removed that last option also. The only options left to turn off updating checking/nagging are:

          1) Install ESR and ALSO use a policies.json file, which has to be updated with each Firefox update.

          2) Recompile the entire browser with a hack installed.

          Very hostile. But they did all this is the name of "security." It doesn't matter than you might not want to update the second something comes out, or have a locked-down kiosk, appliance, or test machine that should never do that, or thin-client, or other reason you might want to NOT update it and NOT be nagged about it. Yes, this angered me a lot.

          • >"1) Install ESR and ALSO use a policies.json file, which has to be updated with each Firefox update."

            I need to make a correction- you can use the policies.json file on both ESR and "normal" Firefox. I actually do that all the time on non-ESR, so I am not quite sure why I said that. Ooops.

            And for those wondering why someone might do that, other than on kiosks, thin clients, etc. If you are running "vanilla" (downloaded) Firefox on your Linux distro, then updating it is all manual. In many cases, it i

      • >"Just stop running their browser. At least run a sanitized version of it if you must."

        That isn't helpful advice. There is no fork of current Quantum code. Pale Moon, for example, is not such an option, it is based on ancient code that is slow and crufty.

        https://www.howtogeek.com/3357... [howtogeek.com]

        There is only one alternative to Firefox for a modern, updated, multiplatform browser, and that is Chrom*. And doing so gives more power to Google and destroys browser diversity and choice. And that is not a good thin

  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @11:40PM (#61503088)

    Why not just have and "ads" page that you can access and see/use ads that have "sponsored" content that you can look at "if you want".

      if the sponsors or advertisers provide good content, some people may want to actually look at it. If it's another freaking Flo ad from Progressive, not so much.

    I also don't want targeted ads based on my web browsing, because that's just one more thing I don't need or want to have to block.

    • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @12:32AM (#61503186)

      Why not just have and "ads" page that you can access and see/use ads that have "sponsored" content that you can look at "if you want".

      Because nobody wants ads.

      Just like brainwashing, advertisement has to be forced down people's throats and be as unavoidable as possible to be effective and profitable for advertisers. Opt-in advertisement cannot exist.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There called ads and people will just use their own chosen site for home page/new tab(I guess blank page unless that ability disappears) mmm tick tick tick. Funny just to force 1 ad show they will annoy many dollars really do drive people crazy.
    • There called ads It's "they're". The homonym is three different words which makes random selection a bad option. We need something more. That something is called grammar.

    • by xonen ( 774419 )

      There called ads and people will just use their own chosen site for home page/new tab(I guess blank page unless that ability disappears) mmm tick tick tick. Funny just to force 1 ad show they will annoy many dollars really do drive people crazy.

      Yes, too bad Mozilla already removed the custom new tab as option, unless you install an extension. And that solution is suboptimal as it takes seconds for this extension to activate and load. And we now know why Mozilla removed the option for a custom tab.

      It's so sad to see a wonderful code base, that at one time revolutionized the net, being transformed to a monstrous abomination.

  • by Casandro ( 751346 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @11:48PM (#61503102)

    That the finances of Mozilla are so good that they should easily be able to sustain their "business" for many decades to come for just the money they got from Google:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    I mean we are talking about hundreds of millions in income, that's enough to pay for thousands of developers. Plus if they hadn't declared their users as the enemy, people would be willing to donate money to them.

  • by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @11:51PM (#61503106)

    the reaction wasn't as positive as his company hoped. "It didn't go over well,

    I am using firefox to *suppress* ads and scripts with umatrix, ad blocker etc.... And most FF user I know do the same. The MOMENT there is a single *sponsored ad* displayed over my wish to not have any, is the moment FF get the boot.

    • And nobody will miss you since you're not providing any revenue.
    • It's a hobby of mine to rate apps 1-star because "It circumvented my adblocker".

  • move all sponsor links and ads to special pages that disabled by default everyone is opt'd out and needs a triple yes, yes I really want this, yes yes I really really want this. And it resets to disabled every 24 hours.
  • Note to self, check on blocking all Mozilla proxy anything. I only need a firefox download link to work if I am reinstalling or updating.
  • "Describing the as-yet-experimental feature, Engadget wrote a story originally headlined, 'Don't freak out: Firefox will just put the tip in'."

    Fixed that for ya.

  • is why I've given up on Firefox and adopted Brave, despite my deep distrust of the Chromium codebase and my desire not to help Google in their effort to capture the entire web.

    Good job Mozilla. You couldn't make Firefox more unappealing if you tried.

    • How does Brave make money and why do you trust what they do for that revenue stream?

      • I don't trust Brave. Choosing a browser today is choosing the lesser of many evils. I chose Brave because it seems the least evil of all at the moment. Of course I may very well be mistaken and they may play me for a fool.

        • sure, but specifically why is it you trust brave over Mozilla? I'm curious: I assume the revenue source in both cases is the main cause for concern. Brave as far as I can tell also had a revenue model based around adverts. So I figure you've compared and I'm interested in your thoughts based on that.

          I've not compared them, but you know despite all the whining and claims that it's going to hell in a hand basket, slashdot still had the best comments section on the internet on the whole. So I've love to hear y

  • by sizzlinkitty ( 1199479 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @12:44AM (#61503198)

    Firefox user begins testing other browsers as default home page is full of sponsor bullshit.,

  • by burni2 ( 1643061 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @03:30AM (#61503348)

    1.) download the full exe not the stub

    2.) before installing disconnect network

    3.) after installing starting it up and about:config
    a.) proton -> disable
    b.) everything's "pocket" disable and delete -> especially the id
    c.) Settings
    general:
    disable (PiP)
    disable suggestion of extensions
    disable suggestion of functions

    homepage:
    content on FF homepage -> all disabled
    page/new tab -> blankpage

    privacy:
    everything data collection -> disabled

    search:
    -> not within URL-Bar
    -> no suggestions
    -> delete google and also down to the minimum of "search engines"

  • by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @03:56AM (#61503386)

    Subject.

    • by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @07:58AM (#61503686)

      >"about:blank is my homepage"

      LOL- glad I am not the only one. That is on my list of things I do on all new installs.

      1) Change search engine to duckduckgo or startpage
      2) Turn off homepage/set to blank
      3) Turn off smooth scrolling
      4) Turn off all tracking, downloading, metrics, etc.
      5) Turn off/remove pocket, suggestions, highlights, snippets, and other crap.
      6) Install a custom Firefox userChrome to fix the UI (get back normal scrollbars, "tabs on bottom", etc)
      7) Install uBlock Origin or Adblock
      8) Install a policies.json to prevent updates and update nags.
      9) Setup the blocking of media autoplay.
      10) Turn off png/gif animation and set ui.prefersReducedMotion=1
      11) Turn off a number of other annoyances in about:config (long list)

      • Install a custom Firefox userChrome

        Enjoy that while it lasts. Mozilla is removing that as we speak.

        I was really pissed when I could no longer move "Open Link in New Window" above "Open Link in New Tab". Tabbed browsing drives me nut, and a lot of sites don't allow you to shift-click on links anymore.

    • Ever since bookmarks became "obsolete", I set my homepage to a local HTML file with links I maintain myself.

      • What do you mean by "obsolete"? I still have the huge bookmarks tree I've been creating/curating since 1999.

  • This is a horrible idea, and will alienate every single Firefox user if they go through with it.

    And you can imagine how it goes; some MBA superhero pushes this through from experimental stage, to somehow convincing the people in charge at Mozilla that this is something the users want, to this becoming default for everyone, and at some point there is no opt-out anymore. Users start abandoning the product, and that is a sure way to lose a "browser war".

    This as a default is a horrible idea. But they could do this as an opt-in, nagging users a few times (not too often) that "our browser costs money, so please please please let us put some ads on the front page", and for some that will be ok and they _choose_ to do that. You know, similar to how Wikipedia make us feel a little bit guilty for using their product for free, for a few days every year.

    Alternatively, enable paying for Firefox at a really low price point. As a Firefox user on several devices, I would be ok with paying a little bit, but they need to keep it in the range that it doesn't start feeling expensive. I would easily pay $10-15 per year for the no-ads-BS experience for running Firefox logged in with my Firefox user. Anything beyond that would probably push me back to Chrome or something else, simply because I hate feeling ripped off.

    And for any fancy extras, put it into premium tiers. I would _not_ pay some kind of "$10 per month and you get various premium features (that I do not care about)". You need a low cost basic offering. If there is a "you get VPN, and we back up your data, and we keep all your information, and we do XYZ", it has to be a premium service. Because if the options are (a) ad-infested product that elevates your blood pressure whenever you fire up your browser, vs (b) pay lots of money for features you care nothing about, then you pick option (c) move on to one of the other browsers.

    I do understand Mozilla needs to somehow monetize this thing. But alienating their users is not the way to do it.

  • Strange, I got a few of these, as they are passing info to/from affiliates. I would like to someone with the guts to boot off false and or malicious advertising.
  • "When you click on a sponsored tile,"

    People STILL do that?

  • ..., at least on Android, which is the only platform on which I'm using Opera. Every now and then another icon for some company's website gets added to the "Speed Dial" page. I haven't found any way to opt out of this, either. This might be enough reason for me to move to another browser, but there is no other Android browser with the specific feature set I want (force enable zoom, force reflow text for screen width, work with Bitwarden)... And it happens rarely enough to not be a real nuisance.

    Good thing I

  • My default page is about:blank. Don't FUCK with it like you did on my goddamn phone! Fuck Firefox and their fucking tinkering
  • But I get that Mozilla needs money. I have very mixed feelings about this. I have never gained anything from ads other than free access to a product and a feeling of annoyance when using a free product. If Mozilla would like a couple of bucks from me for nothing sponsored in my Firefox I would prefer that, however I doubt that would be an option. Advertising that is useful to a user is a flat out myth.
  • That it all, end of story and no mystery whatsoever.

  • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:37AM (#61503758)

    Firefox has a "Slashdot problem" where in both cases those running the show display relentless contempt for their users and no one with power to coerce change calls them out.

    I want Firefox to die for the sins of its owners, and their passing would be no loss either. They stopped caring about the browser long ago and their real, degenerate priorities are obvious.

    I expect Google to be Google, but Firefox management are worse because they began under false pretenses then chose to become enemy parasites. I no longer recommend Firefox (geeks are influential and we should use our influcence) and wish it undermined by every legal means.

    Firefox deserves to go the way of Netscape before it. Those wanting better browsers will code them as Phoenix replaced Netscape.

    • "Those wanting better browsers will code them as Phoenix replaced Netscape."

      Unfortunately, I suspect browsers have become like 100x more complicated since then, due to endless frobs to satisfy corporate interests and eye candy. So, roll your own isn't a 3 month proposition any more.

  • As long as it can be turned off completely who cares just another setting that needs to be changed. And BTW Mozilla dudes/dudets your android browser sucks ass. Since ya took away feedback
  • Firefox has been doing this for a while. While pocket articles are links, some articles are the ad-article variety which exist only to promote a product of service and were specifically written to only to promote a product or service (not counting the articles that promote books)

  • Makes their product worse. Unexpected changed to the basic browser short cuts. CTRL I now opens a new tab with no way to restore old behavior that I've found. They have broke functionally of add-ons multiple times without any demonstrable reason. Its like who ever is in charge is trying to destroy them.
  • Not that I want ads... but I think I would prefer ads to the absolute crap that Pocket serves up.

    The other day for some reason Pocket turned back on, and I was amazed at how low quality it was. Lowest denominator clickbait blog posts, as bad as any facebook stream... lowbrow political commentary, whackjob health advice, and so on. I'd rather see a laxative commercial.

    Pocket is supposed to be a curated stream of higher-quality articles; it seems more like a stream where any quality or intelligence ha
  • Firefox is being destroyed. Choosing a bookmark in Firefox Mobile still has not been restored. Changing "Delete" to "Remove" is an act of foolish arrogance. We have tabs that aren't connected to their pages. And if you think for a moment, that hollow folder icons help anyone to see them better, you're an idiot. Obviously, Firefox is being sabotaged from the inside. Please fork it, and do the same thing that was done to Open Office, because Mozilla now, has not sanity to have the reins.
  • Yeah right! I've been seeing these tiles for weeks already, before I finally found the checkbox to disable them. Useful? No, they are no different from any other so-called "sponsored content." Their only usefulness is to advertisers.

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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