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Mozilla Pulls Advertising from Facebook (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Mozilla is not happy with Facebook. Not happy at all. Having already started a petition to try to force the social network to do more about user privacy, the company has now decided to withdraw its advertising from the platform. The organization is voting with its money following the misuse of user data by Cambridge Analytica, as it tries to force Facebook into taking privacy more seriously. Mozilla says that it is not happy to financially support a platform that does not do enough to protect user privacy. But the company is not severing ties completely. It says that advertising is being "paused" and that if the right steps are taken by Facebook "we'll consider returning."
From everything I've read, the value of advertising on Facebook is pretty questionable.
Facebook is so noisy normally, I'm not sure how people would even see ads apart from those annoying product adds embedded in the timeline view.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well I suppose not being on Facebook and running an ad blocker works, though as a user of Firefox, I wouldn't be a target anyway.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
Depends on the ad. A lot of ads are crafted to look like normal FB posts with only a small "Suggested App" or "Sponsored" identifier at the top to indicate that it's advertising.
Right, but then it looks like a post - where the normal action is to scan quickly and move on. If an ad is not going to get you to click through, it's not very impactful as people's memories are terrible.
I've seen the exact ads you mention, while they are probably more useful than other kinds of ads I still doubt they have a large impact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sure Facebook is quaking in its boots over that.
guess that means they have a hit/recognition factor of 0. save your money.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There is a distinct difference between using Facebooks API collecting information about visitors while following the terms they agreed to and someone with access provided for research using it to slurp up data on everyone then proceeding to sell it. If you can't understand it then it suggests you don't have a grasp of ethics.
If you care at all about privacy you should be happy about the scrutiny, these are far from the only actors collecting data.
If Mozilla cares about Facebook's data mining, why do they have a Facebook page and links to their Facebook page on the Firefox page (and presumably other pages, I couldn't be bothered to check)? If they care about data mining in general, then why are they making it difficult to get the Android version of Firefox via any mechanism other than the Google Play store, why don't they just provide an F-Droid repository that users can subscribe to?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Facebook's business model is analyzing and selling user data. They're not going to change it at all. User privacy goes against their core values, they only really support the illusion of it.
I did! You can, too!
Isn't that why people use it? To put yourself out there to the public?
Or to put it another way, those that want privacy don't use facebook.
I'd consider that we can't get truly private browsing until an inheritance scheme for all browser-stored data is used so that cookies for site X referred by site A are stored differently compared to if X is referred by site B.
And this applies not only to cookies but any cached content so X sees me as a new user for every new site I access that embeds trackers from X.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
is to hoover up as much data as they can and make a profit from it all while pretending to be nothing more than an innocent Social Media platform where friends and family can keep in touch.
I'm curious what " privacy " can reasonably be expected or even demanded from such an entity whose sole purpose is information brokerage ?
See this article: No, Obama Didn’t Employ the Same Strategies as Cambridge Analytica.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/...
Because the person who ran the Obama campaign says that what they did was different and OK.
Right.
This is a move worthy of applause!
There was no ethical difference to users when Facebook slurped up data and sold it to Democrats versus when Cambridge Analytics slurped up data and sold it to Republicans.
Sure there was a difference to Facebook, but to the rest of us it's the same thing.
You don't have a grasp of reality. This is Facebook's business model. They sell your information. Credit Card companies sell your information. Cell phone Apps collect and sell your information!!
This has been going on for decades. But yeah act like it didn't happen before.
I find it funny that just a few versions ago Mozilla was doing privacy-invading shit, now they're calling upon Facebook to be more responsible with user privacy.
Give me a break.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
and too late.
The same "misuse" occurred in 2012, when it was hailed as Obama's genius and "mastery of Big Data". I don't understand, why anyone would use Facebook — and allow them to sell one's data — but to be suddenly scandalized by Cambridge Analytica's use of it is just blatant hypocrisy.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
BS. The distinctions Obama's bootlickers are trying to make in that article are without difference. There is nothing illegal or even unethical about Obama campaign's use of Facebook data, but neither is there anything wrong with CA's use of it. Can we use your FB-data for research? Yeah, sure. Ok, thank you...
Your article outright lies too. For example, its claim that
is contradicted by the perfectly non-controversial 2012 description of Obama campaign's approach:
See? Just by having the gross misfortune of being known to an Obama-backer, made you appear on Obama's radar, without your permission.
And it worked:
Again, it was not wrong then — but it also is not wrong now, however scandalized the hypocrites may pretend to be.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Not a big pale Moon fan. The author is a dick.
I don't care much about that. Being a dick seems to go with the job, and Moonchild is FAR from alone in that regard among the people who head up major projects. What I care about is that I still have a browser that supports all the FF extensions I have come to rely on, along with a sane and configurable UI, instead of Mozilla's flavour-of-the-month-and-users-be-damned bullshit.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The personality test collected information of users Facebook friends, and participants agreed to have their data collected for academic use.
Also the Facebook android app will download information about all your contacts if you agree to letting it find your friends. So you might have a shadow profile on Facebook even if you don't have an account, when your friend uses the Facebook app. And there is no way to opt out.
I'd delete my FB account over this, but... I never made one in the first place. Selling our private data has always been their business model and I've been using various extensions to prevent them from siphoning the info from me since the beginning because it was so damned obvious.
The real problem, though, is how they siphon your data from your friends & relatives and you can't do much about that because you never gave it to FB to begin with. So it's about 10 years too late to be scandalized by all this, but hey, maybe we'll at least get some privacy out of it? Though I really doubt that. Politicians have a way of exempting themselves from any impact.
The loss of revenue may not have a big impact to Facebook. What will impact them is if other advertisers agree with Mozilla, and also decide to pull their ads from Facebook.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
You don't have a grasp of reality. This is Facebook's business model. They sell your information
Actually it isn't Facebooks business model, they don't make any money by selling your information. What Facebook does is sells access to your eyeballs and they're willing to slice n' dice the userbase based on criteria.
Credit card companies, magazines, etc. all do however.
Oh, yes, he did:
The only difference is in the spin — one's "community organizing" is another's "psychological warfare". From the same source:
In other words, having the misfortune of being a "friend" with an Obama-fan, allowed this "geek squad" to "steal" your data — and subjected you to the same "psychological warfare".
No, it was not particularly wrong back then. And it is not wrong now either.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Oh, well, if Snopes finds a fault in Republicans, while white-washing Democrats, that's a real shocker... Every word must be true.
Bullshit — every campaign involves a multitude of "parties", who share the information. Each of those qualifies as "a third" party...
And he did. And then offered results of his research to a political campaign — is it really so unheard of, that results of an academic research are shared with others?
This may speak to Obama campaign not using the data at their disposal to its full potential. But they certainly had full access to it.
Most....
That contradicts the Time's article I cited — and I'm inclined to believe Time on this, because it was written in 2012, before the topic became contentious and various partisans started making spins...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.