Mozilla is positioning itself as an Advertising and Artificial Intelligence company, and is actively sacrificing the security and privacy of Firefox users to be successful in that business.
Need proof of such an outlandish claim?
Look no further than the recent release of Firefox version 128... and the inclusion of "Privacy-Preserving Attribution".
What in the heck is "Privacy-Preserving Attribution"?
"Hey! Privacy preserving! That sounds fantastic! What's the problem?"
This is, in essence, a bit of functionality -- specifically designed for online advertisers, and websites which implement advertising -- which collects and reports browsing activity back to the advertising companies.
"But it uses the word 'Privacy'! That means it's private! And that's good!"
Naming this bit of functionality "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" was a stroke of deceptive genius... as it truly does not preserve privacy. By design.
This is an example of doublespeak, in line with : "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "2 + 2 = 5".
To fully understand the issue, let's look at how "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" works (from a very high level). Step-by-step.
- The Firefox web browser collects your data as you browse a website.
- That data is sent to a Mozilla server.
- Mozilla then bundles all the data from multiple users together -- into batches -- and sends those batches of data to the servers of advertisers.
Now, in theory, this would allow some of the data being sent to advertisers... to be potentially a bit more private. Or, at least, slightly obfuscated by having the data of multiple users smashed together.
Unfortunately there are three key problems:
- The data being sent to the Mozilla server is neither anonymous, nor private. Mozilla knows everything.
- Mozilla now owns an advertising company. Mozilla is the advertiser. Which means Mozilla is sending your private, identifiable data from one of their servers... to another one of their servers.
- Even if neither of those two points were true, there is enough data sent -- even in batches -- to reconstruct personal, identifiable information.
As you can see, "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" appears to be custom designed to give the appearance of privacy... without actually providing true privacy.
The Path of Mozilla
Let's put all of this into the context of what has been happening with Mozilla over the last few years.
- Mozilla, a mega corporation, has had some peculiar finances for quite some time.
- Including skyrocketing CEO pay while Firefox marketshare nosedives.
- Mozilla has repeatedly stated that Artificial Intelligence is a core part of their business going forward.
- Some members of Mozilla's Board conducted, what appears to be, a hostile takeover of the corporation -- resulting in a lawsuit from the person originally slated to become the new CEO.
- That hostile takeover was followed, almost immediately, by the purchace of an advertising company.
- Now, quickly, Mozilla has implemented advertising specific functionality into the latest Firefox release.
What can we determine from all of this?
It certainly is obvious -- especially considering the actions over the last few months -- that Mozilla is being driven towards an anti-privacy, pro-AI, pro-Advertising business.
If their recent activities are any indication of their future actions, it seems reasonable to expect more AI and Advertising announcements over the next few months.
Which, for people who use Firefox as a "pro-privacy" browser, may not be welcome news.
