Technology

59601 readers

2940 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

European iPhones are more fun now (www.theverge.com)

submitted 3 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mke@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thanks. I know you're not OP, but I'll take this opportunity to answer anyway.

privacy preserving attribution

...is not as bad as many people think.

The best argument that I believe still has merit is this:

All websites on the internet—including ad networks!—are guests on our computers, and the content they provide are merely suggestions for a user agent to interpret and show us how it chooses.

If you agree with this—and I kinda do—then yeah, PPA shouldn't exist. You're probably a staunch user of uBlock (or uMatrix) and don't want your browser engaging in any privacy-preserving attribution shenanigans.

But here's the kicker: if you use uBlock, PPA won't do anything. It can't, even when left enabled. The only people really affected by PPA are people not using adblocking, i.e. the people being tracked all over the web, who would likely be helped by PPA.

As I said in a previous comment: if PPA works and is widely adopted, I can see the argument for how it'd be better—unfortunately, most people still browse the internet without uBlock. That doesn't mean I'll stop installing it on every device I can; I'm simply accepting that'll never be every device on earth.

And for all that Mozilla is implementing "bullshit," they're also the only ones keeping uBlock functional by maintaining manifest V2. They spend time and resources protecting the very thing that trumps their supposed bullshit. That doesn't feel like enshittification to me, but a group trying to do its best, even while stuck between a rock and a hard place.