Mozilla has decided to end its long crusade against Meta and its privacy policies, choosing to instead partner with the company over preserving online user safety.
Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised; a big part of 2020, the Me Too movement, and my childhood years with my relatives was realizing that literally every single entity in the world inherently possesses the ability to disappoint and let you down. There are articles that can be found on this very tech journal, penned by me praising Mozilla for its active criticism and private investigations against social media platforms owned by tech giant Meta. I wasn’t the only one either, since Mozilla had actively employed the general populace in many of its researches and investigations, hoping to land a firm hand against the company in terms of its practices against its own community. Between Frances Haugen and her leaked documents circling in, along with reprimands from multiple different countries, the time seemed ripe to finally reprimand Meta for its sins in a much more permanent matter than an inconsequential Congressional hearing. Of course, nothing of the sort happened and now Mozilla is actively partnering with what it had set out to destroy.
The reasons behind this partnership sound noble enough. In a blog post, Mozilla revealed that it has been at work with a team from Meta, looking to integrate a new form of conversion measurement for advertisements on the latter’s platforms. Labelled the Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA, advertisers can now measure the impact that their campaigns have across the likes of Facebook and Instagram, but without directly broaching user privacy. IPAs intend on doing so by creating aggregates of information; instead of individual browsers sending online history and user interactions to some third party company, averages will be calculated across multiple devices and that mean data will be provided. All sounds like a brilliant idea, if not for one tiny, minuscule issue. The company that Mozilla is partnering with is Meta.
I’d only ever trust Meta as far as I could throw it, and considering how Meta is either a massive brick building or just a metaphysical concept denoting said building, the overall result is not that far at all. I have absolutely no doubt that Meta will either find a new loophole, or actively ignore the usage of IPA, leaving Mozilla back at square one; or rather, even further back as the company has managed to lose a lot of the goodwill that it built up attempting to combat Facebook.
Read next: Meta Tries to Tackle Radicalization With New Redirect Initiative
Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised; a big part of 2020, the Me Too movement, and my childhood years with my relatives was realizing that literally every single entity in the world inherently possesses the ability to disappoint and let you down. There are articles that can be found on this very tech journal, penned by me praising Mozilla for its active criticism and private investigations against social media platforms owned by tech giant Meta. I wasn’t the only one either, since Mozilla had actively employed the general populace in many of its researches and investigations, hoping to land a firm hand against the company in terms of its practices against its own community. Between Frances Haugen and her leaked documents circling in, along with reprimands from multiple different countries, the time seemed ripe to finally reprimand Meta for its sins in a much more permanent matter than an inconsequential Congressional hearing. Of course, nothing of the sort happened and now Mozilla is actively partnering with what it had set out to destroy.
The reasons behind this partnership sound noble enough. In a blog post, Mozilla revealed that it has been at work with a team from Meta, looking to integrate a new form of conversion measurement for advertisements on the latter’s platforms. Labelled the Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA, advertisers can now measure the impact that their campaigns have across the likes of Facebook and Instagram, but without directly broaching user privacy. IPAs intend on doing so by creating aggregates of information; instead of individual browsers sending online history and user interactions to some third party company, averages will be calculated across multiple devices and that mean data will be provided. All sounds like a brilliant idea, if not for one tiny, minuscule issue. The company that Mozilla is partnering with is Meta.
I’d only ever trust Meta as far as I could throw it, and considering how Meta is either a massive brick building or just a metaphysical concept denoting said building, the overall result is not that far at all. I have absolutely no doubt that Meta will either find a new loophole, or actively ignore the usage of IPA, leaving Mozilla back at square one; or rather, even further back as the company has managed to lose a lot of the goodwill that it built up attempting to combat Facebook.
Read next: Meta Tries to Tackle Radicalization With New Redirect Initiative