AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

There’s a reason so many people who suffer from chronic loneliness are told to first join some kind of socially-integrated hobby, activity, or group: Doing something you already enjoy, in the company of other people who enjoy the same thing, is likely to bring you people you are more likely to vibe with.

One of the best possible ways to start actually finding people you enjoy being around is to go to activities that involve people with a similar set of interests to you. For example, if I go to my local hackerspaces/makerspaces, I’m going to find a fuck ton of people who are interested in the same technology as me, and that means I’m probably gonna find people that have similar interests overall.

The main problem is that with the major reduction in third places, and with things becoming more and more costly to do, (e.g. my nearest makerspace costs over $100/mo to be a part of) it’s hard to actually get into those social circles where you can meet people that you’ll actually like being around.

Doesn’t even register in WHOIS searches anymore for me. Apparently Namecheap will sell it to you for $2.98.

Schools do indeed sometimes teach some conformist lessons, primarily regarding how you should operate as an individual to work within the Capitalist machine.

That does not mean we should abolish all schools. It means we should ensure schools that do sometimes push conformist messages stop doing that, while still remaining the educational institutions that they are.

Schools taught me the math I use every day both at work and at home, the history I derive various meanings and life lessons from, the art lessons I use to relax in my free time, exercise and nutrition advice that keeps me healthy, writing that I’ve used to publish articles read by thousands, better budgeting, leadership and coordination skills, and even some philosophy that I’ve used to better understand my place in the world.

Not to mention how schools are the primary way many kids create friendships, as it essentially forces you and many other people to all exist in the same, dense space, nearly every day, for extended periods of time, which is crucial for social development.

Without all of that education, I and many others would be in a much worse spot. I find it absurd you’d argue against a concept so deeply human that so many cultures across landmasses and time periods had some form of education through systems very similar to what we’d call “school” now, because it benefited not just society, but any individual that participated in it.

What do you propose as an alternative to school? No education at all, where we simply hope that people’s personal experiences will lead them to the right answers and knowledge they could need for their future?

Why would we abolish a system that exists so everyone gets a level of knowledge that ensures they can both be productive for society, but also productive in their own endeavors, whatever they may be, while better understanding the world and history that led to where they and society is now?

Education is very clearly a beneficial thing, and schools are a good system to efficiently and equitably distribute an education.

We are living in the content age. The information age was over a long time ago for most people, who no longer consider the internet a way to find the truth, but a way to confirm their existing biases.

That concern I can get.

While I don’t think Mozilla is currently doing anything I’d say is super objectionable, or really Facebook-like, they could certainly move more that direction in the future, and then I’d have a problem with it.

I don’t have a problem with ads as a method of funding something, as long as you can either disable/block them, or pay to have them removed, but I think they should be a last resort, not a primary source of revenue, lest Firefox turn into a browser that just crams ads in every single spot it can until the browsing experience is garbage.

Yes, that’s the thing:

Facebook doesn’t “sell” your information either.

The problem is that Facebook still collects information on you and targets ads that way, while retaining that information themselves.

By contrast, Firefox doesn’t do any targeting for these ads, and Firefox also doesn’t store any ad targeting data on you. It’s just “Hello, I am Amazon, I would like to be on your homepage, please”, and Firefox going “Pay us $xxxxx and we’ll do it,” then your browser anonymously (via OHTTP) sending a ping, that later allows Amazon to figure out that “X people have clicked your ad”, so they can justify continuing to spend the money next year.

Yes, Amazon doesn’t get your info, but neither does Mozilla. Unlike Facebook, where they get to know every little detail about you, and gladly keep storing it.

They’re selling “someone, somewhere clicked your ad”. That’s it. No other data about you is ever sent.

You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something?

Nope. (though for transparency, I have briefly talked to someone who does currently work for them) I just want my browser to continue being funded, and if they can do something that is extremely privacy-preserving that doesn’t rely on Google (who gives them the majority of their money) for revenue, then I will be in favor of that existing as an option, and I won’t justify acting as though “ping that says someone somewhere clicked this ad” is the same as “we have received money in exchange for giving up your browsing history”

They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.

Which is unfortunate. I wish they didn’t have to do things like this, because at the end of the day, ads are still ads. I just think that it’s silly to say that they are selling your information, when the information being sold is in no way identifying, which is why I think I’m coming off as defensive here. (sorry for that, I’m bad at doing tone in replies online)

The alternative is just Mozilla paywalling features, heavily pushing other in-house ones like their VPN (which is just Mullvad but more expensive), or having to be more dependent on Google, and I don’t want that. This just feels incredibly reasonable to me in comparison.

“Selling personal data” and “selling ads that we can tell if they are clicked by an anonymous user” are completely different, in my eyes at least.

“Selling personal data” sounds like someone taking your personally identifiable information and giving it to someone for money. What they’re doing isn’t that, so they’re not “selling personal data”

They’re selling ad views, not your information.

Not in all cases.

As an example, Firefox has the option of sponsored results, which send anonymized technical data when a link is clicked, essentially just saying “hey, this got an ad click, add it to the total.” It doesn’t send info about you, your identity, or your other browsing habits.

This counts as a “sale” even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.

I don’t think any reasonable person would consider a packet being sent saying “some unknown user, somewhere in the world clicked your sponsored post” as “selling your personal information”, but that’s how the CCPA could be used to classify it, so to avoid getting in legal trouble, Firefox can’t technically say that they “never sell your data”, even if that’s the extent of it.

Important context!

They had to change this because newer laws like the CCPA classify some ways of transferring/processing data as a “sale”, even if no money is exchanged.

See: this Firefox FAQ where they say:

The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”

Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.

And the person who made that article even included a photo of an Apple sticker on their own car!

And I’ve already had this happen a few times. The search engine I use (Kagi) tends to rank fediverse platforms higher when they have a good answer, though it’s rare they ever have something relevant.

But I’ve gone to multiple posts on lemmy where the content was straight up gone, or where the main post was available, but the comment(s) that provided an actual answer were deleted.

I will say, you’ll see a lot of users on lemm.ee who deleted their content, because lemm.ee shut down, and there’s no way to retroactively delete your content after the fact once the instance is no longer being hosted, so I know a lot of people didn’t want to leave any kind of permanent digital trail of their account data and just deleted the whole thing.

Hell, even I did with my lemm.ee account before it was shut down, but I hadn’t really answered many questions there that would be useful to most people. It was a lot more political debate than helpful commentary.

I have a feeling it’ll simply grow more in popularity, since stable release will probably make a lot more people feel more comfortable recommending it to people, myself included.

Right now, I don’t treat it as if it’s a backup in any way due to its beta nature, and I hope that can change.

Maybe a simple photo editor would fit in nicely?

Basic photo editing capabilities are planned after stable release, this year :)

Can confirm, used to have an account on lemm.ee, switched to PieFed just before lemm.ee went down.

Obligatory deflock mention! (If you see a camera in your city that’s not on the map, add it!)

Seconded. A lot of harms we see from surveillance cameras (and all kinds of other tech) come from how and to whom the data is made accessible to, rather than the cameras themselves.

It’s fine if my neighbor has a doorbell with a camera on it so they can see when a package is delivered, when their kid comes home, or have video of something happening on the sidewalk that could possibly be needed as evidence in a court case, where they can manually export a video and give it to whoever would require it. But it’s not fine if that video is being always uploaded to a corporation’s servers, and they’re handing it off to the police, for example.

Surprisingly, Ring actually stopped doing this given enough backlash, but the risk still remains of future changes to that policy, any breach or software vulnerability, etc.

If it was “easy to police now with AI,” then companies wouldn’t still regularly have issues with all kinds of code injection on their websites, since literally any security vendor would have implemented bulletproof AI protection for it already.

An AI model designed for moderation could probably block some things, but it would be no better than traditional mechanisms employed by large organizations who’s job it is to keep things secure, that still regularly fall victim to these kinds of vulnerabilities. Many of these organizations already use AI-powered tools to police their systems, and they know they’re not anywhere close to even being a full replacement, let alone foolproof.

Relevant xkcd: