[AlotOfReading]

On the other hand, advertising doesn't do much to help Mozilla if it removes the main differentiator Firefox has from vastly more popular competitors. Firefox with "privacy respecting advertising" sounds an awful lot like Chrome with compatibility issues.

[philipov]

Yes. There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. If they mess with extensions like Chrome did, they're going to lose their user base. A much higher proportion of us are only using Firefox because it's not connected to AdTech.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising.

Sure there is; print ads are fine, and nothing prevents that style being used on the web (in fact, I'm aware of a local paper that does do that). It's just that advertisers really want to spy on users, so they pretty much always do.

[galleywest200]

One good example I like to show for this kind of web advertising is https://theweekinchess.com/

Basic image/hyperlinked banner ads, located to the side and non-disruptive, and relative to the topic of the website you are currently visiting.

[philipov]

I don't want the advertisers who are spying on us to get a second chance to reconsider a more ethical way of doing business. I want their industry driven into the ground and destroyed for the crimes they've already committed. Only after that happens can we can talk about privacy-respecting advertising being possible.

[bad_user]

Firefox has been literally funded by Google's Ads, that Search deal having kept Mozilla alive. With all due respect, Firefox not being connected to AdTech is a hallucination.

Actually, all 3 major browser engines are directly funded by Google's Ads. And while you may have noticed that Mozilla and Apple have been singing the privacy tune, you should've also noticed that they never did anything to upset their cash cow.

Mozilla diversifying their revenue would be an improvement IMO. But whatever they did in the past, people got mad, because many imagine that such a complex piece of software could be developed for free or from the donations of individuals that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.

[philipov]

The salient difference is that Chrome kneecapped extensions, while Firefox has not. The more they get involved with ads, the more likely they become to mess with that. It will not go well.