Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.
You haven’t heard about the Brave ads that let you slowly accumulate tokens that you can then use to tip creators or websites? I’m not saying it was a good plan, or an ethical plan, but it was… You know, something.
Unlike what Mozilla did, Brave didn’t enable this by default, but they heavily marketed it as a feature.
If Mozilla implemented some kind of tipping system, that could be interesting. Apparently, such a system already could exist under GNU Taler too.
brave also used it to scam people by taking tips for creators who weren’t on the platform.
and they had an adblocker that replaced ads with their own, making the browser money instead of the site.
they have actively contributed to making the web worse. saying “at least they’re doing something” is like praising the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of a bank robber.