zlacker

>>danShu+(OP)
Can Mozilla also respond with their position on their own IPA proposal[1] for tracking users across the Internet?

If you are shown a product ad whilst browsing searchengine.example and then later look up the product at reviews.example, then end up making a purchase at shop.example, your Mozilla browser will send all of these events to one or more aggregation services that allows shop.example to understand (at least in aggregate, assuming you trust the cartels running the aggregation services) that you were exposed to their product at searchengine.example and further exposed to their product at reviews.example.

Where previously an ad tech company was ultimately able to track users based on source IP address (even if cookies had been disabled by a user), IPA now allows these companies to track users across multiple IP addresses, and regardless of the user's cookie settings, via a unique tracking identifier. It is also proposed that the operating system provides the unique tracking identifier which can then be used by all applications or browsers on a device, allowing different devices behind a single IP address to be distinguished.

[1] https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/ipa/

>>dhx+oi
No matter how bad the mozilla proposal is, what you're doing here is whataboutism, which eventually serves Google's interest, and defend their much more dystopian proposal…

>>little+6u
That's not what whataboutism is.

>>mardif+GC
- Mozilla says “WEI is bad”.

- OP responds with “what about IPA”

It's litteral whataboutism.

>>little+eQ
I think you're attempting to frame the discussion in a very narrow way that is inconsistent with the public backlash. Public backlash is largely due to browser vendors demonstrating a very strong motivation to prioritise the needs of advertisers over users through their contributions to WEI and similar W3C proposals.

Were you expecting only responses of praise for Mozilla, that users have been heard on WEI and therefore everyone can move on? Mozilla has invested resources together with Meta into developing the IPA proposal that also prioritises the needs of advertisers over users. The problem that IPA seeks to solve is:

  "Advertisers need accurate reporting about how their ad campaigns are performing. Currently, businesses use data about the people who viewed their ads and bought their products to determine ‘return on ad spend’. But the ecosystem is moving towards more privacy and less personal data sharing."[1]

In Mozilla's response on WEI they've reiterated a commitment to working on solutions to the "invalid traffic" (e.g. ad click fraud) problem, a commitment which necessarily requires user needs to be suppressed.

  "Detecting fraud and invalid traffic is a challenging problem that we're interested in helping address."

Mozilla's response on IPA is therefore directly relevant to the discussion of public backlash for advertiser needs being prioritised over user needs. Mozilla is demonstrating inconsistency with RFC8890[2] and the priority of constituencies from the W3C Web Platform Design Principles[3] and numerous Ethical Web Principles[4]. Whilst these aren't adopted standards, they are a reflection of values of contributors to these standards organisations.

A further error of your framing is assuming WEI and IPA proposals can be meaningfully discussed in isolation of each other. With such framing, there is an avoidance of discussion of the combined impact of proposals if they were implemented together, or whether proposals such as IPA still make sense to pursue without WEI (or future equivalent proposal).

[1] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NpQz0Wm73eEKw24V7B0y...

[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html

[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constit...

[4] https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#control, https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#multi, https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Defense