Mozilla in version 128 of its Firefox browser introduced a new system - Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), which should allow advertisers to track how their ads work on certain websites without the need to collect personal data of users.
Privacy-Preserving Attribution does not send individual user data, but instead creates a report that shows how a particular ad has performed. But, according to the company, user data, including their online activity, remains protected.
This update caused a lot of negative feedback from browser users, including because the feature was enabled by default without warning or user consent.
To clarify the situation a bit, Firefox CTO Bobby Holley wrote a post on Reddit, in which he talked about the company's decision.
According to Holley, the decision to enable PPA by default was made because notifying users when a new feature is available or even when it's being tested could distract them from using the best settings.
"There is a toggle to turn it off because some people object to advertising irrespective of the privacy properties, and we support people configuring their browser however they choose. That said, we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here," Holley wrote.
As for the PPA system itself, Holley says that not all privacy systems that pretend to be such actually protect users. That's why, he says, they decided to create something for Firefox that would meet the requirements of the company's usual behavior and protect users.
Mozilla worked with Meta on the PPA because, as Holly notes, for a mechanism like this to work well, it must also be useful to advertisers. If the advertisers' wishes are ignored, they will find new ways to circumvent any obstacles to collect even more user data.
For now, PPA works only in Firefox and on a few selected sites so that developers can do all the necessary tests and fix the bugs.