Why Mozilla Is Purging Ad Trackers

People want to get the content that they care about fast. And over the past several years, we've found that trackers deter quick access to content by slowing page loading times. This is really a fundamental code problem.

Many people are not OK with the advertising they’re getting online. They don’t like that their behaviors are being tracked by advertisers. The data collected by a lot of these trackers actually do create real harm, and it's not harm that we can reasonably expect people to anticipate or know how to solve. Users want not only speed on the internet, but also certainty that their information is not being tracked and used in a weird way. But they don't quite know how to do that.

We’re using the Firefox Nightly and Firefox Beta products to test, experiment and understand what the actual impact will be. Over the next few months, we’re going to begin to roll out these changes in some of our mainline products. It’s not going to be done ad hoc, and it’s not going to be done without a lot of thought.

We’re open to any discussions or feedback that anyone would like to give us. It’s important to note that we at Mozilla do not think advertising is bad. That being said, the revenue model is broken.

It’s broken because there’s consumer trust being damaged. Part of why we’re introducing these new features is to empower users who are going to agitate the bad actors in the industry. We think there’s a better way to do advertising so that you can build consumer trust, and that includes allowing people to give consent about the information they’re sharing.

People are not happy with what's happening with their data, and that's a global phenomenon. It's the responsibility of technology companies to treat people like people, to use their information respectfully, and to get consent when they do collect it.

Absolutely.