So basically, it's 'targeted advertising'. Only for content. Only it'll probably still end up mostly used for advertising.
Mozilla ponders blinkers for your browser
Mozilla Labs has outlined an experiment it's conducting in improving the personalisation web publishers can offer readers who browse their sites using Firefox. The outfit says it's been working on the idea since last year, when it “conducted a series of experiments in which a user’s browsing history could be matched with …
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 07:11 GMT JetSetJim
Done properly, it might actually be quite good. I recall reading a science fiction book ages ago which mentioned something similar - the subscribers "news service" gave them stories about topics they were interested in and a smattering of other stuff that they might be interested in, rather than present them with everything.
Strange as it may seem, the Daily Mail might be a good place to implement it as their stories can easily be categorised/tagged:
Kardashian clan
Royal Baby (admittedly only recently)
Various celebs being "brave" by not putting on makeup
Nature photography (usually excellent, btw)
Immigration
Helen Flannagan's boobies
...
Couple it with the ability to "downvote" topics so that as they keep getting presented to you, you can make it less likely that this topic is presented to you again.
At least in this way the targeting is giving me something I want. With ads I never want to click on any of them, irrespective of the targeting (which is why I use Ad-Block & Ghostery).
-
-
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 12:45 GMT stratofish
Re: No
"targeted advertising never seems to address what I'm interested in"
Around xmas of 2011 my kitchen sink/tap broke. While I was waiting for the landlord to get someone in to fix I idly looked up what was involved to fix it, taking around 25 minutes over a couple of sites. As far as I can remember I have never looked up similar things before or since.
I still get tons of ads for kitchen hardware and spares 18 months later.
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 09:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No
It used to be the case that Amazon had a reasonable recommendation system that actually produced useful results for 'people who liked x also liked y' type queries. Unfortunately, as time goes on the system has 'overtrained' somewhat and narrows everything down into tiny little closed graphs... people who like musician 'x' are now only recommended to buy everything else by 'x', and so on.
Gathering more information (as Mozilla is offering here) won't help much if you can't use it effectively, and so far there's precious little evidence that anyone can.
-
Friday 26th July 2013 14:34 GMT Gav
Re: No
No, the main problem is that you are unconditionally giving the website information, in the hope that they *may* use that information to better serve you, rather than themselves.
Care to guess whose interests they'll look after first?
How often do you go into a shop and tell them exactly what the best price another shop was prepared to offer you, *before* you've asked what *their* best price is? Never, because that puts the shop in the position of knowing more than you. If they were going to offer it £20 cheaper they can now offer it £10 cheaper and still get the sale. The information you just gave them cost you £10.
Well this is the browser equivalent. You're telling every retail website what price you've seen elsewhere before they present their price.
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 09:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: God bless his little Royal Highness!
The real question is why would they bother reading the words of someone who can't coherently form a sentence, and who thinks Britain would be better served by "President Blair" / "President Cameron" / "President Clegg" <- That one is so good :-D
What about "President Prescot" / "President Gove" / "President Osbourne" / "President Harman"... Can you imagine? ... OR How about the Dark Lord himself "President Mandelson"
Our Monarchy may not be perfect, but the alternatives all look amazingly bad.
-
Friday 26th July 2013 09:51 GMT Greg J Preece
Re: God bless his little Royal Highness!
The real question is why would they bother reading the words of someone who can't coherently form a sentence, and who thinks Britain would be better served by "President Blair" / "President Cameron" / "President Clegg" <- That one is so good :-D
I hear this rather odd objection every time I argue with someone over the royals. Are you allergic to the word "president" or something? Does it physically hurt you to read it? Why not, then, keep on calling them a Prime Minister, and just ditch the pointless monarchy part?
-
Friday 26th July 2013 10:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: God bless his little Royal Highness!
I hear this rather odd objection every time I argue with someone over the royals.
Do you, how interesting.
Are you allergic to the word "president" or something? Does it physically hurt you to read it? Why not, then, keep on calling them a Prime Minister, and just ditch the pointless monarchy part?
Nope none of that, just an observation about someone who creates sentences such as the following:
I thank the Daily Mail readers for my republic downvotes, it surprises you can read as I always thought you only looked at glossy magazine pictures
Really isn't in any kind of position to criticise the outpurings of others, Daily Fail readers or not.
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 21:11 GMT Jim Lewis
Re: God bless his little Royal Highness!
@obnoxiousGit
Amazingly bad the alternatives may be, but they are at least temporary and not entitled to huge amounts of cash at our expense. You can bow and scrape as much as you want. I'd like to live in a free and fair society where anyone can aspire to the top of the social pyramid.
-
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 05:54 GMT Steve Davies 3
Unless it is OFF by default
then sadly I'll have to say goodbye to Firefox, it has been nice knowing you.
Any advert served to me is a sure fire way to make me NOT BUY ANYTHING from that company EVER.
The same applies to any Fast food flyers shoved through my letterbox.
(If I could only get Virgin Media to stop sending stuff addressed to 'The Householder', I'd be very happy)
Yeah, I don't like Adverts. Thank god for the skip forward 2 mins button on my PVR. (the same goes for Adblock-Plus etc)
-
Friday 26th July 2013 07:02 GMT pPPPP
Re: Unless it is OFF by default
"(If I could only get Virgin Media to stop sending stuff addressed to 'The Householder', I'd be very happy)"
It's worse than that if you're a subscriber. They increases everyone's charges last year, so they could fund a campaign to repeatedly send you junk mail trying to get you to buy a mobile from them.
And their on-demand TV service only works about 60% of the time. And the majority of channels you pay through the nose for are full of adverts and you don't want them anyway.
-
-
Friday 26th July 2013 09:01 GMT Crisp
Browsing history
"Browsing history could be matched with interests in categories like technology, sports and cooking"
Yeah.... My browsing history doesn't really cover categories like that. Who knows what kind of stuff it would recommend with El Reg in my browsing history.
You click on one dodgy video on YouTube and suddenly you're getting all sorts of crap "Recommended for you" that you don't want. I fully expect this technology to function in the same way.
-
Friday 26th July 2013 10:51 GMT A J Stiles
Hmm
This might just turn out be the ruination of the Internet.
If you listen to an all request afternoon show on one of the ultra-bland "local" radio stations (that somehow manage all to sound the same wherever you go) you will quickly become bored. But if you listen to Six Music (assuming you can get a digital signal), they actually play interesting stuff. I might not like every single record they play, but the bad ones make the good ones sound better.
Most of the fun of the Internet is discovering stuff by accident that you didn't know you were looking for. Trying to second-guess users like this is going to remove this. Still, if it gets people away from their computers and out into the big blue room, it might not be such a bad thing, really .....
-
Friday 26th July 2013 11:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
There was an argument against the sites like wikipedia that they weren't as good as a paper encyclopaedia because you'd always find exactly what you were after straight away, with none of the serendipitous stuff you find while flicking through a book.
Of course we now know that you find all kinds of odd stuff while looking for something else entirely, following obscure links all over the place and can waste hours doing it. Often mind bleach is required afterwards.
Having a browser tell a site what you are interested in might well highlight what you are interested in - but on the down side how would I know what I'm not being shown? As an extreme example, all I'd be shown is more of what I already know. Fine for Daily Mail readers, but some of us like to be told new things.
Google does this already - my search results could be different from yours with the same search terms based on past searches. It's useful, but could just reinforce my prejudices. (Except that I don't log in to Google and use Duck-Duck-Go anyway).
-
Friday 26th July 2013 11:07 GMT Down not across
No.
My browsing history is mine. Not intended for some random website to peruse should they so choose.
As has been already said in comments before this one, targeted advertising is crap and about the only useful is the non-targeted which can on occasion lead you to find something interesting. Although I suspect many use Adblock anyway.
And as for the example on sports, I'm sure people will be delighted if the system blats out a score to a game they have yet to watch (which normally they would be able to avoid from happening).
-
Friday 26th July 2013 12:48 GMT VinceH
Optional
So, in effect, Mozilla want to do in the browser something similar to what Google are doing in the search results: Tailoring what you see based on what you've already seen.
Well, the Google problem is solved by not letting Google store cookies on your computer (and remaining logged out of any of their services unless logging in is necessary). And/or by using another search provider.
So the equivalent solution for FurryFox will answer this quote from the article:
"Some publishers have already pressed the API for this kind of thing into service, according to the Mozilla Blog, but the code is not in the wild and is being tested – technically and conceptually – as Mozilla figures out how people will react to websites that dynamically change content based on readers' past behaviours."
The way I'll react will be to prevent my browsing history from being saved. And/or use another web browser.
It's almost as if these companies want to drive people away from using them.
<paranoid> Or maybe they're just trying to drive me away from using them. Which is probably sensible, if truth be told.</paranoid>
-
Friday 26th July 2013 15:09 GMT Brian Miller
And people get upset about the NSA!
Oh, goody! A personalized spy experience! Believe it or not, this stuff is already done using cookies and web bugs and such. I like running with as much snoop-disrupting plugins as I can so I don't have the experience of momentarily browsing a particular site, and ads for that site's products keep following me. I hate that.
It's bad when it's done by the government, and it's bad when it's done by the private sector. This includes you, Mozilla!
-
Friday 26th July 2013 16:53 GMT silent_count
Its not for us
I'd wager that the people who read El Reg are awfully good at bending technology to our will. In this instance, quickly and accurately slurping whatever content from the internet that suits our needs or desires. This isn't for us. I image that what Mozilla is working on will make it a little easier for everyone else - for the people who aren't as good at navigating the endless sea of stuff on the internet - to find what they're looking for.
For us, well, either Mozilla provides an option to turn this behaviour off or there will be an addon which does so within hours. I don't see the harm in something that helps others while costing us nothing.