Fixing our broken internet

In unusually stark terms, Mozilla is trying to rally the troops to take back the internet from the forces of evil—or at least "misinformation, corruption and greed"—that have overtaken it. In a September 30 blog post, the organization behind the Firefox web browser warned that "the internet needs our love". While there is lots to celebrate about the internet, it is increasingly under threat from various types of bad actors, so Mozilla is starting a campaign to try to push back against those threats.

The effort is, to a certain extent, an attempt to raise the profile of Firefox, which does generally have a better track record on respecting privacy than its competitors. That should not come as a huge surprise since the other major browsers come from companies that stand to profit from surveillance capitalism. The Mozilla Foundation, on the other hand, is a non-profit organization that is guided by a pro-privacy manifesto. But beyond just pushing its browser, Mozilla is looking to try to fundamentally change things:

That is some of the background behind the "Unfck the Internet" campaign. The blog post gets more specific about exactly what kinds of abuses are being targeted:

The plan consists of "five concrete and shareable ways to reclaim what’s good about life online by clearing out the bad", much of which revolves around Firefox add-ons that are intended to help combat some of the abuses. For example, Facebook and others target ads at particular groups, so that it is hard for researchers to get a full view of all of the different ads being served. It is difficult to determine what abuses are being perpetrated in these ads if they cannot be seen. So the Ad Observer add-on collects the ads that are seen on Facebook and YouTube to share with them with the Online Political Transparency project at NYU.

Another entry revolves around the recent documentary The Social Dilemma, which, somewhat ironically, comes from Netflix. It is a much-talked-about look at the problems inherent in social media and our reliance upon it. The campaign is suggesting that people watch the movie and share it with their friends, but also that they take action to realign social media and their use of it. Beyond that, there is a suggested reading list to dig further into the topic of social media and its effects on society.

Two other Firefox add-ons are suggested. Facebook Container is meant to make it harder for Facebook to track users across the web by making use of Firefox Multi-Account Containers. The idea is that interaction with a site is done only in a color-coded tab that doesn't share identity information (and cookies) with other containers. Facebook Container ensures that links from Facebook pages are followed in a separate container so that Facebook cannot track the user; using Facebook "Share" buttons outside of the container will route them through the container as well.

Unfck the Internet also recommends the RegretsReporter extension to report on YouTube videos that were recommended but turned out to be objectionable. The idea is to try to crowdsource enough information about the YouTube recommendation system to better understand it—and the AI behind it.

As might be guessed, there are some serious privacy implications from these add-ons, RegretsReporter in particular. Mozilla is clearly conscious of that; it specifically describes which data it is collecting and how users' privacy will be protected in the description of the add-on. The company has generally been seen as a beacon of pro-privacy actions over the years, but it did have a prominent stumble in late 2017 when it installed an add-on ("Looking Glass") without user consent. The privacy implications of that were probably not large, in truth, but the action certainly gave off a bad smell, which was acknowledged by Mozilla in a retrospective analysis of "Looking Glass". That the add-on was a tie-in to a television show, thus presumably done for monetary gain, only made things worse.

The final recommendation is to use more of what it calls "independent tech", which are products and projects that, like Firefox, are focused on protecting the privacy and security of their users. It lists a small handful of companies, Jumbo, Signal, Medium, ProtonMail, and Mozilla's own Pocket, that embody the attributes that Unfck the Internet would like to see:

The intent, it would seem, is for this announcement to be a starting point. More recommendations and ideas will be forthcoming from the project down the road. Getting the word out more widely is another focus of effort, of course, so those interested are encouraged to spread the word—presumably via social media, ironically. The time is ripe: "It’s time to unfck the internet. For our kids, for society, for the climate. For the cats."

The problems being addressed are real enough, for sure; it would be great to see a grass-roots effort make some serious headway in solving them. Whether or not that is truly realistic is perhaps questionable, but it is hard to see other plausible ways to combat the problems. We humans have made this trap for ourselves by consistently choosing convenience and gratis over other, possibly more important, values. Companies that stand to gain from all of these problems are going to be fighting tooth and nail to retain their positions and prerogatives, so they can increase their profits, thus their shareholder value. Until and unless humanity, as a whole, wises up, things probably will not change all that much. In the meantime, though, we can find ways to better protect our own privacy and security—and help our friends, family, and neighbors do the same.