The collaboration is surprising because earlier Mozilla often criticized Facebook (today dead) specifically in the context of user security and privacy. It even posted anti-FB ads on its platforms, describing them as “scaring and targeted”.

Did Mozilla think it wouldn’t bring the river back with a stick? Technological change is inevitable.

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“Ads provide important support for the web. We have tried to apply privacy-protecting ad technology to the attribution issue, so that advertisers can get answers to important questions without compromising privacy,” we read in the official Mozilla blog post. “Over the past few months, we’ve been working with the Meta team (formerly Facebook) on a new proposal aimed at measuring conversion — or attribution — for an ad called Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA).” This project aims to allow advertisers to measure the success rate of online advertising, while respecting the privacy of Internet users more than currently in use online advertising.

As we’ll see in the draft app, the new concept is based on replacing “per action” (ie after clicking on an ad) ad reporting with reporting on whole sets of events. Websites will be able to generate “matching keys” associated with a specific user’s device or account, while protecting the privacy of Internet users. This is similar to the old Prio technology that Mozilla devised a few years ago to analyze how people use Firefox.

The concept is to replace reports on action-based ads (such as clicks) with aggregate reports for a full set of events. Websites will be able to generate private “matching keys” that are closely related to the user, but at the same time will not violate their privacy.

 

Doubts revolve around the fact that the new solution is clearly designed for advertisers.

Recently, Meta cited strict European regulations in the protection of user privacy in its financial report as a source of problems. So it’s possible that the partnership with Mozilla is an attempt to break the deadlock.