A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy
Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has been a core focus for Mozilla from our founding. How do we ensure creators get paid for their work? How do we prevent huge segments of the world from being priced out of access through paywalls? How do we ensure that privacy is not a privilege of the few but a fundamental right available to everyone? These are significant and enduring questions that have no single answer. But, for right now on the internet of today, a big part of the answer is online advertising.
We started engaging in this space because the way the industry works today is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t put people first, it’s not privacy-respecting, and it’s increasingly anti-competitive. There have to be better options. Mozilla can play a key role in creating these better options not just by advocating for them, but also by actually building them. We can’t just ignore online advertising — it’s a major driver of how the internet works and is funded. We need to stare it straight in the eyes and try to fix it. For those reasons, Mozilla has become more active in online advertising over the past few years.
We have the beginnings of a theory on what fixing it might look like — a mix of different business practices, technology, products, and public policy engagements. And we have started to do work on all of these fronts. It’s been clear to us in recent weeks that what we haven’t done is step back to explain our thinking in the broader context of our advertising efforts. For this, we owe our community an apology for not engaging and communicating our vision effectively. Mozilla is only Mozilla if we share our thinking, engage people along the way, and incorporate that feedback into our efforts to help reform the ecosystem.
