Targeted ads should be illegal.

Contextual ads are a compromise I would accept. That is, you can buy ads based on the page content, but not the viewer details. So if I’m looking at a website about bikes, you can have bike ads on there. You don’t need to know I’m a xx year old living in zip code 10001. That’s how ads worked for like decades (centuries?). It’s fine.

I’m honestly not against this. I know a lot of people will be furious with Mozilla about doing anything related to advertising, but as the article says:

And, for the foreseeable future at least, advertising is a key commercial engine of the internet, and the most efficient way to ensure the majority of content remains free and accessible to as many people as possible.

We may dislike ads, but the vast majority of internet users are not going to engage with content that requires you to pay up front. Creators and journalists need money to survive, and currently, ad-supported viewing is necessary for that to happen.

Instead of just hoping that advertising somehow goes away, I’m glad that Mozilla is working on ways for ads to exist without mass individual user tracking. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but wishing won’t change the world.