At this point, in the history of the Internet, most of us have reached an agreement with the fact that accessing the web implies waiving information about ourselves every time we visit a website. Mozilla believes that we can do better, so it is launching Rally, a data exchange platform and complementation, the complaints of the company are the first of its kind in the browser’s space. With a rally, Mozilla says he hopes to obtain a case for an equitable market for data, “one where each part is fairly treated” and “where people understand the value of their data.”
In practice, Rally will allow you to share your navigation data with computer scientists and sociologists studying the web. Outside the door, they will be a single study at Princeton University who seeks to understand how people find, consume and share news about politics and Covid-19. At some point, later, beyond the Paywall of Stanford University will examine the economy necessary for a more sustainable news panorama.
“A fundamental approach to the initiative is allowing unprecedented studies to have important online services that have responsibility,” said Mozilla. For that purpose, the company is also launching a toolkit called WebScience that allows researchers to create standardized studies based on browsers in Rally. Mozilla affirms that WebScience promotes data minimization, the practice of limiting data collection only the information necessary for a specific purpose. As of today, Rally is available for Firefox Desktop users over 19 years old in the United States.
Just as when a brave support was added for navigation by IPFS, Rally is one of those characteristics that could deeply affect how we navigate online, but it will take more browsers who will adopt the platform to fulfill their promise. As of May 2021, Firefox had a 3.36 percent stake in the global browser market, according to Statcounter. And it will take the purchase of Google or, more likely, Apple to move the needle. At that point, Mozilla says he plans to bring a rally to other browsers and web countries. At the same time, we would not have the company, since historically has had an excited influence on other players in space. As just one example, when Apple introduced its monitoring prevention policy in 2019, the company cited a similar set of Mozilla rules as inspiration.