Working Groups/Privacy Preserving Browser

Privacy Preserving Browser
Exploring alternatives to surveillance capitalism

Privacy Preserving Browser was launched in the pilot cohort of Mozilla’s building trustworthy AI working group. The project came in with a set of Privacy Preserving recsys algorithms. However, they needed to research and validate/prove (or disprove) the real world impact and effectiveness of these algorithms by putting them into the “wild” and observe how real users interacts with them.

Problem
"If you are not paying for a product, you are the product" - tech proverb. We are not the owner nor the benefactor of our data. This creates a model that is exploitative and leads to negative outcomes as a community and society like over-consumption/environmental damage, extremism, entertainment without true fulfillment or enjoy that is robbing people of their most scarce asset: our time and futures. If we hand control of data back to the people via the browser, will that shift us towards a new model? We seek a future where data is rewarded to companies building better products for consumer and community well-being.

Solution

Algorithms and AI are making decisions that affects all of us and changing our behaviours. We would like to create a more positive and equitable future as an alternative to surveillance capitalism - starting with a differentially private browser.

Contributors
Shashi Gharti, Maddie Shang

Resources
Preliminary Project Research
OpenMined Privacy Conference - Day 1 - Part 2 Livestream