Would you look at that yet another anti Mozilla post in this community. Go ahead and scroll thru the posts and you'll find at least 4 from the last week or two alone
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Out of touch with reality...
I've been sticking with FF proper since it has the sync stuff that's easily used. But it sounds like it's about time to set up a sync server and run a FF fork.
I hope everybody criticizing the move either do not use products from Mozilla or, if they do, contribute however they can up to their own capabilities. If you don't, if you ONLY criticize, yet use Firefox (or a derivative, e.g. LibreWolf) or arguably worst use something fueled by ads (e.g. Chromium based browsers) then you are unfortunately contributing precisely to the model you are rejecting.
So just to be clear, people aren't allowed to criticize ads in Firefox unless they're open source developers actively contributing to Firefox or they only use... What, Opera?
I thought saying
contribute however they can up to their own capabilities
was actually very clear but seems I wasn't clear enough so that means... literally doing ANYTHING except only criticizing. That can mean being an open-source developer, yes, but that can also means translation, giving literally 1 cent, etc. It means doing anything at all that would not ONLY be saying "this is good, but it's not good enough" without doing actually a single thing to change, especially while actually using another free of charge browser that is funded by advertisement. Honestly if that's not clear enough I'm not sure what would be ... but please, do ask again I will genuinely try to be clearer.
Mozilla could have focused on being user-supported through fundraising like Wikipedia. Instead they chose the comfortable path of being funded by their biggest competitor, who is an evil monopoly spyware ad business, which has been compelling Mozilla to kill Firefox and become the badies on the way down.
You can donate to Mozilla.
Perhaps they should've put that more front and center. But if they add a prominent donate button the people on here would probably lose their shit too.
What on earth would that do? The poisonous leadership would not use it to improve the browser nor would they start working for donors instead of Google.
My point is that there is a funding model that they could have pursued when they still had goodwill and trust. And my hope is if the government finally puts the boot in with Google, then this current version of mozilla will collapse, the rats will leave the ship and hopefully a good browser will emerge the way firefox emerged from netscape.
But you just said
Mozilla could have focused on being user-supported through fundraising like Wikipedia.
It is an option.
Clearly it isn't working well enough for them.
They would have had to build that infrastructure. I'm not saying fundraising is easy. But it's possible as proven by wikipedia. They could have cut Google loose 10 years ago and said "we're going to use our runway to try to put together a wikimedia foundation style fundraising operation. I don't think they can do it now because the trust, goodwill and quite frankly, userbase is gone.
If you were implying that I said being funded by Alphabet/Google was a good thing then let me be explicit, I did NOT say that nor believe it to be the case. Now, once again, cf my actual comment about pragmatic better alternative we can rely on and support today. If you meant to suggest better and are supporting that, please do share.
So, blaming the victim.
I'm so glad that Libre Wolf fork exists, that doesn't change a fact of Mozilla foundation goes in a really wrong direction :/
Edit: typo
The fork is not maintained by LibreOffice.
Yes, thanks - autocorrect messed up my post (I meant Libre Wolf). it’s fixed now
Don't quote me on this but if I remember correctly, Mozilla foundation has nothing to do with Firefox development and was also kind of shady for some reason.
Thanks for pointing this out - I’ll do some research on this topic in a free time (as I don’t know much facts about Mozilla foundation) :)
fuck it
just going to print out the man pages for wget and study it like a religious text
I will never ever accept any ad technology except maybe <a href="company_url"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>
Would you look at that, privacy preserving advertisement!
Let's take it one step further and go really crazy with a/b testing
<a href="company_url/campaign1"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>
<a href="company_url/campaign2"><img src="different_picture.gif"></a>
It'd be cool if Mozilla could just stick with one thing for more than a couple months. Even if that thing is terrible. Right now it's like some physical embodiment of ADHD is running the company.
Adverts are visual and psychological pollution. Get fucked.
I'm not interested in my computer striking a balance between my needs and the needs of people seeking to manipulate me into buying things.
I paid for my computer, it serves my needs. Yes I do run Linux, how did you guess?
But that isn’t the balance that’s being struck. Mozilla is trying to balance between useful services being available for free and people’s right to privacy. If you’re using any websites that has staff employed, they’re more likely than not being paid for by advertising.
The model for most the content on the internet doesn't work without advertising. The people who are "zero tolerance" on ads are going to prevent possible compromises from being made and just encourage an arms race. I don't think we win that arms race, we get more insidious forms of tracking and brazen advertising.
Whatever compromise anyone tries to come up with will be ignored and exploited as hard as advertisers possibly can.
A compromise that actually works would depend on advertisers actually complying. The advertisers that do will be vastly outnumbered by the advertisers that don't.
So we're getting the arms race either way.
Honestly, despite the crypto, good on Brave browser for trying to subvert the advertising model by providing an actual monetization alternative
Chromium shill
Lol chill, I use Firefox. I can still call out good things in other browsers even if I don't like the browser as a whole for other reasons. None of what I said there was in support of chromium.
What does this even mean? Brave didnt find something to "subvert the advertising model", they have a subscription lol. Mozilla is trying to keep its browser free and safe, especially now that it's losing its billion dollar google funding.
Brave can make micro payments to content creators based on the number of views to the site, directly supporting content creators without ads or the need to join the patreon for each creator. It's a fully optional system, off by default but prompted upon opening the browser for the first time. It's a cool idea but they kind of spoiled it by making it be a crypto wallet with ads to earn the crypto.
Also, Brave doesn't have a subscription...?
You haven't heard about the Brave ads that let you slowly accumulate tokens that you can then use to tip creators or websites? I'm not saying it was a good plan, or an ethical plan, but it was... You know, something.
Unlike what Mozilla did, Brave didn't enable this by default, but they heavily marketed it as a feature.
If Mozilla implemented some kind of tipping system, that could be interesting. Apparently, such a system already could exist under GNU Taler too.
brave also used it to scam people by taking tips for creators who weren't on the platform. if the creator never signed up, they kept that money.
and they had an adblocker that replaced ads with their own, making the browser money instead of the site.
they have actively contributed to making the web worse. saying "at least they're doing something" is like praising the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of a mugger.
You're 100% right about Brave being scummy.
And I hope my point didn't come across as a defensd of Brave, but rather, "how is it that Mozilla is doing this thing in a worse way than a company that is infamously disreputable?"
I need to send an email to Mozilla soon. The fact that I'm highly convinced that these three Linux youtubers would do a better job than the current management should tell you a lot about what's happening at Mozilla (yes, it's that bad).
Please do, that email will totally change everything
Daily reminder that Mozilla's new CEO is a former McKinsey consultant.
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