I was all ready to roll my eyes at yet another attempt to blame all the Firefox problems on one thing or another based on superficial and emotional considerations without any data or serious analysis, but it turns out it's just the same video from a few months ago being posted yet again.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
-48 points (31.2% liked)
Privacy
31872 readers
437 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Criticizing this video for emotional arguments doesn't make sense. It lays down statistics, quotes privacy policies, and chips at the way Mozilla uses emotional arguments in its marketing. And I've seen many Firefox people simply argue "the CEO deserves to be paid well" and "Firefox is the last bastion of the open web" - arguments that I myself have at least semi agreed with, which means I might have proclivity to emotion myself.
So if there's a problem... Can you cite specific examples in the video?
I criticized the video last time it turned up in my feed. I don't feel it's worth doing again. The former over-paid CEO has since departed from that post, FYI.
She switched places with another CEO that promptly fired even more workers, yes.
Can you link to your critiques? I looked for them on your behalf and found three other posts of this video, but no comments from you on them.
I dunno, it might've been on mastodon. It's not as if I said anything that's likely to change your mind if you think this video is interesting and insightful. I'm not going to watch it again, but I remember it well enough to say that the only real questions it raises are that of how it got so many views and why it is still doing the rounds so many months later. It misses the mark. Stop to consider it carefully and I've no doubt you'll find for yourself much better things to say about the real problems at Mozilla.
I have carefully considered the arguments. Perhaps I have even contributed to them indirectly. I find them to be incredibly legitimate and in dire need of Mozilla's action.
I'm kind of surprised your comment on this post got so much attention because it says so little; it should be dismissed out of hand as purely rhetorical IMO.
Yup but people dont read to the end of the thread
Indeed my comment seems unworthy of as much attention as you've given it. But you obviously care a great deal about the subject, so I suppose you must've noticed that in general much of the rhetorical abuse directed at Mozilla is even more unfair. I suppose it's because people like to look for easy targets.
There are definitely bad actors who have "Mozilla must fall" ideology, like Brian Lunduke (who gets one hell of a shout-out in this video despite doing nothing but reposting already publicly accessible documents and speculating about them). Lunduke is clearly ideologically biased and doesn't care about whether things are true or false as long as his statements back up his personal agenda.
But the flip side to this is the "Mozilla mustn't fall" arguments that dismiss all criticism of Mozilla and insist that continued compromise (throwing money at every shiny new object, overpaying the CEO, cutting jobs, ignoring their officially stated principles) is necessary for Mozilla to survive, as if survival in itself is a valuable end goal.
And I don't think it is. A Mozilla that abandons its founding principles would be about as bad as a Mozilla that has ceased to exist entirely. We aren't there yet, but it's a death by a thousand cuts.
Ah I see, you mistook me for one of those "Mozilla can do no wrong" people. Yeah they're pretty annoying too.
My own explanation for why Firefox market share is down would primarily consist of two things: 1. Abuse by Google and Microsoft of their monopoly power in other markets to push their browsers, and 2. A long list of individually small product design decisions that slowly eroded its reputation over the years.
Google's influence on all web browsers (including Firefox) would definitely remain a constant even if Mozilla wasn't accepting money from them. Which is also why I have no problem with Mozilla accepting money from them. It's not the first time a company in fear of becoming a monopoly just threw money at a competitor; Microsoft did it with Apple.
The whole FakeSpot thing to me reads like a company pursuing new things on multiple levels. Back in 2022, FakeSpot was trying to get into NFT verification, and they only added the "with AI" label onto their product recently (with no changes I could detect). And given Mozilla's willingness to shift from random project to random project, I'm not excited about what this AI shift is going to do by early 2025.
Related: Mozilla's Biggest AI moments, published January 31 2024, may not age well
The world is full of surprises!
You never know what new to expect from old
The video is probably factually correct, but very disingenuous with its interpretations and conclusions imo.
Of course Mozilla and Firefox have their own share of problems and bad decisions, and they are pretty well known and talked about from what I've seen, but equating it to Google and Chrome is just pure cynicism. Mozilla having to earn money somehow (1% donations!) and Google trying to maximize profits at all costs is not the same thing, even if it might look similar sometimes.
Yes, the result is: FF is the only thing we have. I tried to manually ungoogle Chromium, it sucks. Brave is shady, Vivaldi too.
Use Torbrowser, Librewolf, Arkenfox, Mullvadbrowser and contribute and donate.
What makes Vivaldi shady?
AFAIK, just that it isn't fully open source. It is source available however, but that's not the same. It's sad that they dont go through with it as Vivaldi is by far the most feature rich browser out there.
Firefox has a massive data leak issue, this is unfortunate but nothing new and it's quite easy to stop.
The thing is, the foundation goes in the completely wrong direction. Instead of developing the browser and create an actually good mobile version of it, they sink money in useless hypetrain bullshit.
For example: on Android Firefox you cannot even change the homepage.
I never see the homepage even. It shows up if you close the browser? I never do that on my phone.
Most important thing is you can change your search engine to whatever you want.
It shows up if you close the browser?
If you close all tabs, if you open a new “empty” tab, if you restart the browser, etc. Having a settable homepage is a no-brainer and I never ever stumbled across a browser that cannot set it.
They are going to make a new tab organizer though.
So we can finally have normal tabs in Firefox, too?
And the Android version doesn't even have a bookmarks toolbar. You have to go through the menu -> bookmarks -> bookmarks toolbar -> search for the bookmark
I need 6 taps to open a folder in my bookmarks bar in new "tabs". This is just ridiculous.
exactly. compared to a toolbar which would only be one click that is right on the screen.
Exactly. On desktop this also works as expected. Since the Firefox doesn't have proper quickdial (neither on desktop nor on mobile) such a functionality is absolutely necessary.
You can't login to your google account that everyone already has to sync between all your devices
😂😂😂
Some stuff is probably true though, I didn't listen to most of it. Funds are mismanaged some times (CEO).
Use librewolf and fennec/ mull if you want to support another browser.
I haven't seen the video, but I don't think most of the people who were using FF when it was popular and who switched to chrome later did it because of any of the points listed.
So watch the video :D
They specifically mention this issue
14 minute video. Ok I'll try to view it later. The culprit is Mitchell Baker's manifesto or whatever it was called, ditching the end user principle and putting predatory companies on an equal basis, instead of trusting that they would look after themselves perfectly well. The browser should instead be 100% on the user's side. I'll look for some links when I get around to it.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/
- The internet is an integral part of modern life—a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.
- The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
- The internet must enrich the lives of individual human beings.
- Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
- Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on the internet.
- The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.
- Free and open source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource.
- Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.
- Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical.
- Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.
Yes that one. Compare item 9 with https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html
I'm not against commercial web activity obviously. It's just that the commercial community rightly takes its own side and does a good job of it. Mozilla should correspondingly be only on the users' side, instead of trying to be on both.
And yes I know which side supplies Mozilla with money. But a pro-user approach to the web's evolution would IMHO have resulted in browsers staying much simpler than they are now, and therefore less expensive to maintain.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=ugnOM2mzgNU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Go to hell Mozilla. I couldn't care less if your browser fails at this point.
Amen. I use Firefox, but not because it's great or anything. It's just because Chrome/Chromium is worse in just about every aspect I care about. Seriously, I hope Mozilla dies so that it can be reborn by a different org that gives a fuck about browsers, because Mozilla sure as hell doesn't.
Mozilla only wants that sweet Google money they get paid to be the only "mainstream" alternative (500 million dollars per year). They could make the greatest opensource alternative browser and experience out there with that money, but instead they pay their CEO at least 5 million a year.
Fuck Mozilla.
Seriously, I hope Mozilla dies so that it can be reborn by a different org that gives a fuck about browsers, because Mozilla sure as hell doesn’t.
And why do you think that would happen as opposed to Chromium just becoming the only browser engine available?
load more comments
(6 replies)
Go to hell Mozilla. I couldn’t care less if your browser fails at this point.
I share this sentiment to some point. Mozilla taking millions from Google, and making it difficult for users to DeGoogle or remove the sponsored shortcuts from their Firefox browser. But hard forking Firefox will not be a light weight task for a new project to take on for a long time. I hope the stronger pushing of ads by Google in the Chrome/Chromium browser will make some more people switch back to Firefox.
I dont think Mozilla makes degoogling hard. It is very easy to keep track of the changes and simply flip some switches.
But it is of course ironic that their product is useless.
People used Firefox because Internet Explorer sucked. Now they get ads for Chrome everywhere, have Android and whatnot devices, and Edge is working okay.
People are using devices as appliances, they dont expect needing to repair something they bought new.
I dont think Mozilla makes degoogling hard. It is very easy to keep track of the changes and simply flip some switches.
Some switched ? Have you checked all the connections a Firefox browser makes ? In case you didn't know Mozilla push notifications is hosted on a Google server.
Arkenfox, Librewolf, Torbrowser, MullvadBrowser.
Those switches. It is not easy but it is possible, unlike on Chromium, where after applying even policies it constantly pings Google.
Arkenfox, Librewolf, Torbrowser, MullvadBrowser. Those switches.
I stand corrected.
load more comments
(2 replies)
It really is crazy if you see the hype for the "sovereign tech fund" for GNOME, that was literally just 1mio€.
It is so insane how people can waste so much money.
When donating, nowadays I am often very certain that giving money to homeless people will always be better than giving it random "nonprofit" "charities" that will simply sustain their 1st world lifes as "operation expenses".
I don't remember exactly what i've seen but it's was a research on how many non-profit org and the like you could really trust and it's like 10 for all the thousand there is
view more: next ›