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The original developer has a great blog, and has commented on this
They’ve decided who their customers are, and it’s not you
Since FF is free - isn’t that a given?
He seems to only have been involved during roughly the first year of Mozilla’s existence.
Right, an original at Mosaic [Netscape] before it got into that fight with Internet Explorer, went open-source, and became Mozilla.
Yeah exactly.
In parallel to our existing consumer products, we have the opportunity to build a better infrastructure for the online advertising industry as a whole. Advertising at large cannot be improved unless the tech it’s built upon prioritizes securing user data. This is precisely why we acquired Anonym.
Catering to the ad industry is backwards thinking, imo. Securing user data is easy enough if you do not collect it to begin with.
Imo, the fact companies have changed the narrative in favor of advertisers and data collection, proves only profit matters, not the people.
No one starts a company because they care about people
Securing user data is easy enough if you do not collect it to begin with.
Bingo.
As if de-anonymizing hasn’t been demonstrated, repeatedly.
fuck
Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck
But at least forking is still an option. The instant they make any moves that inhibit forking or privacy on forks, Firefox will be completely dead. For now, it’s just gangrenous.
I wish that most forks wouldn’t be even worse. Pale Moon, the most interesting one, is a gang of patent trolls.
Pale Moon feels like it forked during the peak of Windows Vista, and hasn’t updated its UI, or extension library since.
LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser, and Waterfox feel the most up to date, while being FOSS.
Good luck with even maintaining that fork up to date , with security threats and web standards changing so quickly.
Chromium manages (obsfucated binary blobs from google still being included aside)
Chromium is developed by Google. It’s not some grassroots fork with user interests in mind…
The thing is, people willing to maintain a fork could contribute to Firefox today, and reduce the development cost, reduce the need for income.
Sure, some people will be more willing to contribute, if it’s a pure grassroots effort, or if they’re left without a browser otherwise, but to just assume that a fork will fix it, that’s wishful thinking.
Because of propaganda, people find it easier to imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism. Just the same, theres lots of commenters here that could imagine the end of the internet before they imagine the end of advertising on the internet.
Ladybird is not usable yet, but it’s an independent browser and engine that accepts donations
repo - https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird
youtube channel with monthly updates - https://www.youtube.com/@LadybirdBrowser/videos
So is NetSurf, and has been for most of this century already. I mean, it’s great to see people even caring about independent browsers, but NetSurf surely needs much more love (and more developers). :-)
I feel like I’m reading a different article than everyone else. The comments made me think the article would be adding advertisements, but it seems to be trying to find a way forward to facilitate advertisements while maintaining privacy.
Without technical details I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I know lemmy is largely “Mozilla bad”, but I’m just not sure the comments are in line with the proposal.
Thank you for breathing a bit of sanity into this thread. Same here. Some commenters were like “oh there’s already too many adds” and I was like wait, what? They’re not adding more adds to Firefox, are they? The article doesn’t suggest that.
The “Mozilla bad” crowd echo chamber has gotten completely out of control in my opinion, and it’s an avalanche of low effort comments, dozens of upvotes, and it’s kind of a self sustaining echo chamber that exists because it exists.
Yes, that’s the same thing every time Firefox is mentioned here. It’s like people here WANT to be angry.
It’s like people here WANT to be angry.
Outrage addiction is absolutely, 1000% a thing.
I originally was one of the “FUCK FIREFOX IS FUCKED” people. However, after taking a deep breath and actually reading, yes, you are correct. There is no indication that they’re blocking adblockers or taking away firefox customization. I think they’re both looking for alternative revenue streams and trying to make the advertising business less intrusive. That being said, their communication is absolute dogshit and they deserve a lot of the shit they get. But I am not yet panicking. Firefox remains the best choice for blocking ads.
There is no indication that they’re blocking adblockers or taking away firefox customization.
Yet.
We don’t know that after they are deeper and deeper into the advertising industry, that they don’t just go ahead and do it.
Remember how Google wasn’t always evil? Money changes companies (and people). Advertising money could very well change Mozilla. Plus, remember, these statements are them telling you the public version, things that they are claiming will happen. Often times what goes on behind the scenes is very different.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be concerned by this.
It’s comments like this that concern me. It’s extrapolating on a worst case hypothetical, and setting it equal to a present day reality of Google’s hundred billion dollar advertising empire.
It doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be concerned about, but I think you need to understand the difference between possible bad thing, and fanning the flames of mob mentality.
Remember how Google wasn’t always evil?
You know who also also wasn’t always evil? VLC. And guess what, they’re still not evil! Even though they have turned town tens of millions of dollars that would have compromised their software. So, what does that prove? Maybe that measured concern should be combined with an ability to be nuanced on a case by case basis.
Can you point to where I said that Mozilla is as bad as Google?
I don’t think you’ll be able to.
Mozilla has been called out for concerning things in the past, as has Canonical. I think it’s okay to call companies out for doing shady things, and I think it’s okay to hold them accountable.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be concerned.
The problem for me is that I’m tired of ads at all, so while I do think that having an ad system that is less abusive than the current one is a step in the right direction, I still don’t want to see any unsolicited ads and this feels like the initial steps to try to make it more palatable to eventually try to force users to accept ads back into their lives.
Yea that’s likely what it is. Hopefully I can remain in the 1% of people who go out of their way to block ads. As long as I can do that I’ll welcome the industry as a whole being more privacy friendly (if that’s even possible)
Yeah, that might be the best case scenario. Have ad blocking but add in some technical hurdles so that not enough people do it for it to be worth stamping out.
Though that makes me wonder if this will be effective at all because the technical hurdle to get Mozilla’s new ad system is only slightly less than the technical hurdle to install ublock origin. I’m guessing advertisers will either ignore it entirely and continue with what they are doing (because the data means profit for them) or maybe put some portion of their bandwidth towards it while continuing to do what they are doing with other providers.
It’s really hard to tell how Mozilla is acting doing because 99.99% of the posts/comments on Lemmy/Reddit is just FUD. I’m sire it skews people’s perception.
Yeah, Lemmy isn’t getting the same kind of propaganda as other social media, but it does appear to be present here on some topics.
Like normal conservative propaganda gets drowned out since the userbase has a large portion of people who are here because we’re tired of corporate bullshit.
But it means we’re probably more susceptible to propaganda that accuses corporations of corporate bullshit, whether the accusation has merit or not.
Yea that’s a really good way to put it!
But it means we’re probably more susceptible to propaganda that accuses corporations of corporate bullshit, whether the accusation has merit or not.
Exactly. It’s a different variation. I think the Mozilla stuff is more a sleepwalking echo chamber than an intentional campaign, but at a certain point the difference doesn’t matter.
I still don’t want to see any unsolicited ads and this feels like the initial steps to try to make it more palatable to eventually try to force users to accept ads back into their lives.
Right, there’s still a slippery slope issue here. I actually think it was a good thing that Mozilla was coming up with add-on products to create a revenue stream. I would love to, for instance, pay for a 2TB Mozilla Drive over Google Drive. I would rather do that than the ads.
I’d love a subscription-based privacy review service. Hell, combine it with a full product review where the consumers of the reviews are paying for it, rather than ad revenue, commissions from selling what they are reviewing, free products from the makers, or being outright fronts for marketers.
Like that report about all car companies selling cars that are spy machines was very good to know, as much as it sucked to see confirmation that that was indeed the case.
If there’s enough easy visibility on who is doing privacy right and wrong, then there might actually be more economic incentive to make good products instead of trying to sell out their own customers to make an extra buck.
Yeah, perhaps because advertisements go against the values that users look for in your browser?
Frankly, I’m surprised it took them so long to say this publicly. For over a year, Mozilla has had a de facto conflict of interest when it came to their stance on advertisements, so take anything they say about their necessity with a huge grain of salt…
May 2023: Mozilla purchases FakeSpot, a company that sells private data to advertisers. Mozilla keeps selling private data to advertisers to this day.
June 2024: Mozilla purchases Anonym, an AdTech company.
Thanks but
We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026.
We need an alternative before that
Talk is cheap, get contributing! Donate, translate or code. That way we’ll have a proper way out of Mozilla sooner
Done! I contributed $10 a few days ago. Hope to give some more after my next payment.
Great to know! I donated 6 $ and I’m waiting for them to open the browser to translations
Maybe this pushes the development a little bit. Would be a good opportunity to ask for funding and other means of help.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Google ad monopoly case?
It’s probably at least a factor, yeah. They’ve been trying to reduce dependence on Google for a long time, which was always a smash hit with the community (not), but if there’s a very concrete scenario where will stop paying, then the urgency ramps up quickly.
It is time to fork Firefox. Mozilla has bern hijacked by people who don’t care about its vision.
It’s already been done, LibreWolf is what Firefox originally set out to be.
It is only a soft fork
Sure, but as you pointed out maintaining a browser is hard. I don’t know that any genuine fork or new browser is on the horizon, and the day to day of using firefox is fine by me, so a fork that strips there nonsense might be plenty for me.
Maintaining a browser is very labor intensive
The only ones who will embrace it are the advertisers…
You’re forgetting about the people in the office building that sit around the big table. They embrace it too.
Now imagine if they had something to advertise which people actually want!
This breaks my heart.
But taking on controversial topics because we believe they make the internet better for all of us is a key feature of Mozilla’s history.
Is it?
I would rather have a world where Mozilla is actively engaged in creating positive solutions for hard problems, than one where we only critique from the sidelines.
Maybe your users don’t.
In addition to your good points:
a world where Mozilla is actively engaged
That doesn’t have to mean a world where Firefox itself is involved in this engagement, despite her insistence that it for some reason must be. Firefox is not Mozilla as a whole.
Yeah adblock plus said the same thing. A lot of companies have said the same thing. It always comes down to greed
