7 ms·
After years of being a Chrome user, I've been trying to work myself off of Google's infrastructure as much as possible. Firefox is great, but I was very disappo
by rgrieselhuber 9y ago
After years of being a Chrome user, I've been trying to work myself off of Google's infrastructure as much as possible. Firefox is great, but I was very disappointed to learn that they are partnering with political activists to block sites that they deem to be "fake news."
Edit:
makeee below posted a good source describing what Mozilla is currently doing, which appears to be limited to "researching" the problem of fake news.
I would love to support Firefox so I hope they come up with something more innovative than blocking (which they do not appear to be doing now - I stand corrected) or labeling (which has its own problems).
As I mentioned below, browsers, search engines, or social networks should not be, IMO, attempting to block or de-rank websites based on political activism, regardless of the source.
- kevinh 9y agoOh, that's great news. Blocking fake news sources would get me to try to switch some relatives back over to Firefox.
- catshirt 9y agoin addition to the closet racists, the last election seems to be outing the closet fascists.
- QAPereo 9y agoMaybe it would be more helpful to stop trying to categorize people based on single posts?
- catshirt 9y agocome on. read between the lines. i'm saying that blocking websites is fascist behavior, not noble work. don't abuse your family's trust by imposing political censorship on them.
- kevinh 9y agoFake news sites (real fake news, not how Trump uses it) are malware for the mind. These are things that are 100% fictional and made up to deceive readers for clicks.
- catshirt 9y ago> "real fake news" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope or (to play coy): you're suggesting we block fiction from the internet...?
- kevinh 9y agoFake news is a distinct category of story that is easily quantified. It is a real problem that the United States faces and if we don't attempt to combat it, discourse will suffer. Since you're a fan of Wikipedia articles, try reading this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news_websites_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news_websites_in_the_Unit...
- catshirt 9y agook. read the whole article. and i understood you right off the bat just fine. you want to block fiction from the internet. specifically, political fiction. and to be really generous, more specifically, political fiction with a certain intent. now. who gets to arbitrate what is "political"? who gets to arbitrate what is "fiction"? who gets to arbitrate someone else's "intent"? Clinton? Trump? Bezos? Huffington? pick your poison. and i'll find half a country that disagrees with you. signed, a very confused liberal
- kevinh 9y agoI don't understand why you're treating this as a partisan issue. Fake news affects every political affiliation, and it isn't limited to political issues. I don't want incorrect information that agrees with my point of view any more than incorrect information that agrees with it. As for how they'd decide what websites to block or put a warning in front of, that seems fairly straightforward. Have a committee that represents different demographics, and require a unanimous vote to take action against a site.
- eugeneionesco 9y agoOhh, people at Mozilla have always been pretty much openly fascists. Just look at the Eich story.
- sctb 9y agoWe've asked you many times not to post unsubstantive, inflammatory political comments, so we've banned the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoI simply don't want the technology I use to be the arbiter of information. Teaching people to discern quality sources for themselves is far better IMO.
- makeee 9y agoThat seems to be exactly what Mozilla is doing no? Research and investing in tools that help people learn to navigate information online and judge for them self. Haven’t found anything that suggests they plan on blocking websites.
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoThanks, the link you posted clarifies that what they are doing at this point is "researching" ways to combat fake news. In practice, the solutions I could imagine them coming up with would be either outright blocking / de-ranking, or preemptively labeling certain sites / articles as fake news. I hope to be wrong on both of those counts.
- Manishearth 9y agoWhere does it say that Mozilla is going to do this? As it stands you're spreading FUD.
- makeee 9y agoSource? Can’t find anything online that indicates they are partnering with political activists to block websites.
- satysin 9y agoI assume OP is talking about this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065644 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065644 Edit: Misread, thought OP was talking about Google not Mozilla.
- numerlo 9y agohttps://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information-trust-initiative-building-movement-fight-misinformation-online/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information...
- makeee 9y agoThanks, although link doesn’t support anything in parent commenter’s claim.
- jccalhoun 9y agodefinite [citation needed] on that one
- SyneRyder 9y agoThe confusion seems to be an AFP story conflating two separate programs. The AFP story mentions Mozilla at the same time as an organization called Full Fact, that has a product that does automated live fact checking. It was initially designed for use during televised political debates, where it could show "correct" and "incorrect" warning popups on screen in real time according to what was said: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-mozilla-fact-checker-fake-news.html https://phys.org/news/2017-08-mozilla-fact-checker-fake-news... (Apologies for the awful link source, I can't find a primary AFP link. Several other sites that have published the same identical story.) Full Fact does appear to be a real organization, they claim to already work with the BBC, Guardian & other media partners, as well as Google. Some of the controversy seems to be over their grant funding from Omidyar Network and an organization founded by George Soros. (Whether that's a reason for concern, I have no idea.) https://fullfact.org/blog/2017/jun/automated-fact-checking-full-fact/ https://fullfact.org/blog/2017/jun/automated-fact-checking-f... https://fullfact.org/blog/2017/jun/awarded-500000-omidyar-network-open-society-foundations-automated-factchecking/ https://fullfact.org/blog/2017/jun/awarded-500000-omidyar-ne... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/fake-news-full-fact-software-immune-system-journalism-soros-omidyar https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/fake-news...
- k__ 9y agoSame here, but I guess getting out of gmail and calendar will be tricky.
- ocodia 9y agoPlenty of great email, contacts and calendar services out there, you just need to pay for them. I went with FastMail and it’s been absolutely painless.
- tonyztan 9y agoAny recommendations for a Google Drive replacement?
- satysin 9y agoI have been using Microsoft OneDrive without issue for the past couple of months. The new Files On Demand feature works well. Of course this is only really helpful to Windows users which is a shame.
- PrimHelios 9y agoIt isn't for everyone, but I host my own NextCloud instance on a personal server. Works fine after a bit of tweaking, but it can be a pain to set up.
- cmurf 9y agoI wonder what it would cost to run a fallback instance on Google or Amazon cloud, like if my ISP/cable modem craps out for whatever reason.
- krrrh 9y agoDropbox/boxcryptor + MS Office. It’s of course necessary to use google drive for collaborative editing from time to time because it is so ubiquitous, but excel is still miles ahead of google sheets in terms of usability. Pages and Numbers are also pretty good for light use on the Mac and have free web versions for collaboration. The Dropbox desktop client is so much better than Drive in terms of CPU usage and straightforward sharing.
- yoasif_ 9y agoThis is fake news.
- knodi 9y agoThat's great new unless your party is the one thats generating most of the fake news, A.K.A GOP/Trump.
- pault 9y agoI personally don't think partisan propaganda is the big problem. The problem is the content farms that will write completely fabricated news articles designed to outrage/reinforce certain political views for eyeballs. The former is a problem to but it would be more difficult to pass off as factual in an environment without the latter. Also, there is plenty of the latter targeting left wing voters. I see it all the time on some of my less discerning friends' facebook feeds.
- mintplant 9y agoI'm aware of a research project to see if reliable identification of "fake news" websites is possible, but there's no "blocking" coming to Firefox. That would violate point 5 of the Mozilla Manifesto. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
- userbinator 9y agoThat would violate point 5 of the Mozilla Manifesto. They can interpret that however they want. For example, you can always "shape the Internet and [your] own experiences on it", including removing any blocking, adding things they remove, etc... just get the source code for Firefox and make all the changes you want. It's all a bunch of vague marketing doublespeak anyway, with around as much power over what Mozilla does as the US constitution has on the US government.
- Manishearth 9y agoI don't think Mozilla has ever said we're blocking fake news in Firefox. Mozilla is doing research into this, and may eventually release some tooling for this (an addon or something). But we don't even help block ads in the browser, I doubt this will be built in.
- userbinator 9y agoAs I mentioned below, browsers, search engines, or social networks should not be, IMO, attempting to block or de-rank websites based on political activism, regardless of the source. Indeed, whatever happened to "don't take sides". Couldn't an organisation stay completely neutral and only focus its efforts on the technology of accessing websites?