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It's interesting to me how you can call out this post and recent others as a "marketing initiative from Mozilla" without any apparent backlash (as of yet), but

It's interesting to me how you can call out this post and recent others as a "marketing initiative from Mozilla" without any apparent backlash (as of yet), but when I called it "brigading by Mozilla supporters and fans" on multiple other threads I was completely removed from the conversation. Is there really a difference? Is this the sort of story that casual users or even avid fans of the browser would organically promote? That's the logic that I was handed in some of the responses to me. Am I that out of place to assume that the following is how it goes down? 1.) The marketing/evangelical folks at Mozilla create a story and post it here and elsewhere. 2.) They put out a call to all their supporters in various channels to come and help promote the story (and keep other commenters in line apparently)... I think the problem is that comment forums always optimize towards showing me what the currently active mob/majority thinks about a topic rather than sorting things towards my own personal tastes. I'd much rather see a rating system that weights posts/topics and comments based on my history. For instance: if I've promoted a certain topic in the past, put it higher. If I typically promote a given user, put their comment higher. If I typically promote a certain user who promoted another comment, put that comment higher. And so on. Basically censor the stuff I usually disagree with instead of allowing mob rule. [1] I don't see the point of trying to make everybody see the same truth because that's not how real life works. Mostly, people tend to live in tribes. Wouldn't it be nice if the Internet wasn't always in your face telling you how wrong you are? IMO, such systems would put a chill on the global culture war. [1] - This might be the perfect problem for a graph database. If anyone wants to work on something like this, let me know how to contact you and I'll give you all of my ideas!

feanaro 7y ago
So, in other words, you want the internet to help you cement yourself in your current positions?
- wayneftw 7y ago
  Nope. Just trying to live my life without constantly being pitched to. Are you advocating for mob-mentality?
  - afiori 7y ago
    It is not a dicothomy. While there are obviously trends at all times, they evolve over time and new ones emerge. I do not know your positions but it could simply be that someone with the right formulation able to start a trend is yet to come. Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion, could be that popular assumption are indeed wrong and many people either do not care (maybe for principles or maybe because it is not really important) or just never encountered convincing arguments.
    - wayneftw 7y ago
      > Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion... Firefox isn't popular and that's my point. A browser with less than 10% market share got on the front page of many places this week because of a marketing push that was helped by a group supporters, a mob, who helped push it there. A system that was optimized more towards my own dislike and distrust of Firefox and Mozilla wouldn't have shown me this bullshit.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        It's not popular, but it's better. The recent series of unfavourable events around Chrome and Google led people to talk about it more.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. My reasoning is that, at any given point in time, I am wrong about a great number of things. I fear that any algorithm that learns to present me exclusively with the content I like (i.e. which elicits the least emotional objection) is going to hide all things that might correct my current errors.
    - wayneftw 7y ago
      > No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. Good for you! Now, how about letting people get challenged and exposed to new information at a time and place when they choose to instead of constantly? I like camping and hiking...but I'm glad I get to go home to my comfortable house most of the time. People are currently starting to gravitate more towards small group chats on WhatsApp and similar and away from places like Twitter and Facebook. I wonder why? Could it be it's because they don't want what you want 24/7? I think so. And the system you're advocating for, the current one, is obviously way more susceptible to being gamed. As you can see here all it takes is a small mob and a marketing push to get your unpopular browser on the front page 5 times this week. The system I want isn't susceptible to that in the slightest (but if I want to go look at things that I might not agree with, I'm still able to - that's my whole point: User in control, not some timely mob).
ryacko 7y ago
Most people follow like minded people, become surprised when they have an unexpected opinion, and sometimes unfollow them. Not sure developing new social media would gain adoption.

feanaro 7y ago

So, in other words, you want the internet to help you cement yourself in your current positions?

wayneftw 7y ago
Nope. Just trying to live my life without constantly being pitched to. Are you advocating for mob-mentality?
- afiori 7y ago
  It is not a dicothomy. While there are obviously trends at all times, they evolve over time and new ones emerge. I do not know your positions but it could simply be that someone with the right formulation able to start a trend is yet to come. Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion, could be that popular assumption are indeed wrong and many people either do not care (maybe for principles or maybe because it is not really important) or just never encountered convincing arguments.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    > Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion... Firefox isn't popular and that's my point. A browser with less than 10% market share got on the front page of many places this week because of a marketing push that was helped by a group supporters, a mob, who helped push it there. A system that was optimized more towards my own dislike and distrust of Firefox and Mozilla wouldn't have shown me this bullshit.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      It's not popular, but it's better. The recent series of unfavourable events around Chrome and Google led people to talk about it more.
- feanaro 7y ago
  No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. My reasoning is that, at any given point in time, I am wrong about a great number of things. I fear that any algorithm that learns to present me exclusively with the content I like (i.e. which elicits the least emotional objection) is going to hide all things that might correct my current errors.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    > No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. Good for you! Now, how about letting people get challenged and exposed to new information at a time and place when they choose to instead of constantly? I like camping and hiking...but I'm glad I get to go home to my comfortable house most of the time. People are currently starting to gravitate more towards small group chats on WhatsApp and similar and away from places like Twitter and Facebook. I wonder why? Could it be it's because they don't want what you want 24/7? I think so. And the system you're advocating for, the current one, is obviously way more susceptible to being gamed. As you can see here all it takes is a small mob and a marketing push to get your unpopular browser on the front page 5 times this week. The system I want isn't susceptible to that in the slightest (but if I want to go look at things that I might not agree with, I'm still able to - that's my whole point: User in control, not some timely mob).

ryacko 7y ago

Most people follow like minded people, become surprised when they have an unexpected opinion, and sometimes unfollow them. Not sure developing new social media would gain adoption.