31 ms·

The internet needs our love

134 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

Adferdfqwer 6y ago
Ok
lewisflude 6y ago
This casual tone coming from Mozilla, in a year where they've laid off entire devisions of their business[1] seems a little out of touch. I think they have a lot of work to do in repairing their brand, and showing their core following that they can be trusted. I think Mozilla might need a little bit of self-love. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees...
- zimablue 6y ago
  Companies which are run for good intentions are often hard to work for, pay less etc. You can view it through the lense of employee as consumer - if people are likely to agree with the moral mission of the company, they're likely to be willing to work for less wages. It's weirdly common and makes no sense to me this line of argument, I've seen independent newspapers attacked for paying less than (evil) big media companies. The devil pays well! That's the deal! Good guys can't/don't because they're trying to venture outside the huge raw capitalistic currents, and the employee-consumer effect. Ironically companies trying to do good which do pay well then get attacked for their profligacy with limited resources. Underneath all this (especially on a still semi-elite tech site) I think a (societal) system with big problems pushing people into complicity creates a compulsion to attack anyone seemingly slightly nobler in their mission, in an to quash pervasive cognitive dissonance.
  - hetspookjee 6y ago
    I find it really interesting as well. CEOs of large NGOs often get attacked for their 500k salaries, which is a senior SWE salary at a FAANG. I think it is because people just really hate hypocrites almost more than anything. If you plea the good cause, and you dare to deviate from that path, it's just a matter of time for the moral fashion to blow in your face. Another thing is that if you plea the good cause, you draw the ire of the people with an activist nature, while if you don't, you're just like all the others.
- e737eyrhehrh 6y ago
  Seems like the opposite honestly, their core following blows and can't be relied on to save them. Now that they're focusing on the times again Firefox is the best browser on Android for anyone who cares about a sane mobile ui or reliable core features like dark mode and ad-blocking. If it were up to the core audience we'd still be trapped on the desktop as the world gravitates more and more towards mobile.
atomicfiredoll 6y ago
I know this is probably just their new marketing campaign, but there's this nugget of truth to it. I used to be so optimistic about the internet--about bringing the entirety of human knowledge to everybody's front door. But, the reality has proven to be so much more... complex. I really hope we do find a way get past this awkward teenage phase it seems to be having.
- throwawaysage56 6y ago
  The internet amplifies human ability to access information. We get the entirety of human knowledge in our living room. We also get the entirety of human filth in our living room. Like every power amplifier in this world, for example guns, dynamite or atomic power, it amplifies both the positives and the negatives. The techno-utopian expectation that amplification of power will somehow bring Utopia is just that, utopian. There is but one hope, cultivating virtue. When was the last time you even heard of the concept in modern culture?
- Weebs 6y ago
  I may be off, but the heart of the issue to me is that the internet is beginning to resemble the world at large, because the world at large realized that the internet was another vehicle for profit. The goals Mozilla has mentioned here are important, but I don't think they quite get at the crux of the issue: the rulebook our society plays by is structured in a way that the development of these symptoms is almost inevitable. The hard thing is you can't really begin to point out these structural issue without people shutting you down: saying that's the way things have always been (it's not), there's no other way (there is), denying that it's even a problem, or that it's something we just have to deal with. Until we are structured in a way where we can work for the benefit of each other and ourselves, on our own accord, on our own time, this is the slope of the hill we'll keep rolling down. Let's build open ecosystems and push back, but it is imperative we recognize the game is slanted against that.
nix23 6y ago
Hey mozilla would be nice to unfck your management first.
- banachtarski 6y ago
  Yea how about not handing out giant executive packages while downsizing your teams.
  - ericd 6y ago
    I agree that they shouldn’t be raising executive pay given that they’re not doing a very good job. But let’s not be hyperbolic, it’s not “giant”. Sundar Pichai’s pay is measured in billions, for comparison.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      Sundar Pichai's base pay is $2m/yr. The rest is stock.
      - ericd 6y ago
        Yes, over $1B in liquid stock over 5 years.
        selectodude 6y ago
        Which is a function of his management. The stock didn't go up in a vacuum.
        zepto 6y ago
        Yes, it was all Sundar’s doing. Nothing to do with the search monopoly.
        ericd 6y ago
        I mean, keep in mind that the Nasdaq is up more than Google’s stock over the past 5 years.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
tl;dr: "Big tech has gotten too big." Download a bunch of extensions to complain if you see something you don't like on youtube and facebook, "watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix" and choose independent tech, which includes among others Medium and Pocket.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  Also, help us crowdsource content you deem problematic so we can keep other people from seeing it!
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    This part in particular gets me everytime. Imagine a complaint about big government that demands that big government shuts down people the complainer doesn't like. Sounds insane, but is par for the course in complaints about big tech.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Which part does that?
TimSchumann 6y ago
I really hope this isn't just marketing, but given recent management trends at Mozilla, I'm skeptical.
ConsiderCrying 6y ago
There's also this fun story [0], which was discussed here [1]. Fits nicely with Mozilla saying: "We’re here to prove that you can have an ethical tech business." Start by caring for your workers first, instead of giving pay raises to CEOs, under whose leadership the company's been struggling. [0]: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usage-is-down-85-despite-mozillas-top-exec-pay-going-up-400 https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usa... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698&ref=hvper.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698&ref=hvper.com
- lewisflude 6y ago
  I get the impression that Mozilla is a bloated organisation that's resting on goodwill it built up back when Firefox was a compelling user experience. I think one of the main reasons anyone uses Firefox nowadays is because they believe in the mission and find good values alignment with a player that has more independence than Google. With a constant string of red flags and negative press, I wonder what the next version of Mozilla will look like. Personally, I wouldn't bet on them surviving and thriving for much longer. I feel a core part of the Firefox-using crowd vouch for it because they believe in the Mozilla mission from years back, and feel a strong value alignment with the company. I don't think they've got enough goodwill built up to ride things out forever.
  - ericd 6y ago
    Personally, I use it because it’s privacy focused/not run by Google, and Safari has this weird issue where it will hang the UI thread of the computer itself (is freeze mouse) when one has lots of tabs open. AFAIK, they still have those privacy centric values, and have been working on a number of projects in that vein.
  - prox 6y ago
    Often CEOS don’t know when to quit. I don’t mean they aren’t competent, but they simply aren’t the right one for the job and they don’t want to leave, or unable to change their ways. I really wish Firefox the best but even though I love their blogs and how they communicate, their branding needs adaption as well recapture the hearts of developers and the crowd.
bityard 6y ago
I have an article in my personal wiki titled "How to Unfuck Firefox". It contains a list of the broken default behavior, workarounds, and long-standing unfixed bugs that have caused me great pain over the last decade. It is thus ironic in the extreme that Mozilla is spending time and money on a campaign called "Unfuck the Internet" at a time that they're coming under fire for squandering their financial resources on CEO pay and pet projects instead of focusing their efforts on disrupting the Chrome/Webkit monopoly.
- s17n 6y ago
  I think it's gross to pay the CEO a high salary if you're asking people for donations, but Mozilla isn't; they're self-funded. So if they want to blow all that money on their CEO, I guess it's their call.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/ They are asking for donations.
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      The foundation is, but I think the high CEO pay is paid for from the corporation's budget, which is self-funded.
      - freshsqueeze 6y ago
        The current CEO used to be head of the foundation and board, so she was receiving $1M+ a year already, paid with those donations.
      - sp332 6y ago
        Nope, see page 52 https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-form-990.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...
deleted 6y ago
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beervirus 6y ago
It’s shocking to me that anyone on HN uses Chrome anymore.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Why? And what do you think they should use instead?
- aarpmcgee 6y ago
  I use it only for development purposes, but thinking about switching to ungoogled chromium for that as well.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I use Chrome for one reason only: it supports WebMIDI, and Firefox does not. Outside of that I'll use FF as long as I can.
Santosh83 6y ago
True, but don't forget, Firefox needs your love more than the Internet right now Mozilla... :-)
deleted 6y ago
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utopian3 6y ago
Ironic. This page has an embedded YouTube link where YouTube slapped me with a captcha response.Ironic given the content.
teamspirit 6y ago
I really wish Mozilla would just focus on making Firefox the best browser it can be. Stop with the gimmicks like VPN and DoH. Give us (back) keyboard shortcuts and fix bugs; unfuck Mozilla first.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > Give us (back) keyboard shortcuts and fix bugs ... Also, add-ons for Firefox on Android. That was the largest screw up for me with the Phoenix upgrade. I am using Nightly and I count a grand total of 20 add-ons that I am recommended (read allowed) to install. Add-ons and customization are the prime reason Firefox is Firefox.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    After losing old reddit redirect and YouTube background play fix I'm not sure why I'm even using firefox still
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Add-ons on Android are back![1] For the most part just having uBo was enough for me, but there are a few others I wouldn't mind. 1: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/30/firefox-for-android-brings-back-general-extensions-support-heres-how-to-set-it-up/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/30/firefox-for-android...
- ksk 6y ago
  I think its the best browser out there (along with Pale Moon). What is FF preventing you from doing?
- retox 6y ago
  I was under the impression the 'gimmicks' pay for the browser development. I hope everyone wants a self-sufficient Mozilla.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Google pays for most of it. The point of services like the VPN is to change that though.
vsviridov 6y ago
Stop pandering and go back to making a decent browser...
- zeveb 6y ago
  > Stop pandering and go back to making a decent browser... Once I saw that they expended significant resources and thought on changing 'Master Password' to 'Primary Password,' I knew that there was no hope for them. They are fundamentally unserious. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807 This is even worse. 'As such, comments on the bug outside of those which advance completing the task at hand will be removed.' In other words, dissent will not be tolerated. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643142 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643142
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Political views getting into software is one of the things I loathe the most about "modern" tech culture. That said, Mozilla's political alignment is not exactly a secret.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    > Once I saw that they expended significant resources and thought on changing 'Master Password' to 'Primary Password,' They wouldn't have to if it weren't for the fact that some people are extremely triggered by changes like this. It would be something the marketing department decided over a lunch meeting and they rolled out by the end of the day.
  - dblohm7 6y ago
    It baffles me that you make such a big deal out of this. You’re making it sound like it took hundreds of person-hours to make that change that could have been allocated elsewhere.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      It's going to cause a lot of confusion with users who are not aware of the backstory. Whatever your stance on the subject doing this without a transition mode is just plain wrong.
iJohnDoe 6y ago
I don’t trust Mozilla these days. Normandy. When that certificate expired it also disabled NoScript in the Tor browser which disabled some security. Might not be a coincidence. There are also a couple of other things Mozilla has done that seemed not in the good will of its users. Firefox 47 was probably one of the last few good releases.
- ksk 6y ago
  In which organization do people not make mistakes? Also, if you're going to accuse someone, I think its fair to ask for hard-proof (not speculation).
coliveira 6y ago
It seems that the Chrome lovers are working hard today.
- nix23 6y ago
  It seems more that Mozilla is not working at all (on it's Browser). BTW: I use Firefox since 5 years
- danieldk 6y ago
  I don't think that is fair. A lot of people are using Firefox for ethical reasons. Their recent rounds of lay-offs while management is raking in millions leaves a bad taste for many Firefox users. Sure, they can run their corporation/foundation in anyway they want. But if they run Mozilla as they are, they will lose a lot of mind share among typical Firefox users.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- pessimizer 6y ago
  I'll never be a Chrome user. I have felt undue pressure to to move to one of those partially-functional forks maintained by a handful of programmers who could be putting god-knows-what on my system. I resent Mozilla making me feel like that's my last option to not give up the web entirely.
Jerry2 6y ago
I've completely stopped my donations to Mozilla until they get rid of her CEO and management. They're completely irresponsible, answer to no one, and have totally screwed up that org by diverting funds to all kinds of nonsense instead of concentrating on delivering a good product. I've also stopped using FF because I've lost confidence in the team managing security of it.
- troughway 6y ago
  What are you using these days? Brave? /s
  - taxcoder 6y ago
    You can use Lynx, Elinks, an Emacs browser, etc. There are other options.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      You can't really believe this. Good luck logging into your bank's online portal using Lynx.
      - taxcoder 6y ago
        Believe it? You likely still need a backup browser for things like your example, but the attitude of "There's nothing I can do" annoys me. It's like the non-techies who are suspicious of Google yet refuse to try Firefox with DuckDuckGo.
- encom 6y ago
  I agree with you, but the only alternative is Chrome. If it comes down to Chrome or nothing, I'm probably just going to quit using the internet and go live in the forest.
  - justfortechnews 6y ago
    Use Brave instead of Chrome. There's plenty of other options to use instead of Chrome or FF.
dilap 6y ago
Mozilla provides a really nice example of the importance of your CEO.
randompwd 6y ago
step 1) Spend the money you're given on improving the tool people use to browse the internet. Not the regional/social cause du jour that your circle of friends thinks you should abuse your power to support. Mozilla became popular because of IT people recommending and installing it. That goodwill is long spent. Make a better product and STFU about everything else. Get rid of all marketing & admin staff and hire more devs to fix the issues. Stop spending on social causes. There are more than enough orgs to look after that. YOU HAD ONE JOB and you messed it up. Move Mozilla out of SF.
danielovichdk 6y ago
Why are Mozilla run by CEOs and not by the donators? Not practically, but by democratic election perhaps? It seems odd to me that there is management like that in an organisation which is only backed by donations. Is it not Valve which is run without any form of leadership and only by social consensus?
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Mozilla Corporation doesn't accept donations. Most of its income comes from Google. The parent foundation gets about half its income from the corporation. The rest is mostly corporate and individual donations. Even worker owned companies elect a president or CEO to manage the company day to day. Valve has less official hierarchy than most companies. It doesn't run entirely by consensus though. People who worked there have written about the unofficial hierarchy.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > The parent foundation gets about half its income from the corporation. And every cent of that is wasted afaic.
rubatuga 6y ago
Can we stop hating on Mozilla, one of the few companies actually dedicated to respecting our privacy as well as FOSS?
- lez 6y ago
  We are not hating anyone, just giving honest feedback (if they listen) so that they can improve based on that.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    No, often on HN threads regarding Mozilla (including this one already), people are suggesting that things are already hopeless for Mozilla, and the organization should just disappear. That is no longer giving feedback with an aim to helping an organization improve.
    - rolandog 6y ago
      Indeed. I get a feeling that there's a coordinated campaign to have a negative presence of mind regarding Mozilla?
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        I think it's just that Mozilla management has been determined not to give an inch on the ancient, repeated complaints the majority of their users have had about it. That they continue to plow ahead while users vote with their feet causes a lot of hopeless bitterness. The fact that the executives are paying themselves so much while marketshare is steadily dropping just adds insult to injury. Every negative poster was a rabid Firefox partisan 10 years ago. Now they barely hold on because they don't want a blob on their system and they want uBlock to work. Sadly, I have no confidence that Firefox won't declare next year that shipping a blob is necessary to the health of the web, and that some API uBlock relies on could be confusing to users and will be removed. tl;dr it's a coordinated campaign alright, but it's coordinated by Mozilla's behavior, not by communication between the 90% of users that have left (30% to 3%) or the large percentage of those remaining users who are only staying because of their disgust for Google, closed source and ads.
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
Maybe this a stupid question but why does Mozilla even need a separate Corporation with top heavy (and fairly inept) execs and CEO? Mozilla the _Foundation_ is the recipient of donations, why can't the developer teams work under the foundation directly, as they would for an NGO? Maybe my ignorance but I assume that is more or less the model of the Linux Foundation?
- kamikaz1k 6y ago
  There's some content in the Mozilla Foundation wiki page: "Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-paying entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue. From 2004 to 2014, the majority of revenue came from a deal with Google, which was the default search engine in the Firefox web browser." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation?wprov=sfla1
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    > which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue With the risk of sounding cynical that sounds like business talk for "we need a corporation so that ...we can do things". Again why is it that they are unable to develop Firefox under a Foundation structure? Why could they have not done the deal with google via the foundation? If it is a tax aspect why could they have not created a corporation just to handle the financial deal without all the overhead structure of execs and board C-levels?
  - fakedang 6y ago
    How would such deal making be hindered for a non-profit entity? It's not like that deal is a highly variable cash flow for them to meet profit targets or something.
renewiltord 6y ago
Mozilla won. The aim was achieved. We have the open Internet. Thank you. It does raise the question of what to do with a non-profit once its goals are achieved. Do you disband and go home?
- neolog 6y ago
  When was the internet closed?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    I misspoke. I was referring to the fact that the web was not on an open standard.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      The web has been open since there was a single website. Companies - Google, Microsoft, AOL, maybe others - have tried to make it their own. To some extent this worked, for instance, there are quite a few people for whom the web loosely translates into 'Facebook'.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        I felt like my experience as a Linux web user in the late 90s and early 2000s was way worse than it is today. But, if you guys had better experiences, sure. Half of the websites out there wouldn't work because few worked to standards supported by libre web browsers.
skim_milk 6y ago
Dang, lots of Mozilla hate. OK, I'll take the bait. Why don't we have more advocates for unplugging from the internet? A reasonable person that has lived both online and offline lives would certainly come to the conclusion that online life is inherently inferior to an "offline" life. Social media is inherently unhealthy and attracts people with unhealthy lifestyles and choices. Why should Mozilla's mission be to promote a "healthy" and "online" life when "healthy" and "online" we know cannot coexist? Like, instead of donating to Mozilla to promote good social media use for teenagers/children, how about donating to $NONPROFIT to give low-income families a quality Boy Scouts/camping experience and learn how to live and enjoy life through healthier means for example? We do not have to make online life the norm.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  When people say that social media is unhealthy, they usually have in mind a certain generation of social media when like counts had been introduced, an algorithmically-generated feed, a membership that sought to include everyone, including your family members, etc. Essentially that kind of social media only arose towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium when Facebook became entrenched. Yet many older members of HN spent a significant portion of our lives on the internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and we don’t feel that that online life was destructive. If anything, it was often liberating: someone growing up in a strict conservative community or in a relatively poor country could discover there was more out there. A broad range of smaller special-interest forums instead of a feed-generating one-stop-shop like Facebook or Reddit, tended to keep partisan politics and conspiracy theories away. I’m not pessimistic that that kind of good internet socializing can’t be restored for much of the population – I deleted my Facebook and Reddit accounts years ago and yet I still have found enjoyable connections with other people on various hobby forums. Some independent forums are struggling as younger generations are lost to walled gardens like Facebook, but there are efforts that could be made to fight this.
  - frenchy 6y ago
    When people talk about social media, they imply "mainstream social media as we know it today". We don't have the right words or categories to describe what we're talking about, but there's a big difference between Ye Olde Schoole forum of the early 2000's and modern mainstream social media. It's like Wonder Bread verus the kind of bread you make at home with nothing but flour, water, yeast, and some salt. Yeah they're both bread, but they're not really the same thing.
1023bytes 6y ago
>You probably don’t know the name Mozilla. You might know Firefox. While reading this on the Mozilla blog...
- detaro 6y ago
  ... their hope is that they reached people that are not their core audience.
briantakita 6y ago
Is it me or is Mozilla getting into the censorship game? It would be great if they can deliver a great browser & great tech instead of nanny software. The org has gone downhill since Brendan Eich resigned. "Hold political ads accountable for misinformation: Download the Firefox extension that shares the political ads you see on Facebook to a public database so they can be tracked and monitored." "Flag bad YouTube recommendations: This extension lets you report regrettable recos you’ve been served, so you can help make the engine better for everyone."
- logicalmonster 6y ago
  I believe you’re being downvoted here but I think this is the core problem. The internet is bland and boring and screwed up precisely because of big tech getting into the censorship game. It’s a shame but Mozilla seems ideologically driven in that direction too.
  - briantakita 6y ago
    There's probably a niche that they are catering to. Perhaps, catering to this niche is advantageous for Mozilla to receive further funding. It's too bad that the free & open internet does not seem to be a priority anymore. --- edit: I'm looking more into their recommended apps & the overall effort. It's possible it could either be for the better or worse, so I'll keep an open mind about this & follow it. I don't agree their general moderation worldview, however if I could somehow self-select my own worldview when using their tools, it could be interesting...
- tzs 6y ago
  How is it censorship to make it so more people can see political ads than they were targeted at?
  - briantakita 6y ago
    You're right re: the database helping people see the political ads. I'm jaded by the barrage of the reaction to political ads, particularly the long-time discredited "Russia, Russia, Russia" hoax, which seems far more pernicious than the political ads themselves. The danger is that this tool becomes a weapon of partisan warfare. What is going to be done with the database? Will we be getting disclaimers, moderation, & "truth ministry" propaganda messages built into the browser itself? People can make their own decisions without a voice of "authority" labeling & moderating all content. Otherwise, if the political minority is labeled as liars by the majority, the minority effectively becomes further suppressed. Same with individuals not going with the prevailing social norms. ---edit--- I also see potential in the database. Particularly if news or ads in general could be captured. If this tool could act like a digital archive, recording edits to articles & such, people can track how a certain message evolves over time. The more I think about this, the more potential I can see in this tool working for good & bad purposes, re: our basic freedoms of speech, thought, assembly, etc. It will be interesting to see how this tech develops & is utilized.
bambax 6y ago
> The internet we know and love is fcked up. Let’s unfck it together. Mozilla is fcked up. May we humbly suggest you unfck yourself first; then we can talk.
- greatgib 6y ago
  Could be the new motto: Go UnFck yourself!
drdaeman 6y ago
Checked the article. 100% politics mixed with product advertisement and general "oh we're so caring" virtue signalling, 0% actual care about the Internet. Netflix releases, Facebook containers and regulated political ads is what the Internet needs? Fuck that. (Just to clarify - I'm not saying those are invalid or non-issues, but that it's extremely hard for me to think of those as priorities for one of the last remaining [semi-?]independent browser vendors.)
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Facebook Container is a compelling technical feature from where I'm sitting.
deleted 6y ago
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jgon 6y ago
Everything about this whole post is so symptomatic of everything that is currently wrong with Mozilla. Fundamentally the leadership has become grossly out of touch with reality. Building a browser is basically making a product which is blue collar work and thus yucky. Yeah you have a huge pay package (thanks people we just laid off!), but when you're at the Country Club it's just so gauche to admit that you actually make something. Everyone else is fund raising, and being activists and other much more glamorous things. You're getting your hands dirty like a commoner! And so you embark on a series of nebulous advocacy campaigns with no definable success criteria. You pile millions of dollars into things like "The Knight-Mozilla Fellowship" where you "place creative technologists in newsrooms to work on open-source tools and support reporting that strengthens the web and changes people’s lives". You pour money into making things like "Mozilla Webmaker" ( https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/05/22/introducing-mozilla-webmaker/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/05/22/introducing-mozilla... ). Sure you've got some nerds in the basement doing whatever it is they do, something like "Servo" or whatever, but who cares? You're working on a way to cut them loose anyway, and now when you're at your next $5000/plate fundraiser you can talk about all the amazing advocacy you're doing with the rest of your friends. Of course the problem is that Google has basically spent it's time pouring money into Chrome and unfairly leveraging it's search monopoly to advertise Chrome and intentionally breaking it's sites for other browsers (attention people looking to argue this point: Stop. Google has no more credibility in this area, and anyone who is still in denial is a useful idiot at this point), and so now when Google brings forward a proposal to add DRM to the Web Specifications all of your advocacy amounts to stale fart in the face of a 70%+ browser share. Whoops! But then again, those are "real-world" results, and you're not interested in that. What would it even mean to "unfuck the internet"? What sort of metric, goals, and approaches would Mozilla use here? The problem that Mozilla still still does not get is that they have exactly one piece of leverage: Firefox market share. Every penny then spend on useless advocacy run by tech adjacent "hangers on" and not on making Firefox the best available browser is a penny wasted. They've even managed to turn away people who want to support them by making sure there is no clear way to donate to actually worthwhile browser development without having those donations filtered through the foundation where are bunch of useless apparatchiks will get first dibs on that cash, leaving probably nothing to reach through to the people making things. Until the useless upper management is cleared out and replaced with people who understand that Mozilla has exactly jack shit if they don't have Firefox, it will continue to wind down until we are left with Google as the monopoly owner of the most important platform for information interchange the world has ever known. Yeah that seems like a grim future, but it's the one we're headed for, and Mozilla needs to take a long hard look in the mirror about it's own role in making that future come to pass.
deleted 6y ago
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freediver 6y ago
Good idea on paper but hypocrisy is disturbing because it is obviously not obvious to Mozilla. "It’s noisy out there. We are inundated with sensational headlines every minute, of every day." Firefox home page with clickbait from Pocket is not helping. Maybe start with introspection? "Let’s take back control from those who violate our privacy just to sell us stuff we don’t need." Maybe continue by not taking a giant check from Google every year before telling others to boycot companies violating privacy. Mozilla is in such giant conflict of interest and common sense and that reflects on the main product. As a result, web suffers. So as others said, it first has to unfck itself. Sooner the better.
default-kramer 6y ago
I've never been offended by "bad language" and I'm still not. But it seems ridiculous to choose "unfck the internet" as a slogan for a campaign targeted at the general public. Many people will find it offensive. Many people will find it unprofessional. Many people will find it childish. And no one will think it's cool/edgy. It's 2020, saying "fuck" doesn't impress anyone.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
  This is where the $50m marketing budget goes to.
kanox 6y ago
cringe
zajio1am 6y ago
> Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix Start a movement to create a better internet by watching video delivered using proprietary DRM ...
8bitsrule 6y ago
"This amazing portal into the human experience has become a place filled with misinformation, corruption and greed." That's it in a nutshell. I have an idea. Allow the wild-wild-west only on .com (or segregate however you decide). There need to be domains with no ads, no tracking, no spamming, no 'social' behemoths, no companies, no for-profit org's, no begging bowls. (I'm sure you can think of more nos.) Person-to-community only; supplications need to be granted community-by-community. The penalty for attempted transgressions will need to have serious teeth. Else we're screwed.
- dexen 6y ago
  I hear your points, and I too yearn for the "good old" internet of yore. The days when the 'weird side of the internet' was the main side. However, two observations: 1. removing the commercial interests doesn't stop even half the trouble. Aside of commerce, there is activism, there is politics, and there is social tribalism. You can't even meaningfully remove those. Given that those three stay, the commercial part allows a counter-balance to the ideological and tribal concerns. 2. the healthiest communities are the ones that don't shy away from gatekeeping. With communities and gatekeeping being the key words. Check out IRC, the Eternal September seems to be fading away and already half way gone. Heck, even HN is a half decent example of a community that self-improves through gatekeeping.
cherrycherry98 6y ago
For what it's worth, JWZ said this of Mozilla a few days ago on his blog: "Back to Mozilla -- in my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only: 1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and 2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees. 3. There is no 3." http://archive.is/umaau http://archive.is/umaau (edit, using archive link) I couldn't agree more.
- dexen 6y ago
  jwz is right about Mozilla. Unsurprisingly, as he's actively keeping up to date with discussions, and doesn't shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion. Also, here's a link that hopefully handles the infamous 'egg' surprise jwz prepared for HN users :-) http://archive.is/umaau http://archive.is/umaau
joe33433 6y ago
Translation: Its time to raise salary for our non programming staffs
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
So, the "UNFCK the internet" landing page is transmitting the x-clacks-overhead header [1] which is heartwarming, but then I noticed that https://xclacksoverhead.org/ https://xclacksoverhead.org/ itself tracks you with google-analytics.com, which I find rather against the spirit, both of the whole GNU Terry Pratchett effort and the UNFCK the internet campaign. _______________ [1] http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ But note there's two google trackers on that page.

134 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

This casual tone coming from Mozilla, in a year where they've laid off entire devisions of their business[1] seems a little out of touch. I think they have a lot of work to do in repairing their brand, and showing their core following that they can be trusted. I think Mozilla might need a little bit of self-love. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees...

zimablue 6y ago
Companies which are run for good intentions are often hard to work for, pay less etc. You can view it through the lense of employee as consumer - if people are likely to agree with the moral mission of the company, they're likely to be willing to work for less wages. It's weirdly common and makes no sense to me this line of argument, I've seen independent newspapers attacked for paying less than (evil) big media companies. The devil pays well! That's the deal! Good guys can't/don't because they're trying to venture outside the huge raw capitalistic currents, and the employee-consumer effect. Ironically companies trying to do good which do pay well then get attacked for their profligacy with limited resources. Underneath all this (especially on a still semi-elite tech site) I think a (societal) system with big problems pushing people into complicity creates a compulsion to attack anyone seemingly slightly nobler in their mission, in an to quash pervasive cognitive dissonance.
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  I find it really interesting as well. CEOs of large NGOs often get attacked for their 500k salaries, which is a senior SWE salary at a FAANG. I think it is because people just really hate hypocrites almost more than anything. If you plea the good cause, and you dare to deviate from that path, it's just a matter of time for the moral fashion to blow in your face. Another thing is that if you plea the good cause, you draw the ire of the people with an activist nature, while if you don't, you're just like all the others.
e737eyrhehrh 6y ago
Seems like the opposite honestly, their core following blows and can't be relied on to save them. Now that they're focusing on the times again Firefox is the best browser on Android for anyone who cares about a sane mobile ui or reliable core features like dark mode and ad-blocking. If it were up to the core audience we'd still be trapped on the desktop as the world gravitates more and more towards mobile.

atomicfiredoll 6y ago

I know this is probably just their new marketing campaign, but there's this nugget of truth to it. I used to be so optimistic about the internet--about bringing the entirety of human knowledge to everybody's front door. But, the reality has proven to be so much more... complex. I really hope we do find a way get past this awkward teenage phase it seems to be having.

throwawaysage56 6y ago
The internet amplifies human ability to access information. We get the entirety of human knowledge in our living room. We also get the entirety of human filth in our living room. Like every power amplifier in this world, for example guns, dynamite or atomic power, it amplifies both the positives and the negatives. The techno-utopian expectation that amplification of power will somehow bring Utopia is just that, utopian. There is but one hope, cultivating virtue. When was the last time you even heard of the concept in modern culture?
Weebs 6y ago
I may be off, but the heart of the issue to me is that the internet is beginning to resemble the world at large, because the world at large realized that the internet was another vehicle for profit. The goals Mozilla has mentioned here are important, but I don't think they quite get at the crux of the issue: the rulebook our society plays by is structured in a way that the development of these symptoms is almost inevitable. The hard thing is you can't really begin to point out these structural issue without people shutting you down: saying that's the way things have always been (it's not), there's no other way (there is), denying that it's even a problem, or that it's something we just have to deal with. Until we are structured in a way where we can work for the benefit of each other and ourselves, on our own accord, on our own time, this is the slope of the hill we'll keep rolling down. Let's build open ecosystems and push back, but it is imperative we recognize the game is slanted against that.

nix23 6y ago

Hey mozilla would be nice to unfck your management first.

banachtarski 6y ago
Yea how about not handing out giant executive packages while downsizing your teams.
- ericd 6y ago
  I agree that they shouldn’t be raising executive pay given that they’re not doing a very good job. But let’s not be hyperbolic, it’s not “giant”. Sundar Pichai’s pay is measured in billions, for comparison.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    Sundar Pichai's base pay is $2m/yr. The rest is stock.
    - ericd 6y ago
      Yes, over $1B in liquid stock over 5 years.
      - selectodude 6y ago
        Which is a function of his management. The stock didn't go up in a vacuum.
        zepto 6y ago
        Yes, it was all Sundar’s doing. Nothing to do with the search monopoly.
        ericd 6y ago
        I mean, keep in mind that the Nasdaq is up more than Google’s stock over the past 5 years.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

tl;dr: "Big tech has gotten too big." Download a bunch of extensions to complain if you see something you don't like on youtube and facebook, "watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix" and choose independent tech, which includes among others Medium and Pocket.

BitwiseFool 6y ago
Also, help us crowdsource content you deem problematic so we can keep other people from seeing it!
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  This part in particular gets me everytime. Imagine a complaint about big government that demands that big government shuts down people the complainer doesn't like. Sounds insane, but is par for the course in complaints about big tech.
- tzs 6y ago
  Which part does that?

TimSchumann 6y ago

I really hope this isn't just marketing, but given recent management trends at Mozilla, I'm skeptical.

ConsiderCrying 6y ago

There's also this fun story [0], which was discussed here [1]. Fits nicely with Mozilla saying: "We’re here to prove that you can have an ethical tech business." Start by caring for your workers first, instead of giving pay raises to CEOs, under whose leadership the company's been struggling. [0]: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usage-is-down-85-despite-mozillas-top-exec-pay-going-up-400 https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usa... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698&ref=hvper.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698&ref=hvper.com

lewisflude 6y ago
I get the impression that Mozilla is a bloated organisation that's resting on goodwill it built up back when Firefox was a compelling user experience. I think one of the main reasons anyone uses Firefox nowadays is because they believe in the mission and find good values alignment with a player that has more independence than Google. With a constant string of red flags and negative press, I wonder what the next version of Mozilla will look like. Personally, I wouldn't bet on them surviving and thriving for much longer. I feel a core part of the Firefox-using crowd vouch for it because they believe in the Mozilla mission from years back, and feel a strong value alignment with the company. I don't think they've got enough goodwill built up to ride things out forever.
- ericd 6y ago
  Personally, I use it because it’s privacy focused/not run by Google, and Safari has this weird issue where it will hang the UI thread of the computer itself (is freeze mouse) when one has lots of tabs open. AFAIK, they still have those privacy centric values, and have been working on a number of projects in that vein.
- prox 6y ago
  Often CEOS don’t know when to quit. I don’t mean they aren’t competent, but they simply aren’t the right one for the job and they don’t want to leave, or unable to change their ways. I really wish Firefox the best but even though I love their blogs and how they communicate, their branding needs adaption as well recapture the hearts of developers and the crowd.

bityard 6y ago

I have an article in my personal wiki titled "How to Unfuck Firefox". It contains a list of the broken default behavior, workarounds, and long-standing unfixed bugs that have caused me great pain over the last decade. It is thus ironic in the extreme that Mozilla is spending time and money on a campaign called "Unfuck the Internet" at a time that they're coming under fire for squandering their financial resources on CEO pay and pet projects instead of focusing their efforts on disrupting the Chrome/Webkit monopoly.

s17n 6y ago
I think it's gross to pay the CEO a high salary if you're asking people for donations, but Mozilla isn't; they're self-funded. So if they want to blow all that money on their CEO, I guess it's their call.
- luckylion 6y ago
  https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/ They are asking for donations.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    The foundation is, but I think the high CEO pay is paid for from the corporation's budget, which is self-funded.
    - freshsqueeze 6y ago
      The current CEO used to be head of the foundation and board, so she was receiving $1M+ a year already, paid with those donations.
    - sp332 6y ago
      Nope, see page 52 https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-form-990.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...

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beervirus 6y ago

It’s shocking to me that anyone on HN uses Chrome anymore.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Why? And what do you think they should use instead?
aarpmcgee 6y ago
I use it only for development purposes, but thinking about switching to ungoogled chromium for that as well.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I use Chrome for one reason only: it supports WebMIDI, and Firefox does not. Outside of that I'll use FF as long as I can.

Santosh83 6y ago

True, but don't forget, Firefox needs your love more than the Internet right now Mozilla... :-)

deleted 6y ago

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utopian3 6y ago

Ironic. This page has an embedded YouTube link where YouTube slapped me with a captcha response.Ironic given the content.

teamspirit 6y ago

I really wish Mozilla would just focus on making Firefox the best browser it can be. Stop with the gimmicks like VPN and DoH. Give us (back) keyboard shortcuts and fix bugs; unfuck Mozilla first.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
> Give us (back) keyboard shortcuts and fix bugs ... Also, add-ons for Firefox on Android. That was the largest screw up for me with the Phoenix upgrade. I am using Nightly and I count a grand total of 20 add-ons that I am recommended (read allowed) to install. Add-ons and customization are the prime reason Firefox is Firefox.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  After losing old reddit redirect and YouTube background play fix I'm not sure why I'm even using firefox still
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Add-ons on Android are back![1] For the most part just having uBo was enough for me, but there are a few others I wouldn't mind. 1: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/30/firefox-for-android-brings-back-general-extensions-support-heres-how-to-set-it-up/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/30/firefox-for-android...
ksk 6y ago
I think its the best browser out there (along with Pale Moon). What is FF preventing you from doing?
retox 6y ago
I was under the impression the 'gimmicks' pay for the browser development. I hope everyone wants a self-sufficient Mozilla.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Google pays for most of it. The point of services like the VPN is to change that though.

vsviridov 6y ago

Stop pandering and go back to making a decent browser...

zeveb 6y ago
> Stop pandering and go back to making a decent browser... Once I saw that they expended significant resources and thought on changing 'Master Password' to 'Primary Password,' I knew that there was no hope for them. They are fundamentally unserious. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1644807 This is even worse. 'As such, comments on the bug outside of those which advance completing the task at hand will be removed.' In other words, dissent will not be tolerated. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643142 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643142
- userbinator 6y ago
  Political views getting into software is one of the things I loathe the most about "modern" tech culture. That said, Mozilla's political alignment is not exactly a secret.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > Once I saw that they expended significant resources and thought on changing 'Master Password' to 'Primary Password,' They wouldn't have to if it weren't for the fact that some people are extremely triggered by changes like this. It would be something the marketing department decided over a lunch meeting and they rolled out by the end of the day.
- dblohm7 6y ago
  It baffles me that you make such a big deal out of this. You’re making it sound like it took hundreds of person-hours to make that change that could have been allocated elsewhere.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It's going to cause a lot of confusion with users who are not aware of the backstory. Whatever your stance on the subject doing this without a transition mode is just plain wrong.

iJohnDoe 6y ago

I don’t trust Mozilla these days. Normandy. When that certificate expired it also disabled NoScript in the Tor browser which disabled some security. Might not be a coincidence. There are also a couple of other things Mozilla has done that seemed not in the good will of its users. Firefox 47 was probably one of the last few good releases.

ksk 6y ago
In which organization do people not make mistakes? Also, if you're going to accuse someone, I think its fair to ask for hard-proof (not speculation).

coliveira 6y ago

It seems that the Chrome lovers are working hard today.

nix23 6y ago
It seems more that Mozilla is not working at all (on it's Browser). BTW: I use Firefox since 5 years
danieldk 6y ago
I don't think that is fair. A lot of people are using Firefox for ethical reasons. Their recent rounds of lay-offs while management is raking in millions leaves a bad taste for many Firefox users. Sure, they can run their corporation/foundation in anyway they want. But if they run Mozilla as they are, they will lose a lot of mind share among typical Firefox users.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
pessimizer 6y ago
I'll never be a Chrome user. I have felt undue pressure to to move to one of those partially-functional forks maintained by a handful of programmers who could be putting god-knows-what on my system. I resent Mozilla making me feel like that's my last option to not give up the web entirely.

Jerry2 6y ago

I've completely stopped my donations to Mozilla until they get rid of her CEO and management. They're completely irresponsible, answer to no one, and have totally screwed up that org by diverting funds to all kinds of nonsense instead of concentrating on delivering a good product. I've also stopped using FF because I've lost confidence in the team managing security of it.

troughway 6y ago
What are you using these days? Brave? /s
- taxcoder 6y ago
  You can use Lynx, Elinks, an Emacs browser, etc. There are other options.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    You can't really believe this. Good luck logging into your bank's online portal using Lynx.
    - taxcoder 6y ago
      Believe it? You likely still need a backup browser for things like your example, but the attitude of "There's nothing I can do" annoys me. It's like the non-techies who are suspicious of Google yet refuse to try Firefox with DuckDuckGo.
encom 6y ago
I agree with you, but the only alternative is Chrome. If it comes down to Chrome or nothing, I'm probably just going to quit using the internet and go live in the forest.
- justfortechnews 6y ago
  Use Brave instead of Chrome. There's plenty of other options to use instead of Chrome or FF.

dilap 6y ago

Mozilla provides a really nice example of the importance of your CEO.

randompwd 6y ago

step 1) Spend the money you're given on improving the tool people use to browse the internet. Not the regional/social cause du jour that your circle of friends thinks you should abuse your power to support. Mozilla became popular because of IT people recommending and installing it. That goodwill is long spent. Make a better product and STFU about everything else. Get rid of all marketing & admin staff and hire more devs to fix the issues. Stop spending on social causes. There are more than enough orgs to look after that. YOU HAD ONE JOB and you messed it up. Move Mozilla out of SF.

danielovichdk 6y ago

Why are Mozilla run by CEOs and not by the donators? Not practically, but by democratic election perhaps? It seems odd to me that there is management like that in an organisation which is only backed by donations. Is it not Valve which is run without any form of leadership and only by social consensus?

pseudalopex 6y ago
Mozilla Corporation doesn't accept donations. Most of its income comes from Google. The parent foundation gets about half its income from the corporation. The rest is mostly corporate and individual donations. Even worker owned companies elect a president or CEO to manage the company day to day. Valve has less official hierarchy than most companies. It doesn't run entirely by consensus though. People who worked there have written about the unofficial hierarchy.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  > The parent foundation gets about half its income from the corporation. And every cent of that is wasted afaic.

rubatuga 6y ago

Can we stop hating on Mozilla, one of the few companies actually dedicated to respecting our privacy as well as FOSS?

lez 6y ago
We are not hating anyone, just giving honest feedback (if they listen) so that they can improve based on that.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  No, often on HN threads regarding Mozilla (including this one already), people are suggesting that things are already hopeless for Mozilla, and the organization should just disappear. That is no longer giving feedback with an aim to helping an organization improve.
  - rolandog 6y ago
    Indeed. I get a feeling that there's a coordinated campaign to have a negative presence of mind regarding Mozilla?
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      I think it's just that Mozilla management has been determined not to give an inch on the ancient, repeated complaints the majority of their users have had about it. That they continue to plow ahead while users vote with their feet causes a lot of hopeless bitterness. The fact that the executives are paying themselves so much while marketshare is steadily dropping just adds insult to injury. Every negative poster was a rabid Firefox partisan 10 years ago. Now they barely hold on because they don't want a blob on their system and they want uBlock to work. Sadly, I have no confidence that Firefox won't declare next year that shipping a blob is necessary to the health of the web, and that some API uBlock relies on could be confusing to users and will be removed. tl;dr it's a coordinated campaign alright, but it's coordinated by Mozilla's behavior, not by communication between the 90% of users that have left (30% to 3%) or the large percentage of those remaining users who are only staying because of their disgust for Google, closed source and ads.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

Maybe this a stupid question but why does Mozilla even need a separate Corporation with top heavy (and fairly inept) execs and CEO? Mozilla the _Foundation_ is the recipient of donations, why can't the developer teams work under the foundation directly, as they would for an NGO? Maybe my ignorance but I assume that is more or less the model of the Linux Foundation?

kamikaz1k 6y ago
There's some content in the Mozilla Foundation wiki page: "Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-paying entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue. From 2004 to 2014, the majority of revenue came from a deal with Google, which was the default search engine in the Firefox web browser." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation?wprov=sfla1
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue With the risk of sounding cynical that sounds like business talk for "we need a corporation so that ...we can do things". Again why is it that they are unable to develop Firefox under a Foundation structure? Why could they have not done the deal with google via the foundation? If it is a tax aspect why could they have not created a corporation just to handle the financial deal without all the overhead structure of execs and board C-levels?
- fakedang 6y ago
  How would such deal making be hindered for a non-profit entity? It's not like that deal is a highly variable cash flow for them to meet profit targets or something.

renewiltord 6y ago

Mozilla won. The aim was achieved. We have the open Internet. Thank you. It does raise the question of what to do with a non-profit once its goals are achieved. Do you disband and go home?

neolog 6y ago
When was the internet closed?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  I misspoke. I was referring to the fact that the web was not on an open standard.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    The web has been open since there was a single website. Companies - Google, Microsoft, AOL, maybe others - have tried to make it their own. To some extent this worked, for instance, there are quite a few people for whom the web loosely translates into 'Facebook'.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      I felt like my experience as a Linux web user in the late 90s and early 2000s was way worse than it is today. But, if you guys had better experiences, sure. Half of the websites out there wouldn't work because few worked to standards supported by libre web browsers.

skim_milk 6y ago

Dang, lots of Mozilla hate. OK, I'll take the bait. Why don't we have more advocates for unplugging from the internet? A reasonable person that has lived both online and offline lives would certainly come to the conclusion that online life is inherently inferior to an "offline" life. Social media is inherently unhealthy and attracts people with unhealthy lifestyles and choices. Why should Mozilla's mission be to promote a "healthy" and "online" life when "healthy" and "online" we know cannot coexist? Like, instead of donating to Mozilla to promote good social media use for teenagers/children, how about donating to $NONPROFIT to give low-income families a quality Boy Scouts/camping experience and learn how to live and enjoy life through healthier means for example? We do not have to make online life the norm.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
When people say that social media is unhealthy, they usually have in mind a certain generation of social media when like counts had been introduced, an algorithmically-generated feed, a membership that sought to include everyone, including your family members, etc. Essentially that kind of social media only arose towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium when Facebook became entrenched. Yet many older members of HN spent a significant portion of our lives on the internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and we don’t feel that that online life was destructive. If anything, it was often liberating: someone growing up in a strict conservative community or in a relatively poor country could discover there was more out there. A broad range of smaller special-interest forums instead of a feed-generating one-stop-shop like Facebook or Reddit, tended to keep partisan politics and conspiracy theories away. I’m not pessimistic that that kind of good internet socializing can’t be restored for much of the population – I deleted my Facebook and Reddit accounts years ago and yet I still have found enjoyable connections with other people on various hobby forums. Some independent forums are struggling as younger generations are lost to walled gardens like Facebook, but there are efforts that could be made to fight this.
- frenchy 6y ago
  When people talk about social media, they imply "mainstream social media as we know it today". We don't have the right words or categories to describe what we're talking about, but there's a big difference between Ye Olde Schoole forum of the early 2000's and modern mainstream social media. It's like Wonder Bread verus the kind of bread you make at home with nothing but flour, water, yeast, and some salt. Yeah they're both bread, but they're not really the same thing.

1023bytes 6y ago

>You probably don’t know the name Mozilla. You might know Firefox. While reading this on the Mozilla blog...

detaro 6y ago
... their hope is that they reached people that are not their core audience.

briantakita 6y ago

Is it me or is Mozilla getting into the censorship game? It would be great if they can deliver a great browser & great tech instead of nanny software. The org has gone downhill since Brendan Eich resigned. "Hold political ads accountable for misinformation: Download the Firefox extension that shares the political ads you see on Facebook to a public database so they can be tracked and monitored." "Flag bad YouTube recommendations: This extension lets you report regrettable recos you’ve been served, so you can help make the engine better for everyone."

logicalmonster 6y ago
I believe you’re being downvoted here but I think this is the core problem. The internet is bland and boring and screwed up precisely because of big tech getting into the censorship game. It’s a shame but Mozilla seems ideologically driven in that direction too.
- briantakita 6y ago
  There's probably a niche that they are catering to. Perhaps, catering to this niche is advantageous for Mozilla to receive further funding. It's too bad that the free & open internet does not seem to be a priority anymore. --- edit: I'm looking more into their recommended apps & the overall effort. It's possible it could either be for the better or worse, so I'll keep an open mind about this & follow it. I don't agree their general moderation worldview, however if I could somehow self-select my own worldview when using their tools, it could be interesting...
tzs 6y ago
How is it censorship to make it so more people can see political ads than they were targeted at?
- briantakita 6y ago
  You're right re: the database helping people see the political ads. I'm jaded by the barrage of the reaction to political ads, particularly the long-time discredited "Russia, Russia, Russia" hoax, which seems far more pernicious than the political ads themselves. The danger is that this tool becomes a weapon of partisan warfare. What is going to be done with the database? Will we be getting disclaimers, moderation, & "truth ministry" propaganda messages built into the browser itself? People can make their own decisions without a voice of "authority" labeling & moderating all content. Otherwise, if the political minority is labeled as liars by the majority, the minority effectively becomes further suppressed. Same with individuals not going with the prevailing social norms. ---edit--- I also see potential in the database. Particularly if news or ads in general could be captured. If this tool could act like a digital archive, recording edits to articles & such, people can track how a certain message evolves over time. The more I think about this, the more potential I can see in this tool working for good & bad purposes, re: our basic freedoms of speech, thought, assembly, etc. It will be interesting to see how this tech develops & is utilized.

bambax 6y ago

> The internet we know and love is fcked up. Let’s unfck it together. Mozilla is fcked up. May we humbly suggest you unfck yourself first; then we can talk.

greatgib 6y ago
Could be the new motto: Go UnFck yourself!

drdaeman 6y ago

Checked the article. 100% politics mixed with product advertisement and general "oh we're so caring" virtue signalling, 0% actual care about the Internet. Netflix releases, Facebook containers and regulated political ads is what the Internet needs? Fuck that. (Just to clarify - I'm not saying those are invalid or non-issues, but that it's extremely hard for me to think of those as priorities for one of the last remaining [semi-?]independent browser vendors.)

ForHackernews 6y ago
Facebook Container is a compelling technical feature from where I'm sitting.

deleted 6y ago

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jgon 6y ago

Everything about this whole post is so symptomatic of everything that is currently wrong with Mozilla. Fundamentally the leadership has become grossly out of touch with reality. Building a browser is basically making a product which is blue collar work and thus yucky. Yeah you have a huge pay package (thanks people we just laid off!), but when you're at the Country Club it's just so gauche to admit that you actually make something. Everyone else is fund raising, and being activists and other much more glamorous things. You're getting your hands dirty like a commoner! And so you embark on a series of nebulous advocacy campaigns with no definable success criteria. You pile millions of dollars into things like "The Knight-Mozilla Fellowship" where you "place creative technologists in newsrooms to work on open-source tools and support reporting that strengthens the web and changes people’s lives". You pour money into making things like "Mozilla Webmaker" ( https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/05/22/introducing-mozilla-webmaker/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/05/22/introducing-mozilla... ). Sure you've got some nerds in the basement doing whatever it is they do, something like "Servo" or whatever, but who cares? You're working on a way to cut them loose anyway, and now when you're at your next $5000/plate fundraiser you can talk about all the amazing advocacy you're doing with the rest of your friends. Of course the problem is that Google has basically spent it's time pouring money into Chrome and unfairly leveraging it's search monopoly to advertise Chrome and intentionally breaking it's sites for other browsers (attention people looking to argue this point: Stop. Google has no more credibility in this area, and anyone who is still in denial is a useful idiot at this point), and so now when Google brings forward a proposal to add DRM to the Web Specifications all of your advocacy amounts to stale fart in the face of a 70%+ browser share. Whoops! But then again, those are "real-world" results, and you're not interested in that. What would it even mean to "unfuck the internet"? What sort of metric, goals, and approaches would Mozilla use here? The problem that Mozilla still still does not get is that they have exactly one piece of leverage: Firefox market share. Every penny then spend on useless advocacy run by tech adjacent "hangers on" and not on making Firefox the best available browser is a penny wasted. They've even managed to turn away people who want to support them by making sure there is no clear way to donate to actually worthwhile browser development without having those donations filtered through the foundation where are bunch of useless apparatchiks will get first dibs on that cash, leaving probably nothing to reach through to the people making things. Until the useless upper management is cleared out and replaced with people who understand that Mozilla has exactly jack shit if they don't have Firefox, it will continue to wind down until we are left with Google as the monopoly owner of the most important platform for information interchange the world has ever known. Yeah that seems like a grim future, but it's the one we're headed for, and Mozilla needs to take a long hard look in the mirror about it's own role in making that future come to pass.

deleted 6y ago

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freediver 6y ago

Good idea on paper but hypocrisy is disturbing because it is obviously not obvious to Mozilla. "It’s noisy out there. We are inundated with sensational headlines every minute, of every day." Firefox home page with clickbait from Pocket is not helping. Maybe start with introspection? "Let’s take back control from those who violate our privacy just to sell us stuff we don’t need." Maybe continue by not taking a giant check from Google every year before telling others to boycot companies violating privacy. Mozilla is in such giant conflict of interest and common sense and that reflects on the main product. As a result, web suffers. So as others said, it first has to unfck itself. Sooner the better.

default-kramer 6y ago

I've never been offended by "bad language" and I'm still not. But it seems ridiculous to choose "unfck the internet" as a slogan for a campaign targeted at the general public. Many people will find it offensive. Many people will find it unprofessional. Many people will find it childish. And no one will think it's cool/edgy. It's 2020, saying "fuck" doesn't impress anyone.

pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
This is where the $50m marketing budget goes to.

kanox 6y ago

cringe

zajio1am 6y ago

> Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix Start a movement to create a better internet by watching video delivered using proprietary DRM ...

8bitsrule 6y ago

"This amazing portal into the human experience has become a place filled with misinformation, corruption and greed." That's it in a nutshell. I have an idea. Allow the wild-wild-west only on .com (or segregate however you decide). There need to be domains with no ads, no tracking, no spamming, no 'social' behemoths, no companies, no for-profit org's, no begging bowls. (I'm sure you can think of more nos.) Person-to-community only; supplications need to be granted community-by-community. The penalty for attempted transgressions will need to have serious teeth. Else we're screwed.

dexen 6y ago
I hear your points, and I too yearn for the "good old" internet of yore. The days when the 'weird side of the internet' was the main side. However, two observations: 1. removing the commercial interests doesn't stop even half the trouble. Aside of commerce, there is activism, there is politics, and there is social tribalism. You can't even meaningfully remove those. Given that those three stay, the commercial part allows a counter-balance to the ideological and tribal concerns. 2. the healthiest communities are the ones that don't shy away from gatekeeping. With communities and gatekeeping being the key words. Check out IRC, the Eternal September seems to be fading away and already half way gone. Heck, even HN is a half decent example of a community that self-improves through gatekeeping.

cherrycherry98 6y ago

For what it's worth, JWZ said this of Mozilla a few days ago on his blog: "Back to Mozilla -- in my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only: 1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and 2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees. 3. There is no 3." http://archive.is/umaau http://archive.is/umaau (edit, using archive link) I couldn't agree more.

dexen 6y ago
jwz is right about Mozilla. Unsurprisingly, as he's actively keeping up to date with discussions, and doesn't shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion. Also, here's a link that hopefully handles the infamous 'egg' surprise jwz prepared for HN users :-) http://archive.is/umaau http://archive.is/umaau

joe33433 6y ago

Translation: Its time to raise salary for our non programming staffs

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

So, the "UNFCK the internet" landing page is transmitting the x-clacks-overhead header [1] which is heartwarming, but then I noticed that https://xclacksoverhead.org/ https://xclacksoverhead.org/ itself tracks you with google-analytics.com, which I find rather against the spirit, both of the whole GNU Terry Pratchett effort and the UNFCK the internet campaign. _______________ [1] http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ But note there's two google trackers on that page.