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My thoughts on this are that every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterl

• meremortals 5y ago
  I agree with this sentiment -- Firefox should be a web browser first and foremost and not a social justice blog
  • spankalee 5y ago
    Can you point to the social justice blog part?
    • meremortals 5y ago
      The first that comes to mind is [We need more than deplatforming](https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...) There's a bit of discussion about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25838861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25838861
      • spankalee 5y ago
        So not a blog, but one blog post? That's certainly no indication that Firefox is first and foremost a social justice blog.
        • meremortals 5y ago
          Sorry -- I'm just a casual commenter, not a bibliography, but here are some others to get you started: - https://lmgtfy.app/?q=mozilla+blog+social+justice&iie=1 https://lmgtfy.app/?q=mozilla+blog+social+justice&iie=1 - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/?s=social+justice https://blog.mozilla.org/en/?s=social+justice - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/?s=gender https://blog.mozilla.org/en/?s=gender - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/first-steps-toward-lasting-change/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/first-steps-toward-lasti... - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racial-justice-commitments-one-year-in/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racia... - https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter-extention/38140/24 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter... - https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/mapeo-helps-marginalized-communities-collect-data-reclaim-land-rights/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/mapeo-helps-marginali... - https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9202067/mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-reddit-hate-speech https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9202067/mozilla-ceo-chris... - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28018772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28018772
    • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      And more importantly, what rival browser should people adopt if they want to signal that they don't like all this diversity and inclusion stuff? https://diversity.google/ https://diversity.google/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/default.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/default.aspx Have any browser vendors came out as strongly pro-bigotry?
      • meremortals 5y ago
        You're not very good at mind reading. I'm not advocating pro-bigotry. I just want a browser to focus on being the best browser, and not "fact check" for me. I'd suggest Brave Browser
• knob 5y ago
  Here is my upvote. Although your post is "rough", the truth is quite often as such. Thanks for putting it out there.
  • throwawaymanbot 5y ago
• tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  A good time to remind everyone that when you donate to "Mozilla", you're donating to the Mozilla Foundation, which is the social justice part, not the Mozilla Corporation, which is the browser part.
• ashwagary 5y ago
  >even assholes have a basic right to exist >I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are. I dont either, but do their coworkers care? If so, they should be disciplined or fired depending on behavior.
  • account42 5y ago
    If the "asshole" is being an asshole on the job yes. If the problem is that the coworkers don't like the "asshole"'s beliefs or what he is doing in his free time then they should be told to deal with it.
• eigenrick 5y ago
  I think this post assumes that Firefox is an inferior browser, and that the cause is mismanagement. But is Firefox an inferior browser? I think it used to be, but over the last couple years, it has made massive improvements in features and performance. I use it in both desktop and mobile, and I prefer it over Chrome. As a software engineer, I rely heavily on my browser for work. For me, the multi-account containers in Firefox are the must-have feature. No other browser can offer the ease of separating multiple test accounts, and multiple gmail/gsuite accounts for multiple enterprises separate. Also, I like how Lockwise on mobile is divorced from the browser, making it easy to use it to manage passwords across websites and apps. Maybe the problem with Mozilla, then, is marketing. Maybe not enough people know that Firefox is much, much better than it used to be. Or maybe the general sentiment is echoed in your post. People don't feel that Mozilla is focused on writing good software, so they don't expect Firefox to be good. Personally, I think the biggest cause for the loss of market share is simple: Safari is the default on iOS and Chrome is the default on Android, and population of mobile devices is exploding, and there are no mainstream mobile devices that are carrying Firefox with it.
  • andoli 5y ago
    > Also, I like how Lockwise on mobile is divorced from the browser, making it easy to use it to manage passwords across websites and apps. I liked that too. That was before they decided to shut it down...
    • edeion 5y ago
      In case you wouldn't know: Firefox for iOS can now act as a password manager. So, even though Lockwise has disappeared, the function is still there through Firefox alone.
  • tored 5y ago
    Firefox is inferior still. It has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every year I switch to Firefox and use it as a main browser. It usually goes for a month and then I need to switch again because Firefox has too many glitches. Firefox has had a bad policy of not fixing the basics first before new features. I do use Firefox as my main development browser still but that is because I’m more used to the developer tools than the alternatives.
• panarky 5y ago
  > I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are It sounds like you do give a shit that they care about "social justice" and you don't want to use their browser because of that? Or are there specific features / functionality / performance / security issues that prevent you from using Firefox and are somehow caused by the worldview of the developers?
  • bostonsre 5y ago
    Just interpreting what the OP said and not really sure where I stand on the topic, but I think he means that "social justice" controversies have purged asshole devs that were competent developers producing good features and that firefox as a product is not as good due to that. Taking senior engineers off the roster will usually impact the product whether or not they were assholes.
    • Melatonic 5y ago
      To me it reads more like he used to be one of those engineers who were let go or his friends were.
      • ashwagary 5y ago
    • panarky 5y ago
      In my experience Firefox has become a much better browser in the last 18 months, so if there was an asshole purge then maybe that helped? If Firefox is missing specific capabilities that make it noncompetitive, and those deficits are traced to the asshole purge, then @rpnx might strengthen their argument by citing those examples.
      • bostonsre 5y ago
        Yea, could be that a purge helped. I tend to think assholes produce a toxic working environment and are almost like malignant cancerous tumors in the way they impact a company in the long run.
• BEEdwards 5y ago
  "Maybe they were assholes, but I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are." There coworkers do though, assholes have a right to exist and others have a right to not want to work with them.
  • bostonsre 5y ago
    Yea, not having to work with assholes is pretty great. Maybe there is some tradeoff to be made and a balance where keeping a productive asshole around could be better for the product than purging said assholes, but I think a team with that toxicity can't be sustainable in the long run unless its a team full of assholes that are content.
  • throwaway9870 5y ago
    Don't let the world see you dirty laundry. Every company has these problem, customers should never see it.
• teawrecks 5y ago
  I agree that it is your prerogative as a consumer to decide how much you care about the integrity of the companies who make the products you use. Maybe it's just my inner Hank Hill talking, but I don't think a responsible consumer would ever say, "I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are." The way I see it, if you're willing to be an asshole for profit to someone else, then you're willing to be an asshole for profit to me too. So I appreciate and support companies who make deliberate choices to treat humans better, especially ones made at the cost of profits.
• pavlov 5y ago
  > "even assholes have a basic right to exist" The problem is when some assholes are actively engaged in denying basic rights from others. If you say "well those assholes have a right to exist", you're effectively saying "the assholes have more of a right to exist than the people they're trying to erase."
  • jwond 5y ago
    Could you clarify what basic rights you are referring to, whose existence ”the assholes” are trying to erase, and what methods they are using to do so?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • spartanatreyu 5y ago
      I think they're talking about the creator of JS giving money to a political cause trying to block gay marriage. There was a big huff about it in the tech space for a while when it happened and he ended up secluding himself after that for a while. It was really not a good look. In the years since, we've seen a much larger push to shine the spotlight on behaviour that would have previously been swept under the rug or hidden behind technological "tenure".
    • pas 5y ago
      • npteljes 5y ago
        TIL that he's the CEO of Brave Software.
  • takeda 5y ago
    Not all assholes are denying rights from others, there is plenty of equal opportunity assholes.
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
• openfuture 5y ago
  Came here to make this comment. Glad to see it is at the top. Moz://a has lost all trust. Yay for atlas engineering! :)
• Melatonic 5y ago
  I use Firefox daily and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What does Mozilla have to do with "cancel" culture? Is there some huge news article I am missing out on or something?
  • travem 5y ago
    Likely rooted in the experience with Brendan Eich who had a long history with Mozilla, was appointed as CEO and then (due to his personal political contributions, mainly Proposition 8 related) essentially forced to resign as CEO due to the accompanying backlash - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...
    • Melatonic 5y ago
      According to wikipedia he now an "ardent" anti-masker for Covid and now people are trying to get him to step down from Brave browser. Does this guy just not learn?
      • simondotau 5y ago
        I don't think supporting a mandate to wear a basic cloth mask is a hill anyone should be willing to die on. I'm fiercely, fiercely pro-mainstream-science, and there's no doubt that proper N95 masks (or better) are very effective against respiratory disease transmission. But mask mandates almost always permit basic cloth masks which lack strong evidence of efficacy. If we're not going to mandate an effective mask, I honestly don't see what the point of the mandate is.
        • mike00632 5y ago
          Can you cite why you believe masks don't work? It seems at odds with the scientific consensus as described by the CDC.
          • nailer 5y ago
• spankalee 5y ago
  > every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterly unimportant to web browser selection. This can't be true, unless you have extremely unusual new reading habits.
• dundarious 5y ago
  The vast majority people who use web browsers have literally zero knowledge, awareness, or interest in these things. What actually seems to have happened, is that a long time ago now, their techy friends recommended they use Firefox instead of IE. Then those techy friends recommended Chrome because it was even better. Now it's arguably the case that Chrome and Firefox are equivalent from a non-techy standpoint, but non-techies don't want to move browsers over and over. That large audience is largely lost to Firefox until there there are big enough practical downsides to Chrome or upsides to Firefox. As it stands now, even if techy people, who might be put off by the things you mention, were to be made perfectly happy again, if they recommend Firefox without a significant practical justification, non-techy people simply will not change from Chrome back to Firefox again. Importantly, more and more people have just grown up with Chrome, never having used Firefox or IE even once. Even if Firefox stays as good as Chrome, more and more people will start their web browsing experience never having considered Firefox and just always having organically used Chrome. This alone will lead to Firefox losing market share over time, even if all existing Firefox users keep using it and loving it. In my mind, it's clear that the reasons Firefox lost market-share are technical/practical, and the way it might regain market-share is also technical/practical improvements. That will be hard though, especially given Firefox would probably need technical/practical dominance on Android as well as on traditional computers.
  • lamontcg 5y ago
    If Google shut all the doors making ad blockers on Chrome virtually impossible that'd be interesting. Ad blocker use is pretty high and might be as high as 40% and if those people all defected that'd do it. Probably why Google can't do that though even though they clearly want to.
• liveoneggs 5y ago
  So many "assholes" in this thread! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHNB8IHfHdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHNB8IHfHdU