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Building a browser is harder than posting puff pieces about privacy. Mozilla has sadly strayed away from being a browser company into being some PR company that

Building a browser is harder than posting puff pieces about privacy. Mozilla has sadly strayed away from being a browser company into being some PR company that happens to make minor changes to a browser once in a blue moon.

neilv 3y ago
Agreed, a lot of the behavior looks like that. But if we ask why we want them to build a browser, would you agree that privacy+security+freedom+democracy online are the main reasons we have? If so, then would you say much of their current messaging has the right idea? Would you also say that we've seen genuine progress (and also regression resistance) in that direction with the browser? Personally, I'd say yes to all those. Two things that I don't understand are what one executive was getting paid, and some of their decisions during that executive's tenure, for a long time. One guess is that some people were letting it be run like a tech company, and furthermore a tech company coasting along in some ways without being very effective. And that would have to be multiple people, since everyone answers to someone. If that guess were accurate, then not only do you have to ask the watchers why that was allowed to happen, and figure out how to fix that, but you also have to look for cascading effects within the organization from that having gone on.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Mozilla has gone all-in on talk (or "messaging") and but very little action. In some cases I would say they are actually giving people a false sense of security because despite all the claims, Firefox in its default configuration isn't actually great privacy-wise (for starters, default-on telemetry is in direct breach of the GDPR). Mozilla could massively help non-technical people regain privacy by shipping Firefox with actually private defaults and uBlock Origin built-in (they've got the infrastructure to download Pocket on first run, so they can do the same for uBlock), but doing would actually mean "doing something" and put them at risk (I'd expect the Google money to stop the second this is released, meaning they'd need to actually start operating a real business with a real business model), where as merely writing puff pieces is safe as it doesn't really hurt anyone.
  - neilv 3y ago
    Messaging sure could use a great, open solution. There are big problems with every current solution I'm aware of. I'm guessing a very hard problem is figuring out how to fund Mozilla's non-profit mission, without behaving entirely like a for-profit tech company. I have a lot of sympathy for that difficulty, but no tolerance for some of the behavior that's gone on.

neilv 3y ago

Agreed, a lot of the behavior looks like that. But if we ask why we want them to build a browser, would you agree that privacy+security+freedom+democracy online are the main reasons we have? If so, then would you say much of their current messaging has the right idea? Would you also say that we've seen genuine progress (and also regression resistance) in that direction with the browser? Personally, I'd say yes to all those. Two things that I don't understand are what one executive was getting paid, and some of their decisions during that executive's tenure, for a long time. One guess is that some people were letting it be run like a tech company, and furthermore a tech company coasting along in some ways without being very effective. And that would have to be multiple people, since everyone answers to someone. If that guess were accurate, then not only do you have to ask the watchers why that was allowed to happen, and figure out how to fix that, but you also have to look for cascading effects within the organization from that having gone on.

Nextgrid 3y ago
Mozilla has gone all-in on talk (or "messaging") and but very little action. In some cases I would say they are actually giving people a false sense of security because despite all the claims, Firefox in its default configuration isn't actually great privacy-wise (for starters, default-on telemetry is in direct breach of the GDPR). Mozilla could massively help non-technical people regain privacy by shipping Firefox with actually private defaults and uBlock Origin built-in (they've got the infrastructure to download Pocket on first run, so they can do the same for uBlock), but doing would actually mean "doing something" and put them at risk (I'd expect the Google money to stop the second this is released, meaning they'd need to actually start operating a real business with a real business model), where as merely writing puff pieces is safe as it doesn't really hurt anyone.
- neilv 3y ago
  Messaging sure could use a great, open solution. There are big problems with every current solution I'm aware of. I'm guessing a very hard problem is figuring out how to fund Mozilla's non-profit mission, without behaving entirely like a for-profit tech company. I have a lot of sympathy for that difficulty, but no tolerance for some of the behavior that's gone on.