Mozilla RegretsReporter
foundation.mozilla.org
foundation.mozilla.org
A browser that's not pushed by an advertising company is really important. If we lose Firefox, we lose badly, and these diversions are putting that key bulwark at risk.
"Activism stuff" is precisely what the Mozilla _Foundation_ is for.
Because I bet many donate because they want to support Firefox.
The New York Times ad was paid for through donations to present an alternative to the closed ecosystem dominated by one browser that didn't follow open standards.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/fast-for-good-launc...
Early versions of Firefox featured links to various news organizations and stories pulled from their feeds, until certain jurisdictions threatened to block the browser entirely.
At some point their missions may have diverged, but the marketing of both were closely intertwined. MoFo accepted donations and other sources of funds which it used, in part, to fund development of a browser by MoCo. Other projects came later, but the community's understanding of their respective roles remained the same.
As a long-term observer I followed this closely when the Foundation and Commercial split was announced, and remember reassurance s about the core mission being loudly proclaimed.
Here it is from the former CLW herself:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2007/08/09/firefox-is-a-public...
While true, those donations were largely from sources connected to Netscape. If they had built a normal corporation, it'd be startup capital.
>MoFo accepted donations and other sources of funds which it used, in part, to fund development of a browser by MoCo
Mozilla Corporation saw $60 million in revenue in the first year, at no point were the donations a significant source of income.
>remember reassurance s about the core mission being loudly proclaimed.
Here's the actual "core mission" they launched at the time, note the pledge containing
>Use the Mozilla assets (intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks, infrastructure, funds, and reputation) to keep the Internet an open platform;
As it stands, the primary activity of the Foundation is to take money and goodwill earned by Firefox and divert it to unrelated activism.
“Firefox is maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation” https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq/
Agreed. I'm encouraged at the thought of Google being forced to divest from Chrome by US antitrust action [1] [2].
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/13/what-would-google-be-...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/10/feds-may-target-goo...
How would Chrome as a standalone business generate revenue?
My question here was how would would we benefit from the breakup? And how would some products which are dependent on he search revenue survive? At least they sell GSuite so it's an actual competitor to Office.Chrome is just to get more people using a browser that makes more web experiences better so they'll use more Google products.
These things discourage customers from mixing products from different companies, thus reducing competition.
Another way to look at it is that there are two ways for a large company to get its software to work well with others: Either it participates in open standards, or it creates its own ecosystem to lock its customers into. The former is better for customers, but companies obviously choose the latter. So we need to take that option away from them.
I don't know if this applies to Google Docs and search. It might have been a bad example.
If a product can't survive on its own, it should die – that is how a market economy works.
RegretsReporter at the very least is about reinforcing orthodoxies.
From my point of view the proper way to solve this is to educate people and build up "media competence".
Who defines what a harmful video is? Such classification is always influenced by current trends, social norms and so on. What might be harmful to a child might be not even worth a shrug to an adult. What is fact today, might be laughable tomorrow and heresy the day after. Have fun navigating this.
If you think that youtube guides people on downward spirals towards extremism and is not willing to acknowledge or change it - talk to your kids and peers about it. Repeat this until they are able to decide for themselves.
But pushing some information (sort of propaganda) and hiding some information (sort of censorship) both lead down a dangerous path.
I can't put my finger right on the spot, but it seems like nuking a hurricane.
What information is this pushing or hiding? This is trying to better understand how YouTube is making these recommendations, so it is a known factor when you talk to your kids and peers.
Well, I personally doubt that this project aims at purely understanding the recommendation logic and then doing nothing. But i might be mistaken. Time will tell.
Barnum’s sideshows eventually stopped, but it wasn’t education that stopped them. Mostly, it was government regulation stripping away all the big draws (the big-top shows) by making a lot of them (rightfully) illegal. That just required a few experts and politicians to achieve consensus on the subject; a secular shift in public opinion wasn’t required.
This looks even worse to after reading that many brilliant engineers were let go due to financial reasons.
Not from a company - from the foundation.
I don't see how this Mozilla tool could ever contribute to making the web more free and more open; in fact it seems to be designed by activists to make the web _less_ free and _less_ open.
I really don't understand why people think this makes the web less free and open. Somebody voicing their opinion about a video to a third party doesnt block the video.
Honestly, short of going and looking it up, I haven't got a clue what the for-profit mozilla entity does other than the browser. Sign deals exchanging money for the default search engine position?
Why would that stand to reason? Firefox makes Mozilla money (through search provider sponsorship), and therefore needs to be a company to receive that revenue. Nothing else Mozilla does makes them money, and therefore nothing else they do needs to be a company. What would you imagine the Mozilla Corporation exists to do, if not to make money from Firefox (and then plow that money back into Firefox development)?
A simple act of etiquette would be to recognize your own astounding biases and at least put up a little warning sign or something: “Made by and for American Progressivism Activists”.