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Comment by renewedrebecca | Hacker News Reader

> For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.

Sure, but why should anyone have to?

Look, I hate ads as much as the next person.

But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right? A small advert to amazon/hotels/whatever that can be removed basically permanently with a small change in the settings is about the best balance I can think of.

If you donate to Mozilla, I have more sympathy for you. Perhaps they could make it so that if you have a Firefox account linked to a donation that they remove this, or something.

I have struggled to find methods as an individual to donate to Firefox.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/

I'm fairly sure that's for donating to Mozilla, where the funds go who knows where (kidding, it goes to the executives and marketing).

Is there anywhere I can donate to Firefox, specifically the development and the maintenance of the browser itself, and only the browser? Maybe donating directly to developers working on Firefox would be the best approach here.

Nope! In fact, last I heard, donations to the Mozilla Foundation could not be used at all for the browser, which is developed by the Mozilla Corporation.

That's for donations to the Mozilla foundation, they aren't used to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla corporation and Mozilla foundation are distinct entities.

Same.

They should have offered us monthly services that made sense. Long long ago.

> But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right?

WHY? They get hundreds of millions a year to place Google as the default search engine. That’s a shit ton of money. At that level they could even put some away every year for an endowment. Why does a nonprofit need to generate even more money by violating its users?

Money is drying up because Google is being ordered to terminate the deal, and they refused to save it and rather spend it on flights to Zambia to make a festival session about "feminist AI alliance for climate justice" "centering on LGBTQIA+ individuals". Their words, not mine.

See videos 4 months old or younger: https://www.youtube.com/@Lunduke/search?query=mozilla

Never hear of that person before, but before listening to anyone, I like to go through their material to see if they at least give the impression of a balanced and impartial person.

> The company made popular by making modular laptops now makes a desktop with soldered-on RAM. Bonus: They appear to support targeting children with Trans cartoons.

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/framework-unveils-2000-non-up...

> Leftist Extremists Leave Linux Kernel, Demand Conservatives Be Banned

> Leftist Linux developers demand those with wrong politics "be removed". "Right-wing people are not welcomed," says one. "You can [CENSORED] right off from my projects," the other.

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/leftist-extremists-leave-linu...

In this case, it seems they are neither balanced nor impartial, so beware people who chose to engage with that. It seems Lunduke is yet another culture-warrior masquerading like "The last bastion of truly independent Tech Journalism". I'm sure they get lots of traffic from it, but it's not really a reliable source for facts.

Why shoot the messenger? Not a rhetorical question, answer it if you are able to.

diggan, your way of thinking needs to face strong criticism. It brings you into the realm of make-belief and delusion and turns you away from the truth. Dealing with the trappings instead of the essence of things is no way to live in this world. Be level-headed and apply rationality, otherwise I predict you will see supposed enemies hiding behind every stone and then it will end badly for you.

FWIW, anyone can follow to the sources in order to come to the same summary, or through interpretation to the same conclusions. It only takes half a minute with a Web search and see that B.L. indeed is a reliable transmitter of facts. It took you longer to sow the FUD than to simply do the verification! *smh*

Here are the sources:

* https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/TKUXAQ-1

* https://xcancel.com/bazzite_gg/status/1887913668182163478

* https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2025-February...

* https://chaos.social/@karolherbst#:~:text=not%20welcomed

* https://web.archive.org/web/20240619223519/https://social.tr...

It is not "sowing FUD" to mention that someone has a history of posting ridiculously emotionally charged headlines/content, and point out that that habit might also color the truthfulness of their reporting.

Yes, it is. I have shown the sources, and thus quite demonstrably refuted diggan's claim of Uncertainty at the end of his post. The other parts of his post are very much emotional appeal, trying to get a HN reader to feel Fear and Doubt.

You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and denial of reality. Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.

It is a good thing that we all have the freedom to check the veracity, and do not have trust gatekeepers and do not have to short-circuit by taking anyone's word.

>You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and denial of reality.

No, I just avoid "journalism" from people who only post with wildly emotionally charged language. If the reporting speaks for itself, you don't need to prime my feelings with your headlines or interpretations.

>Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.

Your moralizing is tiring to read.

> Yes, it is.

No it isn’t

fine, but applying that method to journalism will essentially run you out of trustworthy sources to gather news and information from the very same day.

Not at all.

For one, it's a continuum, not a binary thing.

Second, for topics I care about, I look at multiple outlets and/or their reported sources so that I can hopefully isolate the facts and form my own opinion.

And yes, for each outlet I weigh their reporting by how much emotionally charged language they use. Or in this case, whether they shoehorn something about trans people into an article about RAM in addition to the other emotionally charged language.

Outside of all this culture war stuff, on a much more tangible subject, I guarantee you that for the money they sank in their flashy Paris headquarters[1,2] (thousands of m² in one of the fanciest areas), they could have paid for hundreds of man-years in very decent French engineers wages.

Let's be honest, they just spent the Google money like if there was no tomorrow, and an individual that won't even see from afar that much money in my whole life, I won't be donating to save them from their pitiful financial choices.

[1] https://www.mellett-architects.com/en/portfolio/mozilla/ [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/places/2013/03/27/mozilla-paris-fin...

Sure, I agree with Mozilla not being the greatest steward (as written minutes before the comment you responded to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195286), I'd much more like Firefox split off from Firefox.

But regardless of our feelings for Mozilla being one way or another, listening to authors who clearly are over-emotional about subjects isn't a way to learn more.

> listening to authors who clearly are over-emotional about subjects isn't a way to learn more.

Independently of the guy's own politics (I only know his “Linux Sucks” videos), he is directly citing an official Mozilla[1] document.

[1] https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/schedule?isRecorded=tru...

There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a natural neutral point. It's like saying you want to hear arguments both for and agains murdering children. All you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR pre-conceived notions.

> There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a natural neutral point

It does not, professional journalists are able to provide two different points of views in their articles, granted they work for a professional publication. I'm not sure where you're from, but seemingly it isn't very popular in the US, but in other countries it does exist.

> All you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR pre-conceived notions.

I'm trying to filter away people using overly emotional language, regardless of their political or moral leanings. I don't care if you're up, right, down or left, using clickbait language gives me reservations about even listening to the author.

Are those “professional journalists” in the room with us right now? … because the media has made a conscious effort to fire anyone unbiased for the last 20 years

Firefox is supposedly owned by a nonprofit organization that's expected to act in the user's interest.

Nonprofits are supposed to raise funds from donations and grants, not via enshittification for the primary subject of their mission.

The problem is that besides being a supposed nonprofit (Mozilla foundation), the same people also want to larp as a sillicon valley tech business (Mozzilla corp which largely shares leadership with the org) with insanely high saleries funded anti-user bullshit.

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