… Perhaps the best way to understand Mozilla is in the words of their president on their new VC arm:

“We see a lot of startups who want to tackle things like privacy, trustworthy AI, and alternatives to Twitter… alternatives are not going to emerge unless there’s founders and companies who build them. And the founders are not going to build them unless there’s money aligned with their vision … So I think we need to still be about commerce and creating wealth”

https://www.yahoo.com/video/mozilla-foundation-mark-surman-rethinking-120004066.html

2/3

… Or, in what a previous head of public policy at Mozilla told me while we were chatting before our talks at a data protection conference:

“Aral, we’re just another Silicon Valley tech company, I don’t understand why you’re holding us to a such a higher standard.”

When I finally managed to pick my jaw off the floor the only retort I could manage was: “But that’s not what you tell people.”

3/3

#Mozilla #fediverse #SiliconValley #ventureCapital #BigTech

PS. Please don‘t reply asking me which browser you should use :) This is not about that. It’s about understanding the nature of a thing so we can recognise what is a stopgap and where we (in the EU?) need to invest differently (e.g., using our taxes) in longer-term solutions. If you want to use Firefox, please do (I do & I’m glad Chrome isn‘t the only game in town*). Just make sure you configure it to turn off Mozilla’s own data collection or try LibreWolf.

* the problem is the town is a sewer