Mastodawn

Sylvain Chamberland Dec 25, 2022

#Mozilla is creating a fediverse instance. What is Mozilla?

• A “not-for-profit” that owns multiple for-profit businesses and pays its CEO $5.6M
• Gets ~83% of its revenue (~$500,000,000) every year from surveillance capitalist Google
• Makes a browser that protects your privacy (*some configuration required)
• Is now a VC…

This is the best we can expect from Silicon Valley/capitalism. Question is: can we do better than that?

Sources: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf, https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf

1/3

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

… 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

Yahooist Teil der Yahoo Markenfamilie

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

… 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

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

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

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

PPS. Remember that the way you keep a system going is to control all sides of the narrative, not just your own. Be careful who you allow to shape the narrative around the alternatives. Ask yourselves whether they are part of the system that they purport to offer alternatives to.

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

PPPS. (I know, sorry, last one, I swear) Finally, remember that a “startup” doesn’t just mean “a new business.” Startup is a Silicon Valley brand. It’s a very specific type of business: one that’s catalysed by venture capital to either fail quickly or grow large enough to be sold (either to a larger corporation or to the public in an IPO). Only when a startup is sold do the investors get (multiples of) their money back (this is that ROI or “return on investment” you always hear about).

Dario Dec 21, 2022

@aral ‘Fail quickly’ is very much a business model that I’ve come to realize over the last 10yrs in startup culture.

It was a disappointing realization that not all our goals are meant to benefit end-users as many of us wanted to believe.

Karin Sorenby Dec 21, 2022

@aral it’s just so much money money profit… and the crazy amount of money these CEOs are making.. 😣

@aral Lest we forget that Marc Andreessen was involved with Mozilla

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marc-Andreessen#:~:text=Netscape%20was%20purchased%20by%20America%20Online%2C%20Inc.%20(AOL)%2C%20in%20November%201998.%20With%20the%20increasing%20competition%20from%20Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20the%20open%2Dsource%20browser%20developed%20from%20Navigator%2C%20and%20the%20continuing%20market%20dominance%20of%20Explorer%2C%20AOL%20discontinued%20support%20for%20Navigator%20in%202008.

Marc Andreessen | Biography & Facts

Marc Andreessen, (born July 9, 1971, Cedar Falls, Iowa, U.S.), American-born software engineer who played a key role in creating the Web browser Mosaic and who cofounded Netscape Communications Corporation. While still in grammar school, Andreessen taught himself BASIC, a programming language, so that he could write his own computer games; he later attempted to design a program that would do his math homework. He planned on becoming an electrical engineer, but that changed when he entered the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and landed a part-time job at the school’s computer lab, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Encyclopedia Britannica

Sunny Willow 🌞Dec 21, 2022

@CassOfDunshire @aral

He's the one behind Post.

@sunnywillow sure is

Stacey Cornelius Dec 21, 2022

@aral Thanks for all that. Sometimes it feels like trying to run in quicksand.

Admin Dec 21, 2022

@aral we do all worship a #deathcult and have little understanding, and near zero motivation to look/act else were #OMN

Emon (moved to masto.top)Dec 21, 2022

@aral or use brave for chromium addicts

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

@emon This is “Brave”: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Basic Attention Token

A new token to value user attention on the Internet.

Basic Attention Token

Emon (moved to masto.top)Dec 21, 2022

@aral I don't use much the BAT functionality, actually I don't really get it. I just use Brave for it's native privacy friendly features and performance. I will check it out.

lachlan slowly taming rust Dec 21, 2022

@aral
Biggest reason I use them is not that I like them as a company (I'm deeply ambivalent about them... and growing moreso) - but more that I think it's bad that we've only really got one other browser engine, which seems like a big issue to me. Particularly when that only other browser is controlled by an advertising seller.
But damn, really wish there was more.

Blake Leonard Dec 21, 2022

@lachlan @aral We all do, but it's way too complex to do, given everything Web browsers do. #Gemini for the win 😎

Typical Hypervisor Enjoyer Dec 21, 2022

@lachlan @aral There're also Webkit-based browsers, which share a common ancestor with Blink browsers like Chromium. Webkit is mainly used for Apple's Safari, but is also used by many projects like GNOME & KDE for their native browsers.

Simon 🌻Dec 21, 2022

@aral Over the last few years i’ve become more grumpier/ aware of privacy and certain companies selling your data that i’ve been moving away from a lot of them. Moved from gmail to Hey then Fastmail, moved from using google search to Duck Duck Go and last few months to Neeva ( use their browser too on iOS) and use Arc browser on Mac. Facebook ditched a couple of years ago which i have zero regrets doing.

joene 🏴Dec 21, 2022

@aral I just wanted to ask you. 😉 To add to this; I use Fennec (from Fdroid) on Android. It's perfect, because you can use add-ons collections, like you can on Firefox for Android Nightly. On the regular Firefox for Android you only have a very limited amount of add-ons.

Mat Owen Dec 21, 2022

@aral you just got a follow for that alone. Important point you make about remembering what Mozilla is while not maligning it, it’s good to have a two horse race for our browser but we need to build better alternatives. Is this the right moment to say I miss old Opera?

Jedidiah Dec 21, 2022

@aral That makes me so sad that their head of public policy would say that, I can see why you would struggle to reply!

I used to work quite often from their offices in London as they allowed charities and other non-profits to work there for free. That certainly wasn't the attitude or belief of the people I interacted with, or the energy of the place compared to other tech campuses. Really upsetting.

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

@jedidiah Mozilla is a honeypot. It does, of course, attract exactly the kind of people you describe due to how it brands itself. That’s one of the things that guts me. They deserve better. Way better.

David Hoeffer Dec 21, 2022

@aral getting to know a Mozilla employee in real life actually turned me away from open source for a couple of years (somewhat unfairly and irrationally, I'm sure)

Toasterson (Till Wegmüller)Dec 21, 2022

@aral So true. I constantly see this with the quality of their products. Thanks for making the public work here. As you mention we need to find better ways, are you aware of any efforts to direct funds to a Coop/Foundation that makes either Servo or V8(Deno) into a browser product people could use? Things like qutebrowser but more for a general audience rather than vim lovers?

Adam Dalliance Dec 21, 2022

@aral Yeah, I don't expect to use a Mozilla instance myself.

But the friends who have backwards ideas and refuse to trust anything other than massive commercial enterprises.

I guess Mozilla might be the best of that kind of bunch, if they can't be convinced that "massive commercial enterprises" are in fact the last trustworthy enterprises that there are.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK Dec 21, 2022

@aral I also remember Mozillas marketing department recently making the bald statement "Advertising funds the modern web" in some article (presumably trying to justify some adtech feature they had added to the browser)

Toni C. 🎗🍉🔻Dec 21, 2022

@aral WOW. Even if they weren't pretending to be something else, how detached from their own community must they be to wonder why they are held to higher standards...

Nitbuntu ✅Dec 21, 2022

@aral by current standards, I think Vivaldi does a bit better than this in terms of straight talking, easy to understand and transparency:-
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/

But, yes, it would be great if there was a business model that didn't involve any sort of grubby deals, but such is the reality of digital business these days.

Even with Mastodon a crunch point will come where tough decisions need to be made about how to sustainably fund development. Currently, it is partly bankrolled by the EU.

What’s Vivaldi’s business model? | Vivaldi Browser

Some browsers use your data in ad networks, push promoted content or use other invasive methods to fund their development. We don’t.

Vivaldi Browser

Sam Butler Dec 21, 2022

@nitbuntu @aral

"how to sustainably fund development" —

https://www.sambutler.us/coop-template?coop_name=Mastodon%20Collective&project_service_name=social%20media

Coop template for Mastodon Collective

How Mastodon Collective can be sustainably funded as a cooperative

Nitbuntu ✅Dec 21, 2022

@sambutlerUS Regarding the co-op model: I think this has mileage.

But suppose, for a service to be sustainable, members around need to pay $100+ a month in the first year since the membership hasn’t grown to a large enough number for the development work to be sustainable. That’s clearly not going to work.

Unless we’re thinking that the service is subsidised somehow until a large enough membership is reached to allow the subsidy to be taken away?

Typical Hypervisor Enjoyer Dec 21, 2022

@nitbuntu @aral That's simply not the case. Most non-profits in software maintain better relationships with the public than Mozilla.

In the case of Mastodon, the EU is forking over tons of money, and we have massive buy-in now. Yet we also have legendary funding passing through Patreon. The money will not be the limiting factor on Mastodon's growth, political willpower will be.

Nitbuntu ✅Dec 22, 2022

@hypervisor_enjoyer @aral it can seem that way now, but as things ramp up, costs increase.

Until recently Twitter had 5000 employees!
Even if Mastodon only ever requires 5% of that, that’s still 250 people and Berlin office space.

Soon you’d want to know how this is funded long term, if the EU can continue bankrolling this, fine.

But what if, like their CAP farm subsidies, EU tax payers start finding it a waste of money? Why bankroll an app used by ‘liberal elites’ when you can fund schools.

Typical Hypervisor Enjoyer Dec 22, 2022

@nitbuntu @aral It's hard to imagine a government funding schools, because my own country is a farce.

But Mastodon is a software project. There's an absolute finite limit to how much they could even need money. Features, bugfixes, and refactoring are all finite. If Mastodon becomes a mindless feature-mill, there will be a handful of additional forks to trim it down to one's personal tastes, so who cares?

Typical Hypervisor Enjoyer Dec 22, 2022

@nitbuntu @aral

Are you imagining server costs?
They are paid by a widely distributed network, where most costs are externalized. Neither of our servers come out of the Mastodon project's coffers, and that situation is only getting better.

Andrew Hinton Dec 21, 2022

@aral I didn’t know all this … but somehow I’m not surprised. We need truly civic orgs and infrastructures.

Valentin Goșu Dec 21, 2022

@aral some of us working at mozilla are still holding the company to a higher standard. It's not perfect, but it's better than most.

Nicolas H.Dec 21, 2022

@aral I friendly disagree: Mozilla is playing the game like others are doing. If you want great engineers, you have to pay them with great salaries. If you want a huge infra/service, you need money. I have no problem that they get their money from Google. Google could spend it in something way worse.

I do prefer a world with Mozilla than a world without. Simple as that.
(we would still be with IE6 without Mozilla)

Typical Hypervisor Enjoyer Dec 22, 2022

@Nico3333fr @aral Organizations have lives of their own. Mozilla in 2022 is hardly like 2004. FLOSS projects have been trying to fork Firefox for a great, long time.

Dario Dec 21, 2022

We need heroes. We find them in every space we occupy and Silicon Value was no different.

So embedded is the need that tech startups began using the ideology in their marketing, and it worked.

The desire to believe Mozilla has our best interests in mind is also rooted in our historical distaste for government despite leaning on it heavily — it also hosts the dichotomy of good vs evil and binary thinking.

It’s all fascinating until I realize, I believe it too 😳

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

@dariohudon Here’s to a future with peers, not heroes :)

Dario Dec 21, 2022

@aral Well said my friend!

Dario Dec 21, 2022

@aral I need to thank you for sharing this.

It’s such a good reminder of reality.

Johannes Brakensiek Dec 22, 2022

@aral @bugaevc Which sounds like it‘s bad. But it‘s not. If you want to make software that works sustainable and reaches people all over the world you need to earn many dollars and you need to pay people on a very high level.

For me the point rather is: If you earn as much money as #Mozilla how comes they are making products that bad? Companies way smaller have created good browsers (and mail clients, regarding Thunderbird), so Mozilla really looks somewhat inefficient and money-consuming…

SEPIA Open Assistant Dec 22, 2022

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc Can you name a browser made by a small company that is not based on Chromium, Firefox or WebKit and that is actually good? 😅 I'm not saying there is none but I don't know one. Working on a browser would be my personal nightmare btw, it's endlessly complex 🙈

Johannes Brakensiek Dec 22, 2022

@sepia @aral @bugaevc There is OmniGroup who once made OmniWeb, there still is iCab f.e. Of course it‘s way more complex these days, but still these companies also were way smaller.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniWeb

OmniWeb - Wikipedia

SEPIA Open Assistant Dec 22, 2022

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc I don't think its fair to compare a browser that hasn't been updated for 10 years with anything good today. Icab is based on WebKit since v4 according to Wikipedia (and Safari on v6?). Both are likely not battletested by millions of devs. Maybe we should clarify what a "good" browser is first. For me it is a browser that supports modern web standards, is fast, efficient and has few bugs. By this standard Safari barely makes the cut btw 😆

Johannes Brakensiek Dec 22, 2022

@sepia @aral @bugaevc That was not my point. My point is that ppl have greated good software (at that time) with waaay less money and resources. Even if it’s more complex today, Mozilla seems to eat billions of dollars for medium quality products. That was not a technical, but an economical argument.

Philosophically spoken: If tech really is that complicated that it eats dollar sums in sizes of gross national products, we maybe should drop it at all or redo it (see #Gemini).

thomkennon Dec 21, 2022

@aral Yeah fuck this valley bro hate cult. Thx for sharing this. Will be ditching his surveillance layer. Recos for comrade-friendly browser alternatives?

Social Justice Warrior🦍Dec 21, 2022

@thomkennon I personally like gemini, although that might be too radical for most people.

datenwolf Dec 21, 2022

@thomkennon @aral Ladybird is extremely promisng: https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird – and yes, it cross platform and not limited to SerenityOS

GitHub - SerenityOS/ladybird: The Ladybird web browser

The Ladybird web browser. Contribute to SerenityOS/ladybird development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

Dario Dec 21, 2022

@aral @thomkennon I’been using Vivaldi for the past month or so (details in screenshot)

More so to support Fediverse projects but must admit that after this thread, I need to reconsider my desire to believe any project's value match my own.

JamesGecko Dec 22, 2022

@thomkennon @aral Everything outside the super popular browsers is either:
1. Closed source.
2. A build of the open source parts of a super popular browser (good) and perpetually a few steps behind on shipping security patches (oh no).
3. Doesn't yet implement the latest WhatWG specs and will not render the majority of popular websites correctly.
4. Blockchain nonsense.

Also, the majority of alternative browsers use the same Google rendering engine under the hood. It's dire. Pick your poison! 😭

costrike Dec 21, 2022

@aral Eating the world won't happen on its own.

Social Justice Warrior🦍Dec 21, 2022

@aral Free software is not always free as in freedom.

Seclovin Dec 21, 2022

@vegafjord @aral Freedom conducted by laws isn't Freedom.

NullVoxPopuli Dec 21, 2022

@vegafjord @aral

better than being controlled by greedy corporations, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Edge, etc

Social Justice Warrior🦍Dec 22, 2022

@nullvoxpopuli Just because one solution is better than all others, doesnt mean the solution is good. We need to mobilize for a portal that is owned by the people, not by for profit actors.