Mastodawn

Sarah Jamie Lewis Sep 13, 2024

Firefox forks might be a reasonable short-term solution to the current era of Mozilla paper cuts, but the crisis is ultimately driven by economics.

Browser dev and maintenance is expensive and that pressure is pushing Mozilla towards the same underhanded, advertiser-driven strategies embraced by google et al.

At best firefox-forks are a less well funded version of what Mozilla used (at least publicly) aim for.

Show thread

Sarah Jamie Lewis Sep 13, 2024

What I would really like to see in the browser space is an actual strong vision that prioritizes the open web, and community building - one that suggests alternatives to ad-tech (e.g. browser support for micropayments or subscriptions or view-proportional payments or the dozens of other models proposed over the decades)

Show thread

stgiga (they/them)

Sep 13, 2024

@sarahjamielewis

I'm sorry, I CANNOT get behind ads OR the ❝alternatives❞ you propose. Adding microtransactions, subscriptions, view-proportional (and thus tracking), or such to HTML5 (and by extension browsers) is a VERY bad idea. We don't need more fucking modals, paywalls, or nag boxes.

I will reiterate that the entire tech monetization system, as we know it, is a broken piece of fuckshit. What you propose is NOT the solution. It's like saying 🙶The solution to pollution is dilution.🙷, which it isn't.

As someone who is financially-underwater, I find these "ideas" completely fucking repulsive. We DO NOT need paywalls added to fucking HTML5.

I'm really fucking losing my cool here and due to yesterday's events that included HRT drama.

I'm GLAD Gumroad recently got fucked. Oh and nobody will ever miss Adfly.

Let's just say that this is probably the angriest Fedi post I've made in a while, because what I'm responding to is a suggestion of something like the fucking Web Integrity API.

ALSO I'm a fucking web app developer.

I don't hate you, but damn, those "ideas" you floated are damaging and will only make the web WORSE. End of story.

There are better ways to achieve the desired results.

If you have something positive I'd love to see it. But not THIS. I'm sorry for the profanity by the way, I'm just really rattled from all sorts of crap recently. That's its own story, but at least I see Green Day tomorrow.

Show thread

Sarah Jamie Lewis Sep 13, 2024

@stgiga

My words, at most, expressed a desire to see browsers trial new features to undermine the current ad-driven ecosystem. New economies come in many forms, and I don't know what combination of models would be viable.

From those words you extrapolated a (really) bad implementation and then expressed anger at me for promoting it.

Show thread

stgiga (they/them)

@sarahjamielewis

I suspect I must have misinterpreted your post tbh. I don't hate you.

Truthfully my rage is towards the current online content ecosystem, a challenging issue to fix without giving big corporations even more power to squeeze money from users. THAT's my problem with trying to make these features real.

But what we CAN agree upon is fuck ads. They're at this point a cross-platform virus development toolkit. And a source of scams. I'm in favor of regulating them into having NO CSS, JS, or IMG tags, in a style similar to unbranded cigarette boxes in non-American countries.

Oh and Flash going bye-bye didn't fix ad malware so...

My apologies.