jonny (good kind)May 29
Every time I read a mozilla product blogpost I get more convinced that whoever is writing them has left earth long ago and is writing them from an increasingly distant part of the universe that bends all communication into the register of a maniacal product manager, and the only way they have of signaling something has gone wrong with their shuttle is by heightening the self-evident contradictions between the self praise and the content of the blog posts they are indentured to write
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
Investing in what moves the internet forward | The Mozilla Blog

Firefox is the only major browser not backed by a billionaire and our independence shapes everything we build. This independence allows us to prioritize bu

Show threadjonny (good kind)

?????????????

Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which their data will be permanently deleted. [...]

Meanwhile, new features like Tab Groups and enhanced bookmarks now provide built-in ways to manage reading lists easily. [...]

This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way. We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.

May 29 at 7:54amWeb
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29

"We are stopping the thing that lets you make and share curated collections of offline pages with a little algorithmic affinity recommendation overlay because people don't want to manage reading lists and want to only have algorithmic recommendations.

Don't worry we basically fully replaced them with bookmarks (??) and a different tab orientation (??) because people still want to manage reading lists (??). But you can't actually import your pocket export to those things, and since they don't actually replace them we won't just move your data to them and will just delete it in a few months.

In conclusion, this is why pivoting to focus on the same gimmicks everyone else is focusing on and transitioning your personalized collections to generic AI slop reflects our being the most independent organization ever (???) Which lets us prioritize personalization (????)"

excuse me can you repeat that? blink twice if you need someone to come get you

Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
Having seen a bunch of writing on social media from ppl there and read a bunch of these blog posts, the corporate culture must be absolutely wild to allow this kind of completely 180 degree opposition between the choices they are making and internal heroism myths vs. the entire reason why the tiny tiny fraction of browser-using people use Firefox do so and literally everything that mozilla itself is saying about its values.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
And like if it was just a normal for-profit corporation I wouldn't blink twice, I am aware of the need for diversification since their major source of revenue could potentially get cut down to $0 pretty soon, but a lot of this is just a total self own and a totally mystifying one. There was an obvious route and they decided to throw it into reverse and drive through the garage door instead.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
I'm actually not sure of a bigger example in tech of burning all your goodwill for almost no reason like this. Usually it's because companies get bought or something, but mozilla just decided instead of "we have a ton of dedicated people who understand the importance of the thing, so let's do a wikipedia and really obnoxiously remind people we need them to pay for browser development while keeping their trust by not doing the bullshit that causes people to want to use our thing" that it would be better to just completely lose the plot and lean into the thing people were running from because they got high on their own patronizing supply of "we know better, ads are good, ai is good, our entire userbase that is yelling what the fuck at us is just a vocal minority... of itself..."
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29

I wouldn't say I know a ton of people, but I know enough, and none of them use Firefox unless they are a privacy wingnut or otherwise have some specific reason to hate Google and Apple. It just isn't a better piece of software than Chrome, it can't be and never will be, Google has infinity dollars, it competed on a different axis and that was fine for the people the use it because privacy is more important than perf or ux. The 2% of browser share that use Firefox are those privacy Wingnuts.

The one moz employee that frequently wanders into these threads once promised to show us the user research that is informing them and making them think "people who use Firefox are fine with ads, love them, don't mind having surprise advertising tech running in the browser that explicitly tells them it won't do that, and are apparently now clambering for more AI in their browser" and I suspect we probably won't. There just is no way that someone who thinks that the series of bad calls Firefox has made recently are actually fine would use Firefox.

Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
And it was always impossible to compete technically on browser development bc of the amount of labor involved and the very adversarial nature of web standards.... but man you're pivoting to trying to compete on "AI"? The extremely capital intensive, every tech giant is betting the whole farm, running at a loss, spent a decade recruiting top talent, pay 10x what you can.... That "AI?" Just comically bad calls. Maybe I would be more sympathetic if they explained the strategy instead of just saying "we're doing what's best for the web now shut up and eat your poison"
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30

i don't mean to spend multiple days ragging on mozilla, but reading this:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_brief/

and it's hard for me to express how i both feel for them and do not love the idea of firefox revenue going to zero, but also can't help but laugh at how this is pure slapstick and they are the clown trying to beg the rakes to stop hitting them in the face.

ok in this RPG you are mozilla. the federal government pursues google for antitrust finally (this is good). the federal government zeroes in on exactly your funding mechanism as one of the major remedies it seeks (this is bad). you are in a pickle. you need to hedge, you need to diversify, you need to abandon ship. everyone who cares about you knows that, but what do you do?

do you:

  • jump directly into the oncoming traffic of the market dominance strategy of that very same google, trying to compete on the sheer accumulated goodwill associated with your brand (which is evidently massively overestimated, internally) as "the good AI." Zigging while everyone else zigs. Late and dad cringe in a crowded market. But not only that, you take the bold strategy of specifically and directly alienating the only people that care about your flagship product or soul as an organization. You make a truly bizarre and hard to read amicus plea to the courts to save your soul: "we hate the monopoly power of google too, but this particular monopolistic behavior is paradoxically good for reasons that we won't explain except to say that google has been so successful in building the browser monopoly that we barely even exist. and by the way google is very good! and if we somehow make it out of this alive, they should keep paying us!!"

or....

  • recognize that it's do or die, and you have a small but dedicated group of people that are very clear about their reasons for using your product being antagonism to the tech monopolists. you come out guns blazing and say to the courts "yeah that's right fuck Google. Their browser monopoly has put us in this position we absolutely hate where we are dependent on exactly the company that has crushed the life from our organization and keeps us alive as a corporate human shield to deflect accurate claims that they have swallowed the internet whole. The only way out is to cut them to ribbons, but since we doubt the court will have the courage to do that, we now need everyone who wants to see a free internet to put their money where their mouth is and fund us as we go to the mattresses to keep the internet alive. No AI bullshit, no bizarre doublespeak, pay up or we're dead." It's not unprecedented. Meredith is over there giving the finger to surveillance capital every day and ramping up the donation nagware for Signal users, which they gladly do, because Signal fucks. and Mozilla used to fuck.
The future of the web depends on getting this right | The Mozilla Blog

The remedies phase of the U.S. v. Google LLC search case wrapped up last week. As the Court weighs how to restore competition in the search market, Mozilla

Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
i feel like it's monsterdon every day and at the first sign of danger Mozilla is always the first to say Lets Split Up, I'll Take The Basement
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
"This initial implementation uses a form of inert gas to temporarily concentrate the oxygen within the chamber to depress the temperature of ignition. While we don't actually shoot ourselves in the foot, we do ensure that high velocity, high inertia events do happen somewhere near the anatomical feature that we stand on. Let us know: would you want a spontaneous metallic impact on command, perhaps with a risk of making it look like you peed your own pants for the rest of your life?"
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
local translation: makes sense. best effort structured mapping of page contents between two spaces. can be computed locally. local first "AI" recommendations based on you pre-emptively crawling the local bubble of internet around you, potentially posing as you, to show a popup summary of what a link might have at it? are you ok? you're betting it all on link previews? ok, right and opengraph tags too. great. well i really have to be going
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
the entire idea of content recommendation is based on the platform having more information than the user. you cannot do on-device content recommendation. that's not what words mean.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
sheesh
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
Trying to relaunch as an AI startup with the 2015 readthedocs.org theme on what should be your word salad "whitepaper" tab is like watching a very earnest 65 year old finally retire and start spending every day auditing classes at the local university but you forget and start thinking you're actually in college again
Show threadrefraction May 30
@jonny eh, the haters must be wrong, clearly there's millions of potential users that have only been waiting for Mozilla to do AI to switch to Firefox, cause that's such a unique selling point in 2025.
Show threadみやくモードMay 30
@jonny Before you go let us know: do you want the link preview workers to constantly be fucking up everything for you in the background on any site that isn’t stateless, even if you never use them?
Show threadPlaidMay 30
@jonny
I’d be willing to bet cash that they’re contractually obligated to side with Google, and that they’re amply compensated for it as well. At least of the current board member is a “special advisor” to (at least one) Alphabet company. Google’s been paying their bills for a while and their previous CEO of MoCorp made millions per year doing that. Money talks, and contractual non-disparagement clauses hammer the point home.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
@plaidtron3000 the only explanation is of course that they are trying to shoot off some startup liferafts before scuttling the ship, yes.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
@plaidtron3000 in slapstick you must assume that the clown dislikes being hit in the face with the rake, despite it being very clear they are doing it to themselves.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
@plaidtron3000 sliding into surveillance capitalism as a bit as you get out of costume and try and dissolve yourself into the infocapital abyss
Show threadPlaidMay 30
@jonny The for-profit Mozilla Corp could be jettisoned pretty easily, I'm sure. It's probably crafted that way on purpose. Even if DOJ forces Google to divest Chrome, both Chrome Corp and MS want another browser to keep up the appearance of competition. Microsoft has been paying Mozilla to keep Bing a search option, and for ad roll too. Mozilla is just a tool of the capitalists, and even MoCorp CEOs and board members are just tiny fishes nibbling at capitalst scraps. They fear losing even that.
Show threadPlaidMay 30
@jonny I think what I'm trying to say here is that this all just feels like good, old fashioned, unenlightened self-interest. Greed, venal and bare.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30

@plaidtron3000 ta-da! the shit was just shit!
[echoing ha ha ha ha ha ha ha until all lungs flatten into a single sheet, incapable of laughter, smudged against the vacuum collapse radiating from the heart of a new physics]

https://youtu.be/kdA0mW-9jRs?t=472

Clown Core - Van (Visual Album)

YouTube
Show threadPlaidMay 30
@jonny Someone's got a reasonably heathy diet. They missed out on a quality Poseidon's Kiss with this one.
Show threadstarkraving666May 30

@jonny @plaidtron3000 i ended up watching this entire thing from beginning to end. amazing

also when commenter said “When he said "I am the creator of all ukelele-whistling music heard in every advertisement throughout all of time I am sad" I felt that. Relatable af” I felt that. Relatable af.

Show threadKevin RiggleMay 30
@jonny naturally they’re going with 1)
Show threadKevin RiggleMay 30
@jonny is there going to be a new org and another fork which takes all the people left supporting the actual browser á là OpenOffice -> LibreOffice or are we all too old and tired for that any more
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 30
@kevinriggle i'm ready to ride another clusterfuck! i want to ride another folly into the sea of online!!!!
Show threadDamonHDMay 29
@jonny Maybe I fall into the "privacy wingnut" category, but FF remains my preferred browser over Chrome, Safari, and everything else. Use ratio probably 95:4:1.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@DamonHD
One glance at your website and I'm like "yep one of us"
Show threadDamonHDMay 29
@jonny Is that good or bad? %-P
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@DamonHD
I think people who care about digital privacy are pretty cool
Show threaddaveMay 29

@jonny well, LIbrewolf seems a better choice. Even then, you will be owned by 52/8 54/8 34/8 and 35/8 netblocks from Amazon and Google unless you get rid of push, ping, shopping the control addresses and a few other things.
You see, they put a lot of work into this, mainly out of self interest. It's not for you.

If you're online, they will try to stop you from changing or even scrolling down to certain things in about.config

They infiltrate everything.
keep on eye on that pile of underwear.

Show threadLisa Magdalena Riedler 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️May 29
@jonny I use FF almost exclusively - if I was a privacy nut I’d use librewolf or something. well I mean I do, but exclusively for porn. gotta keep that shit separated
Show threadLisa Magdalena Riedler 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️May 29
@jonny anyway I’m not a privacy nut because I keep telemetry on
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@_r
Well there certainly are exceptions. But yeah i would say knowing about librewolf and when to use it and making an active choice about telemetry puts you in a very high percentile of people who know about digital privacy.
Show threadLisa Magdalena Riedler 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️May 29
@jonny I mean, I’m in IT, so knowing about this sorta stuff is kinda intrinsic. Certainly I’m not the average consumer, and I do feel that FF is geared towards technically literate people
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@_r
Definitely agreed. People who in some way are aware of the landscape of why they might not use the overwhelming defaults of chrome or safari
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@_r
And for a long time I would always take it upon myself to take the 5 minutes to be obnoxious and tell my non-computer touching friends why it was so important to use a non-chrome browser, recommending Firefox because I liked mozilla, but I don't do that anymore and I can't imagine many of the people who used to evangelize do either.
Show threadStephen Matheson🌵🌲May 29

@jonny @_r I'm a mere mortal, the kind of dupe who knows just enough to be concerned but not enough to track the latest wolf species or to know how to make an "active choice about telemetry" (PS those were some great scenes in Apollo 13 amirite). Digital privacy is less important to me than epic complicity, but both are important. I'm a devotee of @cyberlyra (Janet Vertesi) but too slow to implement her opt out recommendations. I guess what I'm getting at: if FF is going bad, what should a mere moral do? Besides vote?

I know this is like asking someone how to play bridge and I know it sounds selfish and childish. I also know enough to be worried about hundreds of millions of easily zombified users...

Show threaddaveMay 29
@jonny They do all they can to make your data available to Google and Amazon, relentlessly.
Heads up I tagged them in the other comment I posted.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@hologram
Not too worried about the mozilla tag, honestly if it evoked any response from the pr intern that would make my night because the corporate messaging disfunction would be too funny to handle at that point.
Show threaddaveMay 29
@jonny just so you know.
Show threaddaveMay 30
@jonny I now know what really went wrong. My Firefox installation is now much quicker since I liberated it from the #Nimbus project.
Turn the "True" to "False" but there are other things also.
Show threaddaveMay 29

@jonny Well, I only started into it to get rid of all the "pings". It's more than that, the push facility and "shopping" are very noisy. Don't miss "shopping" in about:config
The the controlling IPs from Google and Amazon prevented me from changing the settings. I had to make sure they were blocked.
You might also find a Fastly address.

Do check this --
"browser.shopping.experience2023.active false"

Show threaddaveMay 29

@jonny

Ask: who owns your desktop, and the browser you use on the OS you have installed?

Not #Mozilla Not any more.

Some of us are looking for a return of #Iceweasel it has never completely disappeared.

Show threadDan GoodmanMay 29
@jonny I feel so sad that Firefox's days are probably numbered. Not sure I can cope with the web without an effective ad blocker and cookie containers. 😞
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@neuralreckoning
Im sort of ready to go offroad in some ramshackle clusterfuck of cobbled together web stack parts
Show threadrefraction May 29
@jonny I don't think it was the door...
more like trying to recreate an anecdote dad told us from the military where they drove their IFV straight through the back wall of a barn in an exercise. except there that was somehow the winning move (that cost the Bundeswehr a bunch of money to replace some farmer's barn wall) and you're trying to do it with the family car.
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²May 29
@jonny mozilla corp is for-profit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation massive cope in the overview section that refuses to use the term for-profit and instead says "taxable entity" i'm tempted to call unencyclopedic
Mozilla Corporation - Wikipedia

Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²May 29
@jonny not sure i've ever seen an article just replace an overview with a lengthy direct quote from an incredibly partial source lmao
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²May 29

@jonny when i'm in a not saying for-profit match and my opponent is the mozilla corp wikipedia article

The Mozilla Corporation was established on August 3, 2005, to handle the revenue-related operations of the Mozilla Foundation. As a non-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is limited in terms of the types and amounts of revenue it can have. The Mozilla Corporation, as a taxable organization (essentially, a commercial operation), does not have to comply with such strict rules.

Show threadsrslypascalMay 29

@hipsterelectron @jonny

Just compare their development expenses to their total expenses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances

Mozilla Corporation - Wikipedia

Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@srslypascal
@hipsterelectron
Love to see that number diverge.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@srslypascal
@hipsterelectron
I've said it before and I'll say it again, all anyone wants from them is for them to make a non-cursed browser. That is all. Extras are fine too, internet health organization fine, extra apps fine, as long as the browser is not cursed. I bet they would have alienated fewer users if they literally held everyone's browsing history for ransom to pay for browser development and only browser development than wandering off and crowning themselves the arbiters of the future of the net that will bring the Good Advertising and Good AI to fight the Bad Advertising and AI.
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@hipsterelectron
Get in the talk page and light some fires
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 29
@hipsterelectron
Emphasis on the "normal" part, yes
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²May 29
@jonny ah sorry missed that point. i wasn't aware of this until someone told me last year
Show threadshadowwwindMay 29
@jonny funny that they say "more ai" features as the previous two aren't using AI? And if they had a specific idea for a feature in mind they probably wouldn't be so vague. They have no idea for a good AI feature. Thats so desperate