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)May 29

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

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.

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)
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..."
May 29 at 6:24pmWeb
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 threadEmmy, GendermancerMay 30

@jonny it occurs to me that they could possibly use the current AI era to play catch up by ignoring it while everyone else is obsessed with it.

Then again, is they are under contract to not disparage Google, they're possibly required to use and hype AI.

I am absolutely one of the privacy nuts that used Firefox while everyone else was ditching it for Chrome, but the goodwill has been burned for years, IMO. It's hard to look Firefox in the UI.

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 threadEmmy, GendermancerMay 30
@jonny @plaidtron3000 the Internet is mysterious and important
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 threadJeremy KahnMay 31

@jonny @kevinriggle

*Pushes through the crowd at the recruiting desk like a pre-serum Steve Rogers*

Where can I enlist?

Show threadrefraction May 30
@jonny but can you fund millions of dollars in salaries for the C-suite on donations while your org is struggling?
Show threadxinit ☕May 30
@jonny Based on history, I believe that Mozilla can only perceive the first option.
Show threadelilla&, famigerada sapata travestiMay 30
@jonny please do spend multiple days ragging on mozilla, they earned it
Show threadombremadMay 30

@jonny also all of this happened because they jumped the gun on "let’s do a US non-profit organisation because it’s the best way to do things according to (shitty lawyer #452)" instead of settling in like EU where a lot of the FOSS community is

Mastodon is guilty of the same thing btw

Show threadjust small circles 🕊May 30
@jonny it all depends on the bribes of your CEO I guess.
Show threadAlexMay 31

@jonny yeah at this point can the signal foundation adopt Firefox please

I already donate monthly for signal I'd donate a lot more for signal-flavoured firefox

Show threadIrenes (many)May 31
@jonny can we just say we've been really annoyed how none of the debates about mozilla's now-gone funding model we've been in over the last ten years, led to any way to convince the org to pivot? bleh
Show threadIrenes (many)May 31
@jonny seeing things coming just makes it worse when we're right
Show threadBálint MagyarMay 31
@jonny “We got it wrong | The Mozilla Blog”
Show threaddbat May 31
@jonny Facepalmzilla™
Show threadtekheddMay 31
@jonny I don't think anybody likely to see my boosts needs to see this but the way it's written ... er, where's the chef kiss emoji?
Show threadNachiket VartakMay 31
@jonny I think you misread Mozilla’s position. Google is a car maker. As they manufacturer cars, they also manufacture wheels for their cars. Mozilla is a wheel manufacturer. They cannot manufacture cars. For Mozilla to keep being able to sell their wheels, it is important for them that Google keeps manufacturing cars. And Mozilla gets a bunch of payout for saying their wheels work best with Google Cars. Mozilla is not an independent entity. (1/2)
Show threadNachiket VartakMay 31
Its entire revenue model is intertwined with Google’s dominance, even if they are technically a competition in Browser space. Mozilla is basically after-market wheels. (2/2)
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 31
@vartak
That might be what you wish they would have written, and yes that is one metaphor one could apply to the situation, but that is not what they wrote either in this blog post or the amicus brief
Show threadjonny (good kind)May 31
@vartak
Or, I guess, generously, that is an argument they make in one place in the amicus brief, but it is not at all their primary argument. And yes, you could say I am "reading between the lines for comedic effect to make a point" and not "directly parroting the most sympathetic version of the argument for mozilla"
Show threadTockMay 31
@vartak That metaphor only explains their business relationship, not their products.
Show threadMatthew FennellMay 31

@jonny Karen Sandler gave an excellent talk at #FOSDEM on saying no to funding: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6481-when-is-it-right-to-say-no-to-funding-/

What I took away is that compromising your values for funding is always a mistake. Every time you dilute what you stand for, your biggest supporters and believers turn away from you.

I would love to throw money at Mozilla, if only the money went to the browser, and they stood up for the open web.

FOSDEM 2025 - When is it Right to Say No to Funding?

Show threadGiant Pink Robots!Jun 1
@jonny They aren't going to raise the necessary funds with donations only. The more I think about Mozilla, the less certain I am about their long term survival. To figure out a way for their proper independence from Google would be a bit of a miracle.
Show threadjonny (good kind)Jun 1
@giantpinkrobots
Especially not if you are alienating anyone who would donate to you and not making the case for why it is important to do so. And especially when somehow you manage to find $30m for ai nobody asked for, etc. You lose all your credibility that the money would be well spent. Whatever you would call what they're doing instead, it aint working
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 threadRiedler, The (2004) 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️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 threadRiedler, The (2004) 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️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 threadRiedler, The (2004) 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹🇪🇺🏴‍☠️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 threadcyberlyraMay 30

@sfmatheson

You're doing a great job! Nobody's perfect, we all just do what we can when we can. Keep it up!