RE: https://social.vmbrasseur.com/@vmbrasseur/115922995190919975
Mozilla wants your input. Here's mine:
Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:
1: Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2: Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3: There is no 3.
Mozilla should have NOTHING to do with AI. Nobody wants it. Stop forcing AI into every corner of every project because your VC-brained management have completely lost the plot.
@jwz Related: if a browser truly wanted to re-establish trust with end users, and make it clear that they are in fact a "user agent" rather than a tool of the adtech industry, you know what the single biggest way to speak with their actions would be?
Ship an adblocker out of the box, by default. Everyone using the browser would have it on, with a reasonable default set of rules, unless they explicitly disable it or added custom rule sets.
An open declaration of war on the adtech industry.
@jwz @azonenberg I can take or leave ad blockers. If I (miraculously) had the budget to coordinate the development of a browser ex nihilo, the design principle throughout would be making it monetization-hostile. This would be a higher priority than standards compliance, as large portions of the standards have been drafted by the IP or adware industries to serve their own interests.
Particularly, the Javascript runtime would be highly user customizable to make broadly defined categories of events loggable, bypassable, etc.
I would include opt-in telemetry, but specifically to enable users of the browser to "compare notes" (in an automated way) on the multitude of domains in the asset pipelines of the websites they visit.
@jwz Told them something along those lines too. Maybe they'll get the message if there's enough answers in that vein.
I don't have high hopes, though.
@jwz My response in the third block:
---
There is no #3. GET THE FSCK OUT OF THE LLM CESSPOOL!
"But everyone else is adopting AI..."
Oh, so I suppose if everyone else jumped off the Empire State Building, *you* would have to jump off the Empire State Building.
LLMs are the 3D movies of tech. A novelty. It *seems* cool, but in truth it's a *dead end.* Save your reputation. Save your *MONEY!* Get off the bandwagon before it sails off the cliff.
I forgot to add: get a decent spell-check. 5/6 suggestions are just letter-salads, not words.
@jwz Firefox market share is <6%. Zen is trying to port the much-loved features from the now stagnant Arc, but the result so far is clunky and I've returned to Arc because it's more perfect right now for how I work and play.
Mozilla needs a mission bigger than just a standards-based browser. It should be experimenting with new UX. Not Liquid Glass UI/UX, but Arc-like UX.
Perhaps they should be experimenting with AI, with the goal of making AI invisible to the user without boiling the oceans.
@jwz @n3bulous I can live without a new UX. I can even live with incomplete implementation of the standards.
astoundingteam.com/2020/04/21/…
What I really miss is the independence. When Firefox was first airdropped into the public domain, legions of indy websites advertised it, for free. You literally can't buy that kind of enthusiasm and loyalty, but Mozilla sure knows how to piss it away.
@jwz What is accomplished with an irrelevant Mozilla? What are FF and Mozilla in 10 years being only a standards based browser?
My original post agreed with points 1 and 2, but I trimmed them due to length. I believe those are noble goals, but you are effectively killing FF. Maybe you want EFF but for the Web.
That said, I didn't really agree with any of the question choices so I posted only a comment.
@n3bulous How you judge the success of a commercial product is by counting users and counting ad revenue.
How you judge the success of a reference implementation is by standards compliance and code reusability.
I guess you think Mozilla should be a company making a product rather than a nonprofit whose mission is the open web, with a reference implementation existing only in service of that goal.
@jwz I see where you are coming from. I was operating from where they are now, and you are saying they shouldn't be doing most of it? That would be fair.
At one point, as you know, people were concerned with being compatible with Firefox/Navigator. My perspective is that was because a significant marketshare used it. Right now, it seems most companies target only Chrome and hope for the best with others (while forcing excessive amounts of React down our tubes).
@jwz @n3bulous EFF but for the Web is basically IceCat. I like IceCat, even though it's basically unusable. IceCat is unusable because of how websites are implemented, not because of how IceCat is implemented. I like to fire it up every now and then just to update my mental friend/foe list. Privacy Badger (also supplied by EFF) is also very educational in that way. The Tor Browser has a similar but different usability/unusability pattern. Retail websites block Tor exit nodes about as aggressively as news media websites accuse tracker blockers (such as Privacy Badger) of being ad blockers (which it absolutely is not).
People speak of tools like Privacy Badger "breaking" certain websites. The message discipline I use reverses this. I describe tracker-dependent sites as "breaking" Privacy Badger. With such tools amplifying the contrast between "figure" and "ground" (breakage and non-breakage), you can practically see the outline of various business models. It's as entertaining as it is educational.
What I really want is the pre-Web Internet. Do the young people even know that the Internet is older than the Web?
@jwz dear heavens that survey is as biased as anything Sir Humphrey could've dreamed up 😬
Well said. Can't think of anything I would add or change.
But yeah, inherent AI functionality is the LAST thing I need or want. Keep it out of the core build. Make AI plug-ins for those that desire it maybe..
Cheers.
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https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201
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