sigh

139 points

It’s truly wild how hard of a heel turn mozilla has taken. I’m going to cancel my recurring donations to them, and get off all of their products.

permalink
report
reply
6 points

Why would you donate to a company? I assume you are talking about the non profit

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Because they are a non profit which makes stuff one likes?

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Firefox isn’t made by the non-profit. What do you like that the foundation does such that they’d deserve a donation over a shit ton of open-source projects that need funding?

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

People are digging up a bunch of old shit right now

permalink
report
parent
reply
63 points

September 18, 2024 is “old shit”?

permalink
report
parent
reply
-20 points

Well, it was already posted here, and i just saw an article from 2021 about something bad mozilla allegedly did

permalink
report
parent
reply
-9 points

It’s obviously orchestrated

permalink
report
parent
reply
39 points

Is Mozilla in on it too? Because they’re the ones who orchestrated laying off Steve Teixeira.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-13 points

holy shit you donated money to these wackos?

with so many OOS projects out there in need of funding, so many devs roughing it up, you donate to the advertising company Mozilla that has zero cash needs, they give million dollar bonuses to their executives every year.

Literally giving money to wacko rich executives

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Haha hard to believe people are actually donating to Mozilla so that they can spend that money on political donations, exec salaries, and useless projects they kill shortly afterwards.

permalink
report
parent
reply
107 points

It’s almost like they are intentionally trying to get in trouble.

permalink
report
reply
80 points

I feel like the CEO of Mozilla is paid by Google to be as fucking stupid as possible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
31 points

To be fair I believe being as fucking stupid as possible is a prerequisite of being a CEO of anything.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

I dunno, a lot of CEO’s are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

I hope discovery finds something obvious to this effect, or we’re all going to have a bad time in the near future

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Fucking stop with this conspiracy theory already, i’m reading it for the third time this thread. As if CEOs can’t make bad decisions and there has to be a “realll11” reason.

permalink
report
parent
reply
33 points

Honestly. Even my most cynical assumption was that Mozilla would subtly pressure him to leave the company, making life harder for him in ways that wouldn’t be possible to legally prove.

I haven’t seen anything this egregious since Elon Musk fired Halli.

permalink
report
parent
reply
73 points

Ok wtf is Moxilla doing? They know their company is built on good community perception, right?

permalink
report
reply
22 points

They honestly have a monopoly in the sense that they are the only think not Chrome

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

I mean they’ve been pedaling AI crap for a while without negative backlash.

Similarly they tried to ride the Blockchain train back in the crypto scam days and also didn’t face any backlash.

They’ve publicly vouched to become an AI company and an advertising company without backlash.

I think most Firefox users don’t care

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

I think most Firefox users don’t care

Oh we care, but there’s no alternative besides Chrome and Safari and those companies are even worse (Google definitely is, anyway, Apple is debatable)

Luckily there’s still alternatives like Librewolf that unfortunately still use Mozilla’s browser engine.

I do hope the Servo project will be ready to use in a production browser soon.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Apple is definitely just as fucking terrible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

We are stuck with Firefox based browsers for a few years at the minimum as it takes a really long time to develop an engine.

Also Servo is very much not the only thing around. Ladybird exists as well

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

So it’s known there’s also a really indev project ladybird it’s a full browser from the ground up

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

What they mean with AI features is also their offline website translation feature, which is something I’ve wanted for years. The alternative is online Google website translation.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

I agree with you. It’s frustrating to see people lump in genuinely good AI/ML work like private on-device translations in attempts to discredit Mozilla. There are good criticisms against them. They’ve made mistakes. There’s zero need to lump in AI/ML.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Honestly a lot of Firefox users are eyeing forks

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

They are a Silicon Valley-based foundation half-heartedly rehashing Silicon Valley’s worst trends.

The truth is, you have to do these sorts of things to attract and retain talent, even if they aren’t great ideas.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

The users most likely to complain are also the users least likely to stop using their products.

permalink
report
parent
reply
65 points
*

No no, guys Mozilla are the good guys. They never did something nasty like bundling tons of spyware and 3rd party calls with Firefox nor adding unique IDs to every installation. Mozilla also acquired an ad analytics company recently for some reason.

permalink
report
reply
32 points

adding unique IDs to every installation.

I wasn’t familiar with that so I did a quick search. For anyone else interested here is some info about it:

“Internet users who download the Firefox web browser from the official Mozilla website get a unique identifier attached to the installer that is submitted to Mozilla on install and first run.”

[…]

“Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:”

  1. Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla’s HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).

  2. Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.

“The downloaded installers do not have the unique identifier, as they are identical whenever they are downloaded.”

In the comments section someone says:

“It seems that getting Firefox from GNU/Linux repos (Debian, etc.), doesn’t come with unique IDs.”

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Yeah repositories and FTP don’t include that, but it is kind shady that the first way to get it (website) for the majority of regular users (Windows/macOS) has a unique ID - after all this is the company that goes all in for privacy…

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Must be for ad attribution and install tracking. Only something a major portion of their users are specifically trying to avoid when they’re choosing Firefox.

permalink
report
parent
reply
26 points

Wtf happened in the last month? Everyone used to love and jerk off Mozilla and suddenly we hate them?

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

Nothing, not everyone liked it, the only difference is that my comment would result in a shit show of downvotes last week while not people are starting to realize what Mozilla/Firefox really is. Mozilla was never the “all savior” pained them to be and it only took Wireshark and a couple of minutes to see it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*

Even if Mozilla/Firefox was at some point a healthy organization, the shear incredible disparity of power between Google and Mozilla/Firefox means that the probability that Mozilla/Firefox would remain a healthy, functional organization approaches zero over a long enough period of time.

This is a problem that needs legislative action to destroy Google’s incredible power and pseudo-monopoly control of search.

I am not saying Mozilla/Firefox isn’t toxic, but there a million ways that Mozilla/Firefox could end up a toxic entity and billions of dollars that are directly interested in that being the case so shrugs.

…but yeah I agree with you, Mozilla/Firefox definitely didnt turn into a shithole overnight, but until recently criticizing them has been very difficuly to do in a lot of circles.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

bundling tons of spyware

I couldn’t find any info about this with a quick search. Do you have any links to where I can read more about this?

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points
*

I have this in user.js:

// settings user-test-programm
user_pref("app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled", false);

// dont use me as guinea pig
user_pref("app.normandy.enabled", false);
user_pref("app.normandy.optoutstudies.enabled", false);
user_pref("messaging-system.rsexperimentloader.enabled", false);

// side-loading of telemetry-extension
user_pref("extensions.systemAddon.update.enabled", false);

// disable Mozillas new tracking aggragation thingy
user_pref("dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled", false,);

// almost only for tracking useful
user_pref("beacon.enabled", false); // so webpage can send (tracking) data before you close tab
user_pref("browser.send_pings", false); // hyperlink auditing (click-tracking)

Note: the last two are more nuanced.

Argument for beacon is that webpages will use a more intrusive way with noticeable delay to upload data on tab close. I personally prefer that, as a warning, but never saw one after years.

Argument for send_pings is, that trackers will use more mean and stealthier ways to track you, if they don’t have that interface (same as in private-attribution). I do know however, that companies who track you have high greed and low morale to begin with, and use all they can get to generate more money.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

That is blatantly false. Don’t even waste your time.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
*

Just fire up Wireshark and inspect what Firefox calls, a lot of calling home and even if you change all the settings and config parameters to something sane it will still contact a 3rd party analytics company. Mozilla also acquired an ad analytics company recently for some reason.

permalink
report
parent
reply
60 points
*

Jesus isn’t rule number one of an employee suing you is to NOT FIRE THEM?

Seriously Monty Burns did this. Monty fucking burns. A cartoon villain

permalink
report
reply
-10 points

*Monte Carlo

permalink
report
parent
reply
33 points

Season 2 - Bart gets hit by a car. Bart gets hit by Mr Burns while skateboarding. Homer uses Lionel Hutz to sue his employer, Mr Burns for 1 million dollars. On receiving notice, Mr Burns tells Smithers to fire Homer. Smithers asks “Do you think that’s wise, sir? Think of the headlines”

permalink
report
parent
reply

Firefox

!firefox@lemmy.ml

Create post

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

Community stats

  • 1.5K

    Monthly active users

  • 926

    Posts

  • 17K

    Comments

Community moderators