Mozilla is a sinking ship. : microblogmemes

[-] Sarothazrom@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago

I mean, I understand this argument, but Mozilla is still vastly superior to the alternatives. And as others have pointed out, even if Mozilla kicks the bucket, Firefox is open source and forks exist.

Mozilla has been making a lot of questionable decisions, but they are nowhere near the point-of-no-return yet. Mozilla is still a company, and companies make corporate decisions.

[-] Fades@lemmy.world 89 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is such a braindead fucking take. Companies should explore new technology not just take a look at the current popular opinion and run with it as absolute fact. The majority of this post is literally just using AI as a boogieman, oh no they're creating jobs that relate to AI! The company is over!!!

They saw three roles that mentioned AI and took that as absolute proof that Mozilla has "fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads". Grow the fuck up. The internet takes money to run, ads are an inevitability so no shit a major browser company has someone managing that aspect of their browser.....

I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads

oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!!!!! THat's a THIRD of the cOmPaNy's listings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory

N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25

That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn't mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.

But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.

[-] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

I'm ok with them chasing ethical applications of AI. I'm more tired of their half-assed efforts to chase every shiny new object over the last few years. It feels like as a non-profit, they should be comparatively immune to chasing the same transitory trends that other shareholder-owned companies are obsessed over. But it seems like for Mozilla, they have an even shorter attention span than their corporate competitors. We've seen them chase after crypto, metaverse, augmented reality, Firefox OS, and now AI. All of those efforts fizzled out with a whimper.

[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That crypto one isn't even a project, just that they used some service to handle crypto donations for them. It is weird though that they think they can just walk into a successful space without offering anything new and still expect to get users.

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[-] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 16 points 23 hours ago

AI -> ADS

AIADS

AIDS

[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 13 points 22 hours ago

If firefox becomes worse or starts lagging behind more, I'll stop using it. It doesn't seem all that useful to attempt to predict 5 years into the future Firefox's state and therefore decide to switch away now.

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 23 points 1 day ago

Only a good AI can stop a bad AI with a pun

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

people been saying the ships been sinking since netscape. version 130 now

[-] sysop@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago

It has been sinking. Adtech is cyber warfare. They sold out. https://make-firefox-private-again.com/ everybody be sure to change your settings in about:config to disable that Anonym bullshit. No, we're not the 'product' we're human beings.

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[-] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

The only thing I don't like about Firefox (other than no PWA capability) is the 'dark pattern' of how when the home page loads, the first three of the six items shifts to the right after the page has started loading, and are replaced with sponsored links. So, if I go to click on YouTube when I launch Firefox, there's a fair chance that by the time I get to click there it'll suddenly jump over to the right and I'll end up clicking some other link.

To me, that's sketchy behaviour.

[-] Amir@lemmy.ml 8 points 22 hours ago

You can disable those ads though...

[-] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

I don't mind the ads. I just don't like the 'trickery' of them shifting the existing shortcuts after the page has already loaded.

[-] Amir@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 hours ago

The only good ad is a dead ad

[-] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 points 19 hours ago

No PWA capability?

At least on mobile, I have multiple PWAs installed via Firefox.

[-] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Not on desktop though.

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[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 18 points 1 day ago

No, worries. We will always have forks. Mozilla wins simply by having their only competitor be Google.

[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The problem is they have to come up with a new source of income now that it looks like Google's payments to be the default search engine to them are illegal.

That's like 90% of their revenue, so they're panicking.

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[-] Ilgaz@lemm.ee 3 points 19 hours ago

Clown graphics reminds me of the alt-right trolls who hate Mozilla for their stance on diversity and freedom. They are even late to the AI party, there isn't a single "free as in freedom" AI around, are you aware of it?

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 49 points 1 day ago

AI + Ads = AIDS.

Just say no, kids.

[-] auzy@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So they probably scrolled through a page of job ads and cherry picked a few so they could talk smack..

You can do this with any company

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 day ago

I looked at their jobs list and counted 35 jobs. Of that I count 9 that are AI-related and 4 that are ads-related. The list also includes a few generic jobs like "Chief of Staff", "Client Analytics Manager", "Staff Test Engineer" or "Fixed-Term Social Media Trainee".

Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they're advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.

You can't do this with any company. The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.

[-] Fades@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

First off, keep in mind the post we're all responding to is trying to use these listings to paint the entire focus/future of this company with a single brushstroke, as that is relevant context.

I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads

that statement right there.

Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.

oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!!!!! THat's a THIRD of the cOmPaNy's listings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory

N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25

That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn't mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.

But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.

The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.

Here you are telling on yourself. Ads, whether you like it or not, are a huge piece of how the internet funds itself. As Mozilla is essentially the second largest browser after chromium-based ones, you absolutely need someone managing how ads integrate with your browser.

For example, there is a HUGE amount of people that don't want to mess with ad blockers and such and want a browser to protect them outright, Mozilla can do this with things like privacy-preserving attribution to protect user data while still serving ads in good faith.

Yes, it is so very easy to say FUCK ads, they don't belong on the internet.... until you want to host something and suddenly the costs can get real big real fast.

And another thing, you say "correct number of ads people working at firefox is 0"

You can’t do this with any company.

by this, do you mean cherry pick open listings by a company and pretend that those open listings are indicative of not only the companies focus but also their general distribution of efforts? Because that's all you're doing with this comment.

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[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Why doesn't Mozilla move to a Wikipedia model and ask for donations? I would certainly rather donate than be served ads by Firefox.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 12 points 1 day ago

Because the CEO of Wikipedia doesn't get paid $2.5 million a year. She only makes $450k.

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[-] blarth@thelemmy.club 42 points 1 day ago

Damnit. I love Firefox. What is the best alternative?

[-] michaelmrose@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Reports of its death are GREATLY exaggerated. I would suggest continuing to simply use firefox and disable any future crap you don't prefer.

That said librewolf which is intended to be firefox with stronger privacy settings by default that said

Default settings break more websites
You have to get extensions manually from for instance github because it doesn't use mozillas addon (it can probably be enabled)
It doesn't use the built in password manager which is in fact privacy preserving so you have to enable it or use something else
you don't get syncing via firefox sync which is in fact already privacy preserving so you have to enable it if you want it
It doesn't remember cookies without manually adding an exception to each site this is extremely obnoxious. I'm sure its configurable though

At this time it is far easier to disable the few things that may be undesired from firefox vs turning librewolf into an acceptable option.

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[-] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

There really isn't one. The closet would be Konqueror with KHTML and one of Mozilla's discarded projects called Servo (which is a beta project now run by the Linux Foundation). The rest are Chrome in a wig and Safari.

[-] bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 3 points 23 hours ago

FYI: KHTML became Safari that became WebKit that became Chrome.

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[-] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 50 points 1 day ago

A few days ago there was a thread that was talking about fingerprinting.

I started playing with cover your tracks by the EFF.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

It turns out that Firefox was routing all my browser DNS traffic around my pi-hole. (It is called DNS over HTTP or DOH)

I had no clue.

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[-] Kushan@lemmy.world 76 points 1 day ago

Mozilla has been a sinking ship for decades now.

There's a reason Chrome was able to steal the alt browser market from Mozilla at a time when even laymen understood that IE was awful - Mozilla stopped innovating the second they were winning. They had tabs! What more could you want?

Chrome came along at a time when browser performance wasn't a focus, when JavaScript meant websites were slow, and said "fuck that, let's make it fast". Say what you will about Chrome or JS, Google was on to something and the modern web today is 95% thanks to Chrome pushing things forward.

Everyone jumped to Chrome and Mozilla fucked around for literally years before they got the memo that actually browser performance matters. They were once the best browser tools on the market until once again Chrome pushed the envelope, and once again developers switched while Mozilla sat back and did nothing.

Mozilla meandered back and forth, releasing shitty products nobody wanted (like pocket and send) instead of focusing on the most important thing: the browser.

Yet they're somehow still here, hobbling along, doing fuck knows what instead of making a better browser and innovating to beat Chrome.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago

Chrome came along at a time when browser performance wasn't a focus, when JavaScript meant websites were slow, and said "fuck that, let's make it fast". Say what you will about Chrome or JS, Google was on to something and the modern web today is 95% thanks to Chrome pushing things forward.

That's where the web started getting worse.

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[-] aaaaace 24 points 1 day ago

The tech world is steaming Full Ahead toward an inflatable Gibraltar.

[-] Metz@lemmy.world 89 points 1 day ago

Hate to say it but can not realy blame them. They need to make money somehow. And Google wont pay 80% of their bills forever.

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