At this point we need a serious effort to fork Firefox and maintain it as a sustainable open source project. I know there are a few forks floating around, but they’re small projects with only a handful of contributors. These kinds of efforts will never be a serious alternative.
A web browser is one of the most important piece of software nowadays, and currently neither Chromium nor Firefox are true community efforts. We need something on the level of the Linux Kernel Foundation in my opinion.
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Yeah, a browser is effectively an operating system at this point.
Thats because todays browsers are way too bloated. A fork that trims unnecessary features could be very effective.
There are browsers that try that only to have broken websites left and right. cough*(GNOME Web)
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Its not only about the protocols, Firefox also has other useless features, like the integrated Pocket addon and probably more.
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If you want something like the linux kernel, then those forks also have to be profitable enough to support firefox.
Or to get enough community funding as non-profit. The whole problem with Mozilla is precisely that it depends on profit and it’s driven by accountants.
Facebook’s business model is to manipulate and study us for profit. It’s like a tobacco company. If facebook collect less data or no data, their business will collapse. The interests of facebook are opposed to the interests of the people. There’s no way for them to become ethical because their model is based on something completely unethical.
The only impact mozilla can have on facebook is to make sure that more people feel comfortable using facebook. This is done through their association with Mozilla and the creation and adoption of new orwellian terms.
In other words, Mozilla is enabling Facebook. This is hideous.
Not likely. Facebook would have done this with or without Mozilla (also the proposal is made by facebook/mozilla, but it’s for everyone), so Mozilla serves the part of the guiding hand.
Many of the responders are in negation that the projects and the internet runs with money 💵. All these privacy conscious companies are trying to find solutions to balance having Ads with everything else. Remember most people online wants or expects everything to be free as in free beer. Innovation and coordination requires the Ads companies, which are mainly Google or Facebook. What should be scrutinize is How they do it more than What they do, to the extent that is reasonable.
Curious, if every user paid a browser $5 a year for a subscription and every search engine $5 a year, would tht cover costs and allow for a small profit? I realize that depends on how many users there are, but seems like if we can put a pigs heart in a human and have the human live (poor, poor pig) and have a human walk on the moon that we’s be able to find a private way for the individual to browse the internet.
We all deserve a salary for our work. But, what about profit? Are there shareholders, angel investors - how does the profit aspect of a browser or search engine work?
Could users buy early shares to later be paid back with future users’ payments? The browser would have to accept anonymous users/payments - such as money orders or the equivalent, I think.
This is a good question I also have. I think we do need to explore some monetization options. As an example, ads on youtube allowed for independent media to thrive. It was good.
But youtube, or alphabet as a publicly traded company, wants more money than just to pay the creators. They gotta increase profit to please the shareholders so we are seeing more ads.
I think we should normalize paying a subscription fee for content so that we don’t pay with it with our data. But it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Unless a creator or website is huge, not many ppl will subscribe for it initially. So what do creators or small websites do? Maybe there is room for ethical ads if we cant get enough users to pay or donate.
Many people are upset about this, but it is in my opinion an excellent thing. Mozilla and Facebook are working together to improve one aspect of Facebook’s privacy
It’s not like Mozilla is shilling and getting paid off, as some people seem to think.
This is how privacy is really improved, by working with the companies and governments that have power in the space, not by sitting in your cave using only librewolf and tor, and refusing to use anything you don’t build from source and self host.
That only helps you at best, and the privacy abusers (google, facebook) will just ignore you.
I see it as on the same level of a vegan advocacy organisation working with one of the biggest meat companies in the world. Sure, the vegan org might reduce the suffering of the animals under their control, but that shouldn’t be their goal, complete abolishment of animal agriculture should be.
I am vegan and must hope any lessening of suffering happens. I hate hunting, but know that a dairy cow is far more likely to suffer far more than a deer a hunter shot. I’d be willing to negotiate if I knew i could lessen the problem. Case by case, of course. All-or-nothing might make the individual feel holier-than-thou, but the problem is just as bad as before. Idealism is not the same as realism. I’d argue that both can be done - diminish a problem by offering some solutions, but go right back by trying to eliminate that problem.
It’s an apt comparison, but do you want complete abolishment of all forms of telemetry, tracking or advertising? Or perhaps more relevant, is that Mozilla’s goal? I don’t think so. See this post by them.
Yes, yes and yes. And Mozilla have been selling out their user’s data since the day they took money from Google.
This is honestly what annoys me more than anything about Mozilla: they pretend to be champions for privacy, but they aren’t. And people fall for it. They are controlled opposition. They are the social democrats of the privacy world: channeling privacy supporters into their compromise (and compromised) position and painting the radicals as unreasonable dreamers.
If they were to finally die, that would probably be good for online privacy. A real non-corrupt free software fork of chromium could take off with built-in ad blocking and actually good privacy defaults. Firefox is sucking the oxygen out of the room right now.
Ultimately all tracking and data collecting besides what’s absolutely necessary needs to be declared 100% illegal. I have no hope Mozilla will help in this fight at all.
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I just think that when Firefox dies, maintaining a chromium fork with Google tracking crap ripped out is going to be way easier than continuing development on Firefox, and can be done by way fewer people.
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Is it Mozilla’s goal?
2020’s Unfck the Internet, by Mozilla:
"A whole sh*tton of how we communicate is controlled by a few centi-billionaires. That’s a new word for all of us: centi-billionaire. It means worth over $100 billion USD. Each.
Social networks are using us as much as we use them. They slice and dice us into categories to get micro-targeted. Newsflash: people aren’t “targets” and it’s not cool to create little bubbles.
Oh and security. If you’re sick of reading about — and getting caught in — one data breach after another, we feel you.
If you want to get out of this mess, we are with you. Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind Firefox, was purpose-built to make the internet what it can be: an open tool for everyone — the powerful and the weak, the right and the left, everyone."
I don’t know, but FF, although having nice options for privacy, don’t set them by default, leaving the user to go investigate what to set and whatnot… And adds is a sensitive topic, though it’s understandable they want to make money…
That’s why I use instead Librewolf, which is pretty much FF with sane settings by default (actually I have to modify some not allowing me to use the browser under some scenarios), and removing binary blobs (FF still includes binary blobs). For Librewolf, the other nice thing is that it comes with uBlock-Origin by default, however it might be it’ll be harder for uBlock to actually block new ways of adds…
You missed the point, it’s not about firefox.
How is that supposed to work? Firefox’s own products in itself are not that reassuring for user privacy. It was better when Moxie collaborated with them to improve whatsapp code. At least that guy’s products were respected for privacy at that time.
Even if they don’t live up to your standards, you can agree they are way ahead of the competition.
Are you talking about Chrome?
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Why dont we have alternatives to firefox?
More than the web browsers the focus is on the Browser engines. Even Microsoft found it difficult to maintain a Browser engine and now use Blink (Chromium(Google)).
why should you even concider to use facebook . Mozilla and Google
Advocating for google on a privacy sub…
Fuck ads and fuck Mozilla. We need a modern alternative.
I’ve barely tried it and its mostly just text-based, but BadWolf works fine on my Debian XFCE. I am no techie, yet was able to install it, so I am sure most others could, too.
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I don’t think there’s any anti-mozilla, pro-chromium squads roaming the wilds, but yeah, Mozilla has not fallen, they’re just working on a spec, with engineers from facebook, to enhance privacy.
The reason why I said it’s a good thing: do you honestly trust the likes of facebook/google to design something privacy oriented, even if their intentions are entirely honest? No, of course not. Regardless of their intention, they have been built, as companies on principles opposing such design. They had to be. They don’t have the people, the experience, the methodology, the principles etc.
So it’s great to see them joined by someone who does (Mozilla) who I’m sure they’ll respect if they want to have the proposal accepted not just by W3C, but the greater community.
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What makes me laugh is the fact that many anti-Mozilla Foundation folks are pro-Brave. Yes: pro-Brendan Eich. We know what that means.
