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Aral Balkan

2 anni fa • •

Aral Balkan
2 anni fa • •

Mozilla’s now director of public policy once asked me, with a straight face, why I was giving them a hard time and holding Mozilla to a higher standard: “we’re just another Silicon Valley tech company.”

But that’s not what you tell people publicly, is it, Mozilla?

Still, it’s time y’all got this.

Mozilla is a half-billion-dollar for-profit corporation – whose CEO makes >$3M/yr – that has a foundation do its PR.

https://www.howtogeek.com/760425/firefox-now-sends-your-address-bar-keystrokes-to-mozilla/

#mozilla #SiliconValley #BigTech #SurveillanceCapitalism

Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla

Firefox now sends more data than you might think to Mozilla. To power Firefox Suggest, Firefox sends the keystrokes you type into your address bar, your location information, and more to Mozilla’s servers.

^{Chris Hoffman (How-To Geek)}

#bigtech #surveillancecapitalism #mozilla #siliconvalley

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Aral Balkan

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Mozilla isn’t an ally. Mozilla is Big Tech. Mozilla is Big Web.

#SmallTech #SmallWeb

Antanicus reshared this.

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一色いろは

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

A greedy one.
@aral

@Aral Balkan

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Vale@kujike.nai

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

is there a "small" browser?

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Floppy 💾

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Yes, Mozilla's CEO is also not a great role model and not every decision for e.g. Firefox was perfect. It might be Big Tech and not I can see why you wouldn't call them ally. But to me Mozilla (or their products) seem not as bad as GAFAM (or their products). I'm reluctant to call Mozilla an enemy among the ranks of evilness as other Big Tech.

Do you think some differentiated judgement does make sense or really they don't deserve getting cut any slack?

in reply to Floppy 💾

Aral Balkan

in reply to Floppy 💾 • 2 anni fa • •

If anything they’re worse: they have everyone believing they’re a not-for-profit fighting for human rights etc., when that’s just PR and they’re just another Silicon Valley Big Tech company.

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Louis R. Couture

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

you have accused Firefox of many things, like to uphold surveillance capitalism and to be a fraud. What are the things you are backing yourself on.

in reply to Louis R. Couture

Aral Balkan

in reply to Louis R. Couture • 2 anni fa • •

Read the thread, my other posts here, (or the Mozilla section in https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/) and do your own research into Mozilla Corporation.

I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)

It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes, it’s exactly what you have to do in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

^{Aral Balkan}

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George Lund

in reply to Aral Balkan • 4 mesi fa • •

the salary thing is controversial but there's an ownership structure that can hold management to account and a mission that is not about fidiciary duty to shareholders. That seems OK to me. You aren't gonna develop a secure Web browser without paid staff, that's for sure.

in reply to George Lund

Job

in reply to George Lund • 4 mesi fa • •

I guess you haven't heard of that time in 2020 when Mozilla laid off 25% of its employees, but still raised the pay of upper management that was already in the millions?

Also, how do you justify the fact that it's not possible to directly donate to the development of the Firefox browser, but only to Mozilla?

@Aral Balkan @Floppy 💾

in reply to Job

George Lund

in reply to Job • 4 mesi fa • •

do I think there might be cases where an organisation needs to be smaller, but executive pay must rise to be competitive? Yes actually, but I haven't read the foundation's minutes so no, I don't know if it was justified in that case. And Firefox is huge and certainly historically has had Google cash. It makes sense for them to use donations in any way that best fulfils their non-profit objectives.

in reply to George Lund

Aral Balkan

in reply to George Lund • 4 mesi fa • •

Where “historically” means currently, to the tune of half a billion dollars a year.

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Andrei Cristian Petcu

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Mozilla is the best we have right now, even if it's not perfect. All the hate it gets does not create better products, it just pushes people to Chrome and it's clones.

Michele likes this.

in reply to Andrei Cristian Petcu

Aral Balkan

in reply to Andrei Cristian Petcu • 2 anni fa • •

It’s definitely not the “best we have right now.” That’s probably GNOME Web in terms of ethics. Sadly, it’s the “best we have under the Silicon Valley model.”

And there, again, folks should use it without being used by it by using Librewolf instead.

What we need is a to fund an organisation from public funds, to create a browser for the public good.

I know, how communist of me ;)

Sabrina Web likes this.

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sudosadhu

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

This is a complicated issue , because mozilla efforts for foss are evident, but it should be realised that privacy cannot be copromise even if the company is unable to make profit without going big tech way , so they needs to overcome this problem. Still we should not forget the tor browser the best browser for privacy and security

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JonossaSeuraava

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

is there even an option left? Like there is basicly firefox and then chrome forks, right?

What's there to do for a lazy mildly caring person?

in reply to JonossaSeuraava

Aral Balkan

in reply to JonossaSeuraava • 2 anni fa • •

Yeah, it’s not looking good.

Last I looked Librewolf was doing a good job of remaining current and stripping out Mozilla’s bullshit from their fork of Firefox: https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

Not a long term solution. Ideally we’d fund an independent not for profit org with EU taxpayer money to build an independent browser for the common good.

LibreWolf Browser

^{librewolf-community.gitlab.io}

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Csepp 🌢

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

If JS is not needed (and I know some people in this thread will hate me for this, but usually it's not needed), then the situation isn't so bad. Netsurf is already pretty usable, @alcinnz has built some cool browsers from scratch, etc.

So currently the way it looks to me is: requiring Chrome features is very similar to requiring Flash, or some other proprietary plugin.

@Adrian Cochrane

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Bill Hooker

in reply to Aral Balkan • 4 mesi fa • •

YES -- where is the taxpayer funded browser? Search engine? These things make as much sense as public libraries, public green space, public transport.

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M.S. Bellows, Jr.

in reply to Aral Balkan • 4 mesi fa • •

Is there a Librewolf-type app for Android?

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Stefan

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

So what browser to use?

in reply to Stefan

maxi 😷 #LütziLebt :vegan:

in reply to Stefan • 2 anni fa • •

Links2 is the best web browser. It doesn't support CSS, Javscript and all that nonsense. @aral

@Aral Balkan

in reply to maxi 😷 #LütziLebt :vegan:

Tommi 🤯

in reply to maxi 😷 #LütziLebt :vegan: • 2 anni fa • •

I get the minimalism and the need to strip out all the bullshit, but I would never use a browser without #CSS.

Websites are becoming so astoundingly gorgeous.

#css

in reply to Tommi 🤯

Doc Edward Morbius ⭕

in reply to Tommi 🤯 • 2 anni fa • •

Counterpoint: Web elements default styling is simply wrong.

On far too mamy sites, I invoke Reader Mode, read via Pocket, or go to a console-mode browser (usually w3m).

Design can be good, but far too often isn't. Most often to me, web design isn't the solution, web design is the problem.

@vgnpwr@aral@maxi

@Aral Balkan @maxi 😷 #LütziLebt :vegan: @Stefan

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.

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Devin Prater

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Lol the fact that they're "just another silicon valley company" is all I need to know.

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Tommi 🤯

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

This is so sad

Sabrina Web likes this.

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Inhji hat ein 🚲

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

I just found otter-browser and will give it a shot today, but yeah, shit like this will drive even more ppl into the arms of Google..

https://github.com/OtterBrowser/otter-browser

GitHub - OtterBrowser/otter-browser: Otter Browser aims to recreate the best aspects of the classic Opera (12.x) UI using Qt5

Otter Browser aims to recreate the best aspects of the classic Opera (12.x) UI using Qt5 - GitHub - OtterBrowser/otter-browser: Otter Browser aims to recreate the best aspects of the classic Opera ...

^GitHub

Sabrina Web likes this.

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Blackpaws ~$ :idle:

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

LibreWolf and FireDragon are nice alternatives, maybe too much privacy. https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/ https://github.com/dr460nf1r3/firedragon-browser

GitHub - dr460nf1r3/firedragon-browser: A fork of Librewolf with enhanced KDE integration, saner defaults & custom branding 🐉 (mirrored from GitLab)

A fork of Librewolf with enhanced KDE integration, saner defaults & custom branding 🐉 (mirrored from GitLab) - GitHub - dr460nf1r3/firedragon-browser: A fork of Librewolf with enhanced KDE inte...

^GitHub

in reply to Blackpaws ~$ :idle:

Sabrina Web

in reply to Blackpaws ~$ :idle: • 2 anni fa da Tusky •

@Blackpaws ~$ :idle:@Aral Balkan this is worth a try

@Aral Balkan @Blackpaws ~$ :idle:

Blackpaws ~$ :idle: likes this.

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★ STMAN ★ 🏳️‍🌈

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Not even surprised.

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iooioio

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

I've defended #mozilla a lot in the past but this is really the last straw. There's like... nothing of value left.

I'll be replacing #firefox with #librewolf on my desktops for now. We really do need a more sustainable long-term solution though.

... and on mobile? No idea.

#firefox #mozilla #librewolf

Sabrina Web reshared this.

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Sabrina Web

in reply to iooioio • 2 anni fa da Tusky •

@iooioio@Aral Balkan personally, I use bromite, but I think that iceraven and fennec droid are valid solutions too

@Aral Balkan @iooioio

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in reply to Sabrina Web

yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

in reply to Sabrina Web • 4 mesi fa • •

i use Iceraven on Android. but for ages now, i have also Simple Search (both are found at F-Droid) for Android which allows me to add search filters because i noticed that DuckDuckGo seems to be keylogging too. this used to happen tome only on Android but recently noticed on Linux. been using Librewolf for what feels like ages now. i just keep FF for the odd government website that won't recognize LW as Firefox.

(updated for clarity)

Questa voce è stata modificata (4 mesi fa)

Unknown parent

Sir Garbagetruck

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

There _is_ a non-javascript frontend for mastodon (and similar) - brutaldon. (https://brutaldon.org) (and yes, I'm using it right now.)

Brutaldon

A brutalist, web-1.0 web client for Mastodon and Pleroma. Supports text-only browsers like Lynx, older browsers, as well as the latest mainstream browsers. All JavaScript is completely optional and progressively enhances the core application.

^{brutaldon.org}

in reply to Sir Garbagetruck

Aral Balkan

in reply to Sir Garbagetruck • 2 anni fa • •

Wow, so unless you’re running your own instance, you’re browsing Mastodon on someone else’s machine. I really don’t understand why folks have such a strong reaction to actually running stuff on their own computers using JavaScript. (But also don’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon discussing it so *leaves*) :)

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the notorious gzt

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

they're REALLY starting to push hard on that "okay so we're still technically not quite as bad as google" line

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.

Unknown parent

Sabrina Web

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa da Tusky •

@Matias@Aral Balkan actually, there are some alternatives on android. On desktop... the best thing is to avoid updating for now

@Aral Balkan @Matias

Matias likes this.

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nilix

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

*sigh* So I guess it's time to contribute to Netsurf :p

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Rokosun

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

I moved to a fork of firefox called librewolf a while ago, and I'm glad I made that choice 😀

Sabrina Web likes this.

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smol, desu ne?

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

at least they aren't Brave

in reply to smol, desu ne?

Anubis2814

in reply to smol, desu ne? • 2 anni fa • •

What is wrong with brave? Been told it's great what are they not telling me?

in reply to Anubis2814

Aral Balkan

in reply to Anubis2814 • 2 anni fa • •

This is what “Brave” actually is: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Basic Attention Token

A new token to value user attention on the Internet.

^{Basic Attention Token}

in reply to Aral Balkan

smol, desu ne?

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

@aral @anubis2814 the most damning thing about BAT is that 30% of your earnings get pocketed by the CEO of the company no matter what, so if you leave it enabled you're basically just farming crypto for some dumbass. not just any dumbass either, this is the dumbass who stepped away from Mozilla after people discovered that he said highly distasteful things, then complained after leaving like he was the victim.

i don't use browsers made by pussies, avoid Brave.

@aral

in reply to Aral Balkan

Jonas Vautherin

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

half a billion, most of which comes from Google, right? Not donations. And they allow you to disable the ads in the search bar and donate, if you think it's a better model.

I don't get all the hate for that move. Mozilla is not perfect, I get it, and the CEO earns a lot, ok. But I see many people recommending LibreWolf, which is Firefox, which suggests that they don't hate the project, but just the optional ads. Still, do they donate?

in reply to Jonas Vautherin

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

in reply to Jonas Vautherin • 2 anni fa • •

Who would donate to an entity that receives half a billion dollars annually from Google?

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 anni fa)

in reply to Jonas Vautherin

M.S. Bellows, Jr.

in reply to Jonas Vautherin • 4 mesi fa • •

Also, although I share the frustration at high CEO salaries, we *do* want valuable, community-improving organizations to have good leadership, and if someone talented will take $3M to run a nonprofit well instead of $30M to enshittifiy yet another commercial venture, that's a good thing. (I don't know enough to opine on whether that's the case here, but the principle is true.)

in reply to M.S. Bellows, Jr.

Aral Balkan

in reply to M.S. Bellows, Jr. • 4 mesi fa • •

Make that €6.9M. As Firefox looks set to dip under 2% usage.

https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/18b6tdp/mozilla_ceo_received_69m_salary_in_2022_a_2m/

Nothing to see here.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Sir Garbagetruck

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

I suppose I don't really have that much of an issue with that considering that if you aren't running Mastodon locally, you're putting your data on someone else's machine... sending login credentials to another machine ... etc.

That host ( brutaldon.org ) is currently hosted by @djsundog .

I don't believe it is hard to host locally - so that's an option. It is 'small web' in my opinion (:

@DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

Please feel free to donate to them. Their CEO only makes a little over $3,000,000 a year. I’m sure your money will help her worry a little less about paying the rent :)

Unknown parent

Jonas Vautherin

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

To me it sounds like Mozilla is not going well, and they need money. At least this feature is optional, so I can disable it and donate.

I don't like ads, but to me it feels like they need more support now, not less. Anyway Firefox may soon disappear (it keeps losing market shares), so there is no need to criticise to accelerate that: those who hate it can just wait.

Mozilla has many projects, but without Firefox revenues, I think they're out.

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

I did mention that their CEO makes over $3,000,000 a year, right? I don’t think the problem is that they don’t have money…

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Jonas Vautherin

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Well I mentioned donations because Mozilla's revenue mostly comes from ads, through Google. Let's say they go full privacy/freedom/whatnot and remove the default search engine? They're out.

I would find it a bit short-sighted to say "I don't want to donate, I'm happy with Mozilla living from ads (indirectly), I just don't want to see it. Let's use LibreWolf, so that on top of it I can pretend that I don't depend on Mozilla either".

in reply to Jonas Vautherin

Aral Balkan

in reply to Jonas Vautherin • 2 anni fa • •

Or maybe they are a highly successful half a billion dollar Silicon Valley corporation and they don’t want to change that? 🤔

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Jonas Vautherin

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

What I read is that they were losing more and more money out of that half a billion budget. Again, 3M is a lot (too much if you ask me), but that's not most of their money.

Actually maybe the way for them to get more market shares could be to spent a ton of money on aggressive marketing, because honestly most people don't make a difference between Chrome and Firefox. But we would not like that either, would we?

It just seems complicated

...

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

For people, I suggest, Librewolf or, if it works for you, GNOME Web / elementary OS Web. You could also try Chromium / Ungoogled Chromium, I guess. Or make sure you turn off the however many things you need to turn off to not have Firefox screw your over. Things aren’t great at the moment on the browser front. And they won’t be until and unless we have a browser made by an Independent organisation funded by the public for the public good.

Sabrina Web likes this.

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

Pragmatically? Librewolf. Or, if you can live with its limitations, GNOME Web.

Sabrina Web likes this.

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Jonas Vautherin

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

You mean that having most of your revenue coming from Google paying you to be the default search engine on a product that is steadily losing market shares can be qualified as "highly successful"? Also for the massive layoffs?

in reply to Jonas Vautherin

Aral Balkan

in reply to Jonas Vautherin • 2 anni fa • •

They make *checks notes* half a billion dollars a year and their CEO makes *checks notes* over $3M a year. Yep, highly successful.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Daniel

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

Which is the point?

Motsilla & Gugl have a obvious (and hidden) agreement. Firefox exists only to preserve a the false appearance of diversity in the web browser "market", it doesn't ever nailing Krome/Blenk. Gugl is repaying Motsilla pushing rust in every places: this is the deal!

in reply to Daniel

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

in reply to Daniel • 2 anni fa • •

What is the hidden purpose behind Rust?

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 anni fa)

in reply to clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

Hypolite Petovan

in reply to clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 • 2 anni fa • •

I think it's a jab at Chrome by using the opposite term.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Janik Ramírez

in reply to Aral Balkan • 2 anni fa • •

I have a question about... Was Mozilla always a "tech company"? Because I knew Firefox was ruled in the beginning by the foundation...

in reply to Janik Ramírez

clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

in reply to Janik Ramírez • 2 anni fa • •

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Establishment

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 anni fa)

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 2 anni fa • •

I wish I had some for you. It’s slim pickings out there.

Unknown parent

Aral Balkan

Unknown parent • 4 mesi fa • •

Careful with Opera. They’re now owned by a Chinese consortium.

(Firefox works fine for me on Fedora Silverblue.)

⇧