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> write a florid virtuous editorial Related: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/168

> write a florid virtuous editorial Related: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/16863 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...

dingledork69 3y ago
Thanks so much for linking that. This is 1000% on point and I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years. It's like the organization as a whole suffered a stroke, and the result is this flowery meaningless prose.
- xg15 3y ago
  As JRRM wrote, "any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all." Any browser who constantly reminds you how private and user-empowering it is, is probably neither. Add to that a vaguely liberal-sounding rethoric that could be right out of Ron Desantis' worst "woke lib" stereotypes - without even actually being liberal. Like, not that I'd see the browser an appropriate location for that, but if they actually wanted to commit to a liberal political view, I'd at least have expected "diverse voices" somewhere. But I have no clue what "independent voices" is supposed to mean.
  - revolvingocelot 3y ago
    >JRRM I know of JRR Tolkien, and GRR Martin, but... As Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll wrote, "If your thoughts incline ever so little towards fuming,” you will say “fuming-furious;” if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards “furious,” you will say “furious-fuming;” but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say “frumious.”" ...to add something of more topical substance, I generally agree with the perfectly-balanced opinion above, in that it's a surprisingly mealy-mouthed justification for what is pretty clearly awful behaviour. I'd respect the hustle a lot more if the response hadn't been so verbally Corporate Memphis.
    - cobychapple 3y ago
      Underrated comment.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      What a beautiful comment. And I agree! As an aside, I’ve started adding Lewis Carrol, mainly Alice, quotes to the bottom of my weekly status reports and gotten some weirdly positive feedback on this.
    - xg15 3y ago
      That was beautiful. ...and yeah, it was late. Sorry.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    I think it means independent from any grasp on reality.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  It's not just Mozilla. Western society as a whole is transitioning from one where discourse and consensus is based on reason, to one where it is based on feelings. Listen to some prominent politicians today. Politicians have always had to speak in convoluted and stupid ways to conceal or deflect the truth, but generally they were coherent, the sequence of words had some meaning you could understand even if it was wrong or they were lying. Now it's just complete gibberish with feel-good words sprinkled in.
  - marisnom 3y ago
    Western society has had discourse on feelings for hundreds of years (see nationalism/imperialism in the 19th century and authoritarian ideologies in the 20th)
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      You misunderstand. I didn't say western society had no discourse on feelings. On the contrary, the fathers of reason in the west like Aristotle talked extensively about feelings, far longer than just hundreds of years ago. I said based on reason. It's quite possible to reason about feelings. Anyway, what's this "discourse on feelings" that was related nationalism/imperialism and authoritarianism you're talking about? I've never heard of it, it sounds interesting.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Anyway, what's this "discourse on feelings" that was related nationalism/imperialism and authoritarianism you're talking about? I've never heard of it, it sounds interesting. The KdF movement might be considered an example (Kraft durch Freude, Strength through Joy). Rearming Germany after WWI required the Nazis to rally the population by means ranging from technical to emotional to spiritual. From Wikipedia: >Hitler's architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, said in his final speech at the Nuremberg trials: "Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man..." [11] If you can read that without feeling a chill at the base of your spine, well, maybe it's just me. And of course, any appeal to religion is ultimately an appeal to feelings, since there's nothing objective behind it. A Wehrmacht soldier who started to question his role in the war needed only to look down at his belt buckle to remind himself that God was on his side. It's all very interesting to consider, but it doesn't have much to do with Mozilla (I hope).
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  This is why Mozilla lost a lot of volunteers, too, including me. I did not wish to contribute to a political organization. I wished to contribute to a browser. It’s not possible to do one without the other at Mozilla, although it used to be.
  - gavaw 3y ago
    Precisely why I abandoned Tor and shut down my relays. It went from a technical project that solved an interesting problem to a "human rights" project that wanted to shape the world in a liberal Western fashion. That's a no-no from me.
  - garte 3y ago
    It doesn't feel like politics to me. More like marketing and economics. A browser could theoretically be politically engaged by ensuring open web standards and accessibility etc. but this is not that, me thinks.
    - tialaramex 3y ago
      When people oppose "Politics" they usually mean politics they don't agree with. The politics they do agree with aren't "politics" to them, that's just a normal part of everyday life and it's crazy that other people try to claim that's "politics". If you have a broader understanding of what politics is in the first place you're not going to object to an organisation having "politics" because of course it does, it's composed of people, it exists to further somebody's goals or else it wouldn't exist, it's not like organisations can spontaneously wish themselves into existence.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago
        I think this is an uncharitable interpretation. My understanding to people opposing politics in certain things, is typically about opposing unrelated political messaging in said thing. For a free open source web browser, obviously there is will be politics somewhere. FOSS is political in nature. Web standards involve politics, with multiple parties wanting to influence them for their own reasons. Hell, challenging a multi-billion corporation monopoly is inherently political. Having political messaging about "celebrating voices making the world a better place" is odd and misplaced political messaging, orthogonal to the politics of a free open source web browser, and will alienate part of the people that are not interested in something this unrelated, irrespective to their agreement to said messaging. I am personally in favor of universal health care. I wouldn't like to see messaging about it in a web browser, just to give a silly example.
- ksec 3y ago
  > I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years Past Few years? I assume you mean from something like 2020? We are now in 2023 they are close to have been doing it for a decade. I am still surprised to see how the acknowledgement curve plays out in real time. It takes 5 - 8 years before it even hit mainstream.
  - ShroudedNight 3y ago
    If your parent is like myself, as I have gotten older, the perceived delta between "close to a decade" and "past few years" has converged to approximately nothing.
    - ksec 3y ago
      I know. I am old from pre-Netscape era. Generally speaking I use few years as 3-4 years. Close to a decade as ~8 years. But in this case, worth considering Firefox ( Or Phoenix ) was established 20 years ago. 5 years is quarter of its life time.
isaacremuant 3y ago
> I'm sorry, Mozilla. It's been a good ride this past few decades, but I think it's time we parted, because with all due respect, I am now questioning the sanity of your staff. This is not how any normal person or company would describe its new software innovations. This is the language of lunacy. Frankly, you sound unhinged I think he has missed the current year jargon which is a mix of corporate BS words and Buzzfeed diversity and inclusion crap. It usually means nothing other than: "We are doing this because of profit or because we want to further censor discussion about something because the right view is X and that's what you're allowed to think and say. Any dissent will be responded with a negative label on your person and, if possible, deplatforming, which is good, because we know what the one true way is" They will phrase it as "in order to improve things for consumers, everyone" while literally screwing over a myriad of those people. Firefox is still a great browser but Mozilla has long been a company that we can barely trust, in the way that it actively is telling us that we need to subscribe to its very US centric partisan politics and view of the world, which has shifted from actual fairness and openness for all vi virtue of being a customizable browser.
- geraldwhen 3y ago
  I wonder if Mozilla knows that their politicking will affect some percent of developers who will no longer open Firefox when writing web applications. This will lead to subtle issues over time, making Firefox usage shrink even faster.
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    Lol. Maybe, although the reason this sort of stuff is fashionable corp aesthetic is because it is, in fact, popular. For me, personally, it's like having escaped the Matrix to a refugee camp, and the morale officer there is annoying. Who cares?! The alternative is fucking vat slavery!!! I would assume a non-negligible percentage of people who use Firefox are techies who feel the same; otherwise, why in the world would they not be on Chrome?
qingcharles 3y ago
Wow. Just wow. WTF Mozilla o_O I still love you though, Firefox. Your heart is in the right place. You're now a lone wolf in a ocean of Chromium and wonky WebKits.
labster 3y ago
The man who typed those artisanal words of inspiration to Firefox Connect deserves our most authentic kudos for bringing that insightful vision of change to the world. Mozilla brand managers should be the first jobs replaced by AI.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Mozilla brand managers should be the first jobs replaced by AI. “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what Mozilla's underlying strategy is, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” -- with apologies to Douglas Adams
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Hmm. On one hand, I largely agree with everything that blog posts says. BUT! it presents it as some universal, self-evident truth, and I think it's not. Just because the blog author and I and some others think so, doesn't mean it's the only perspective or that everybody feels that way. I think there exist people who will enjoy that language, who will understand that language, and to whom that language speaks. My wife, possibly. My sister, almost certainly. Many others in my circle of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. And, it's Mozilla. I don't think it's 100% accurate to say "you're a tech company" or that FireFox is "just a browser". Mozilla foundation is non-profit, and it does have goals and vision. It is, I think inherently "political", though not necessarily in the current American sense of "political" which seems to mean "partisan" or "bad". It has a goal and perspective and a point of view. It's trying to do something beyond generate profit for shareholders, so I don't think it's accurate to brand it as "just a tech company" (whether one agrees with its goals, methods and progress is orthogonal). Ultimately, some people DO choose Firefox as a political statement (that statement perhaps being as simple as "I support independent choice of technology" or "I want my browser to work for me" or even "I don't want Google to COMPLETELY own my life" :). Some people DO see it as a way to vote, or impart a change.
- tedunangst 3y ago
  Can you ask your wife or sister to translate that language to language that the rest of us will understand? What are they saying?
  - NikolaNovak 3y ago
    I mean sure, or I can do a decent job myself ; are you asking to make a point, or a genuine request?
    - tedunangst 3y ago
      I would like to know more about what "Color can change culture. The latest colorways celebrates voices making the world a better place." means.
brigandish 3y ago
More of this is coming down the road, it's the kind of vapid nonsense that children are being force fed from school right into uni. Along with wondering if the internet has improved life in general, I now seriously suspect that education was better when it was truly elitist.
surgical_fire 3y ago
> As for "making the world a better place", again, there seems to be some kind of implicit political agenda. Ironically, Firefox could make the world a slightly better place (in a very specific aspect of the world) if they focused simply in making a great web browser, without unnecessary bells and whistles and without any politic posturing, but that aimed at denting the Chrome monopoly.
- BearOso 3y ago
  That's no longer their goal, though. Their goal is to appear like they care about making a better browser, while actually doing whatever makes the executives the most money.
  - martyfmelb 3y ago
    So, is Firefox effectively on life-support, and functioning purely as a corpse from which the MBA-type vultures who encircle it can pluck morsels of resumé-fluff at the browser's expense?
    - BearOso 3y ago
      It's just my opinion, but yes and no. There's still quite a few decent people working on the browser, and they deserve props. The browser is really good code-wise. The problem is everything else around it. The current CEO, Mitchell Baker, is clearly in it for the money. She got a salary increase while cutting 250 employees last year, and still had the audacity to say it wasn't enough. Brendan Eich had a bit of political controversy, but being a technical person I think he would've been better as far as focusing on the actual browser.
      - isaacremuant 3y ago
        > Brendan Eich had a bit of political controversy, but being a technical person I think he would've been better as far as focusing on the actual browser. He didn't have a political controversy. He was pushed out because he didn't subscribe to the US democrat partisan allowed views, but quite the opposite, which is a fireable offense, apparently. I don't agree with him on that stance but it shouldn't matter to run a tech company. I absolutely know that those who censor and fire for political differences definitely don't have my best interests at heart and, while claiming to represent me and my "diversity", they'll brush me aside with a label as soon as I'm not convenient to them or go against their power hungry messaging. Brendan Eich was a sign of the authoritarian and censorious movement which also tried to bring down the likes of Linus Torvalds or RMS but ultimately failed because it doesn't really produce value and they do, far too much. Just because someone says they're doing good while claiming you're evil if you don't agree with their non debatable measures doesn't mean they're right, consistent and/or honest.
stereoradonc 3y ago
[flagged]
GeekyBear 3y ago
> write a florid virtuous editorial Frankly, it's much less problematic than Google writing a blog post bragging to it's advertising customers that it has started buying a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on potential customers more than ever. > as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases. So, if you buy stuff with a card, there’s a less than one-in-three chance that Google doesn’t know about it. https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-now-tracks-your-credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...
- opportune 3y ago
  If you live in California your issuing bank has to let you opt out of CC data sharing
  - henriquez 3y ago
    Wow, really? You’re actually _allowed_ to opt-out from your bank sharing all of your financial transactions with unspecified third parties? That’s so generous of them! What a great world we live in where certain municipalities provide basic protection over private information!!
    - opportune 3y ago
      Uh… yeah. I just wanted to share a quick tip for those who wanted to opt out of the panopticon.
      - henriquez 3y ago
        [flagged]
hutzlibu 3y ago
" I don't want a Web browser company to "make the world a better place"" I do actually would like the non profit Mozilla to make the world a better place: by focussing again on building a 100% open source and user controlled browser, that has no ads or tracking (studies) enabled by default.
- eimrine 3y ago
  FOSS is what makes the world a better place. Making the world a better place is not making the world a better place actually because the value of FOSS is eternal and making the world a better place is temporal (o tempora, o mores!).
redeeman 3y ago
and this is why firefox was in freefall.. focus changed from making good product, to making anything but. The worst part is mozilla doesnt even understand. also, what is up with the employees there? arent people in tech privileged enough to be able to find jobs? how can they live with themselves participating in crap like that? How do they stand in front of the mirror?
- sfink 3y ago
  Heh. I am a developer at Mozilla, so I guess you're addressing this (partly) to me. Yes, I suspect I could find another job. I interview well—don't tell any of my potential future employers, but honestly I interview better than I do actual work. (I will say that the massive layoffs introduce some doubt. I haven't had to look seriously in a tough market, and just having recruiters still pinging me regularly doesn't mean much. Hopefully it still helps to be on the list of people who have turned down offers at $big_places?) I'm not really feeling it hard to live with myself. Quite the opposite, really; one thing that keeps me here is the mission. It would be hard to switch to a place where I had to work to convince myself that I was net contributing to humanity. I'm not curing cancer or eliminating poverty, but I would probably be crap at those. But I think you're specifically referring to working at a place where Marketing occasionally makes some boneheaded moves, ones that are sometimes counter to the things that keep me here? Yeah, it's hard when that happens. But (1) I still think that it's largely better here than most other places, and (2) we have this teeny little existential problem that absolutely requires marketing to do Stuff. Despite what a vocal contingent on HN thinks, Firefox's market share is not going to turn around based only on engineering work or pouring effort into improved addons and making nice with the community. Those are things that are near and dear to my heart, and I wish we lived in a world where those mattered more, but sadly I have to live in reality. And if you want marketing people to do marketing, you can't exactly tell them what to do and what not to do. Without the ability to screw things up they won't be able to find the things that will make a dent. Mozilla is a relatively small company, but big enough that my day to day work really doesn't feel a whole lot like "...participating in crap like that". I don't feel that involved in marketing whether it's good or bad, not even when I'm complaining about or brainstorming marketing-related ideas on internal message boards (and yes, it bothers me that those conversations happen on internal boards). I'm in a different corner of the organization, writing code and doing things to hopefully make Firefox more secure, faster, and less memory-hungry. I don't feel personally responsible for what marketing or legal or HR or whoever is doing. As for how I stand in front of the mirror... well, sometimes I do it naked, thanks for asking. I don't think either of us wants me to give you a picture.

dingledork69 3y ago

Thanks so much for linking that. This is 1000% on point and I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years. It's like the organization as a whole suffered a stroke, and the result is this flowery meaningless prose.

xg15 3y ago
As JRRM wrote, "any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all." Any browser who constantly reminds you how private and user-empowering it is, is probably neither. Add to that a vaguely liberal-sounding rethoric that could be right out of Ron Desantis' worst "woke lib" stereotypes - without even actually being liberal. Like, not that I'd see the browser an appropriate location for that, but if they actually wanted to commit to a liberal political view, I'd at least have expected "diverse voices" somewhere. But I have no clue what "independent voices" is supposed to mean.
- revolvingocelot 3y ago
  >JRRM I know of JRR Tolkien, and GRR Martin, but... As Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll wrote, "If your thoughts incline ever so little towards fuming,” you will say “fuming-furious;” if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards “furious,” you will say “furious-fuming;” but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say “frumious.”" ...to add something of more topical substance, I generally agree with the perfectly-balanced opinion above, in that it's a surprisingly mealy-mouthed justification for what is pretty clearly awful behaviour. I'd respect the hustle a lot more if the response hadn't been so verbally Corporate Memphis.
  - cobychapple 3y ago
    Underrated comment.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    What a beautiful comment. And I agree! As an aside, I’ve started adding Lewis Carrol, mainly Alice, quotes to the bottom of my weekly status reports and gotten some weirdly positive feedback on this.
  - xg15 3y ago
    That was beautiful. ...and yeah, it was late. Sorry.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  I think it means independent from any grasp on reality.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
It's not just Mozilla. Western society as a whole is transitioning from one where discourse and consensus is based on reason, to one where it is based on feelings. Listen to some prominent politicians today. Politicians have always had to speak in convoluted and stupid ways to conceal or deflect the truth, but generally they were coherent, the sequence of words had some meaning you could understand even if it was wrong or they were lying. Now it's just complete gibberish with feel-good words sprinkled in.
- marisnom 3y ago
  Western society has had discourse on feelings for hundreds of years (see nationalism/imperialism in the 19th century and authoritarian ideologies in the 20th)
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    You misunderstand. I didn't say western society had no discourse on feelings. On the contrary, the fathers of reason in the west like Aristotle talked extensively about feelings, far longer than just hundreds of years ago. I said based on reason. It's quite possible to reason about feelings. Anyway, what's this "discourse on feelings" that was related nationalism/imperialism and authoritarianism you're talking about? I've never heard of it, it sounds interesting.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Anyway, what's this "discourse on feelings" that was related nationalism/imperialism and authoritarianism you're talking about? I've never heard of it, it sounds interesting. The KdF movement might be considered an example (Kraft durch Freude, Strength through Joy). Rearming Germany after WWI required the Nazis to rally the population by means ranging from technical to emotional to spiritual. From Wikipedia: >Hitler's architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, said in his final speech at the Nuremberg trials: "Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man..." [11] If you can read that without feeling a chill at the base of your spine, well, maybe it's just me. And of course, any appeal to religion is ultimately an appeal to feelings, since there's nothing objective behind it. A Wehrmacht soldier who started to question his role in the war needed only to look down at his belt buckle to remind himself that God was on his side. It's all very interesting to consider, but it doesn't have much to do with Mozilla (I hope).
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
This is why Mozilla lost a lot of volunteers, too, including me. I did not wish to contribute to a political organization. I wished to contribute to a browser. It’s not possible to do one without the other at Mozilla, although it used to be.
- gavaw 3y ago
  Precisely why I abandoned Tor and shut down my relays. It went from a technical project that solved an interesting problem to a "human rights" project that wanted to shape the world in a liberal Western fashion. That's a no-no from me.
- garte 3y ago
  It doesn't feel like politics to me. More like marketing and economics. A browser could theoretically be politically engaged by ensuring open web standards and accessibility etc. but this is not that, me thinks.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    When people oppose "Politics" they usually mean politics they don't agree with. The politics they do agree with aren't "politics" to them, that's just a normal part of everyday life and it's crazy that other people try to claim that's "politics". If you have a broader understanding of what politics is in the first place you're not going to object to an organisation having "politics" because of course it does, it's composed of people, it exists to further somebody's goals or else it wouldn't exist, it's not like organisations can spontaneously wish themselves into existence.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      I think this is an uncharitable interpretation. My understanding to people opposing politics in certain things, is typically about opposing unrelated political messaging in said thing. For a free open source web browser, obviously there is will be politics somewhere. FOSS is political in nature. Web standards involve politics, with multiple parties wanting to influence them for their own reasons. Hell, challenging a multi-billion corporation monopoly is inherently political. Having political messaging about "celebrating voices making the world a better place" is odd and misplaced political messaging, orthogonal to the politics of a free open source web browser, and will alienate part of the people that are not interested in something this unrelated, irrespective to their agreement to said messaging. I am personally in favor of universal health care. I wouldn't like to see messaging about it in a web browser, just to give a silly example.
ksec 3y ago
> I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years Past Few years? I assume you mean from something like 2020? We are now in 2023 they are close to have been doing it for a decade. I am still surprised to see how the acknowledgement curve plays out in real time. It takes 5 - 8 years before it even hit mainstream.
- ShroudedNight 3y ago
  If your parent is like myself, as I have gotten older, the perceived delta between "close to a decade" and "past few years" has converged to approximately nothing.
  - ksec 3y ago
    I know. I am old from pre-Netscape era. Generally speaking I use few years as 3-4 years. Close to a decade as ~8 years. But in this case, worth considering Firefox ( Or Phoenix ) was established 20 years ago. 5 years is quarter of its life time.

isaacremuant 3y ago

> I'm sorry, Mozilla. It's been a good ride this past few decades, but I think it's time we parted, because with all due respect, I am now questioning the sanity of your staff. This is not how any normal person or company would describe its new software innovations. This is the language of lunacy. Frankly, you sound unhinged I think he has missed the current year jargon which is a mix of corporate BS words and Buzzfeed diversity and inclusion crap. It usually means nothing other than: "We are doing this because of profit or because we want to further censor discussion about something because the right view is X and that's what you're allowed to think and say. Any dissent will be responded with a negative label on your person and, if possible, deplatforming, which is good, because we know what the one true way is" They will phrase it as "in order to improve things for consumers, everyone" while literally screwing over a myriad of those people. Firefox is still a great browser but Mozilla has long been a company that we can barely trust, in the way that it actively is telling us that we need to subscribe to its very US centric partisan politics and view of the world, which has shifted from actual fairness and openness for all vi virtue of being a customizable browser.

geraldwhen 3y ago
I wonder if Mozilla knows that their politicking will affect some percent of developers who will no longer open Firefox when writing web applications. This will lead to subtle issues over time, making Firefox usage shrink even faster.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  Lol. Maybe, although the reason this sort of stuff is fashionable corp aesthetic is because it is, in fact, popular. For me, personally, it's like having escaped the Matrix to a refugee camp, and the morale officer there is annoying. Who cares?! The alternative is fucking vat slavery!!! I would assume a non-negligible percentage of people who use Firefox are techies who feel the same; otherwise, why in the world would they not be on Chrome?

qingcharles 3y ago

Wow. Just wow. WTF Mozilla o_O I still love you though, Firefox. Your heart is in the right place. You're now a lone wolf in a ocean of Chromium and wonky WebKits.

labster 3y ago

The man who typed those artisanal words of inspiration to Firefox Connect deserves our most authentic kudos for bringing that insightful vision of change to the world. Mozilla brand managers should be the first jobs replaced by AI.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Mozilla brand managers should be the first jobs replaced by AI. “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what Mozilla's underlying strategy is, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” -- with apologies to Douglas Adams

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Hmm. On one hand, I largely agree with everything that blog posts says. BUT! it presents it as some universal, self-evident truth, and I think it's not. Just because the blog author and I and some others think so, doesn't mean it's the only perspective or that everybody feels that way. I think there exist people who will enjoy that language, who will understand that language, and to whom that language speaks. My wife, possibly. My sister, almost certainly. Many others in my circle of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. And, it's Mozilla. I don't think it's 100% accurate to say "you're a tech company" or that FireFox is "just a browser". Mozilla foundation is non-profit, and it does have goals and vision. It is, I think inherently "political", though not necessarily in the current American sense of "political" which seems to mean "partisan" or "bad". It has a goal and perspective and a point of view. It's trying to do something beyond generate profit for shareholders, so I don't think it's accurate to brand it as "just a tech company" (whether one agrees with its goals, methods and progress is orthogonal). Ultimately, some people DO choose Firefox as a political statement (that statement perhaps being as simple as "I support independent choice of technology" or "I want my browser to work for me" or even "I don't want Google to COMPLETELY own my life" :). Some people DO see it as a way to vote, or impart a change.

tedunangst 3y ago
Can you ask your wife or sister to translate that language to language that the rest of us will understand? What are they saying?
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  I mean sure, or I can do a decent job myself ; are you asking to make a point, or a genuine request?
  - tedunangst 3y ago
    I would like to know more about what "Color can change culture. The latest colorways celebrates voices making the world a better place." means.

brigandish 3y ago

More of this is coming down the road, it's the kind of vapid nonsense that children are being force fed from school right into uni. Along with wondering if the internet has improved life in general, I now seriously suspect that education was better when it was truly elitist.

surgical_fire 3y ago

> As for "making the world a better place", again, there seems to be some kind of implicit political agenda. Ironically, Firefox could make the world a slightly better place (in a very specific aspect of the world) if they focused simply in making a great web browser, without unnecessary bells and whistles and without any politic posturing, but that aimed at denting the Chrome monopoly.

BearOso 3y ago
That's no longer their goal, though. Their goal is to appear like they care about making a better browser, while actually doing whatever makes the executives the most money.
- martyfmelb 3y ago
  So, is Firefox effectively on life-support, and functioning purely as a corpse from which the MBA-type vultures who encircle it can pluck morsels of resumé-fluff at the browser's expense?
  - BearOso 3y ago
    It's just my opinion, but yes and no. There's still quite a few decent people working on the browser, and they deserve props. The browser is really good code-wise. The problem is everything else around it. The current CEO, Mitchell Baker, is clearly in it for the money. She got a salary increase while cutting 250 employees last year, and still had the audacity to say it wasn't enough. Brendan Eich had a bit of political controversy, but being a technical person I think he would've been better as far as focusing on the actual browser.
    - isaacremuant 3y ago
      > Brendan Eich had a bit of political controversy, but being a technical person I think he would've been better as far as focusing on the actual browser. He didn't have a political controversy. He was pushed out because he didn't subscribe to the US democrat partisan allowed views, but quite the opposite, which is a fireable offense, apparently. I don't agree with him on that stance but it shouldn't matter to run a tech company. I absolutely know that those who censor and fire for political differences definitely don't have my best interests at heart and, while claiming to represent me and my "diversity", they'll brush me aside with a label as soon as I'm not convenient to them or go against their power hungry messaging. Brendan Eich was a sign of the authoritarian and censorious movement which also tried to bring down the likes of Linus Torvalds or RMS but ultimately failed because it doesn't really produce value and they do, far too much. Just because someone says they're doing good while claiming you're evil if you don't agree with their non debatable measures doesn't mean they're right, consistent and/or honest.

stereoradonc 3y ago

[flagged]

GeekyBear 3y ago

> write a florid virtuous editorial Frankly, it's much less problematic than Google writing a blog post bragging to it's advertising customers that it has started buying a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on potential customers more than ever. > as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases. So, if you buy stuff with a card, there’s a less than one-in-three chance that Google doesn’t know about it. https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-now-tracks-your-credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...

opportune 3y ago
If you live in California your issuing bank has to let you opt out of CC data sharing
- henriquez 3y ago
  Wow, really? You’re actually _allowed_ to opt-out from your bank sharing all of your financial transactions with unspecified third parties? That’s so generous of them! What a great world we live in where certain municipalities provide basic protection over private information!!
  - opportune 3y ago
    Uh… yeah. I just wanted to share a quick tip for those who wanted to opt out of the panopticon.
    - henriquez 3y ago
      [flagged]

hutzlibu 3y ago

" I don't want a Web browser company to "make the world a better place"" I do actually would like the non profit Mozilla to make the world a better place: by focussing again on building a 100% open source and user controlled browser, that has no ads or tracking (studies) enabled by default.

eimrine 3y ago
FOSS is what makes the world a better place. Making the world a better place is not making the world a better place actually because the value of FOSS is eternal and making the world a better place is temporal (o tempora, o mores!).

redeeman 3y ago

and this is why firefox was in freefall.. focus changed from making good product, to making anything but. The worst part is mozilla doesnt even understand. also, what is up with the employees there? arent people in tech privileged enough to be able to find jobs? how can they live with themselves participating in crap like that? How do they stand in front of the mirror?

sfink 3y ago
Heh. I am a developer at Mozilla, so I guess you're addressing this (partly) to me. Yes, I suspect I could find another job. I interview well—don't tell any of my potential future employers, but honestly I interview better than I do actual work. (I will say that the massive layoffs introduce some doubt. I haven't had to look seriously in a tough market, and just having recruiters still pinging me regularly doesn't mean much. Hopefully it still helps to be on the list of people who have turned down offers at $big_places?) I'm not really feeling it hard to live with myself. Quite the opposite, really; one thing that keeps me here is the mission. It would be hard to switch to a place where I had to work to convince myself that I was net contributing to humanity. I'm not curing cancer or eliminating poverty, but I would probably be crap at those. But I think you're specifically referring to working at a place where Marketing occasionally makes some boneheaded moves, ones that are sometimes counter to the things that keep me here? Yeah, it's hard when that happens. But (1) I still think that it's largely better here than most other places, and (2) we have this teeny little existential problem that absolutely requires marketing to do Stuff. Despite what a vocal contingent on HN thinks, Firefox's market share is not going to turn around based only on engineering work or pouring effort into improved addons and making nice with the community. Those are things that are near and dear to my heart, and I wish we lived in a world where those mattered more, but sadly I have to live in reality. And if you want marketing people to do marketing, you can't exactly tell them what to do and what not to do. Without the ability to screw things up they won't be able to find the things that will make a dent. Mozilla is a relatively small company, but big enough that my day to day work really doesn't feel a whole lot like "...participating in crap like that". I don't feel that involved in marketing whether it's good or bad, not even when I'm complaining about or brainstorming marketing-related ideas on internal message boards (and yes, it bothers me that those conversations happen on internal boards). I'm in a different corner of the organization, writing code and doing things to hopefully make Firefox more secure, faster, and less memory-hungry. I don't feel personally responsible for what marketing or legal or HR or whoever is doing. As for how I stand in front of the mirror... well, sometimes I do it naked, thanks for asking. I don't think either of us wants me to give you a picture.