https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/

I'm not angry. I'm disappointed.

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On 2025-02-28, Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

I'm not angry. I'm disappointed.

That's pretty nuts. I wonder what motivted them to this.

I saw something in one of their posts about a leadership shakeup.

I only use(d) firefox at work though, so it doesn't really affect me.
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say@tilde.club writes:

On 2025-02-28, Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

I'm not angry. I'm disappointed.

That's pretty nuts. I wonder what motivted them to this.

I saw something in one of their posts about a leadership shakeup.

Very disappointing. I bet the reason is the typical one---we'll run out
of business if we don't sell something. At some point recently I read
an article about Mozilla having a small team for Firefox and worse.

I've made the prediction that the web will eventually die because it's
lacks diversity. The lack of diversity comes from the lack of browsers;
we lack diversity in browsers because it's too difficult to build one.
(It's taking medium-sized organizations to have any chance of building a popular browser.) When you don't have diversity, the same virus can
kill you all. And there's a virus going on on the web---a commercial,
ad-ful virus. It infects the so-called web developers and they produce horrible web pages, which makes the web even more disgusting. I am
happy to see the Gemini people at work.

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On Sat, 01 Mar 2025, Caden Kray wrote:

I bet the reason is the typical one---
we'll run out of business if we don't sell something.

Not exactly for Mozilla's case.

They have actually been receiving most of their monies from Google,
and I think we all know by now
that what kind of business Google does [1];
so it would not be that surprising
that they are under constant pressure
to subtly (or not-so-subtly) sabotage their users
somewhere down the line.

"Follow the money",
as the old saying goes.

Some people would say that advocating for people
to mass-donate to Mozilla
would fix such problem;
but in this area,
there is another severe problem
in their leadership and internal policy,
that causes the monies people donated
to get funneled into...
something else which aren't development of Firefox [2]:

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla

Thus nowadays,
I have rather been suggesting people
who *really* wanted to help out with Firefox
not to do it by donating;
but rather by directly contributing the code
and/or bug reports instead.

Regards,
~xwindows


P.S.

And there's a virus going on on the web---
a commercial,
ad-ful virus.
It infects the so-called web developers
and they produce horrible web pages,
which makes the web even more disgusting.

Personally,
I have been calling this phenomenon
"JavaS'creep infection"
for several years now.
These web destroyers liked moaning excuses
like not having time/budget
to support minor browser X, Y, Z.
They have been cargo-culting hard
without even stopping to consider,
that most of the sites they were trying to make
could be done without these fragile drive-by programs--
which once done correctly,
they could sidestep the issues of
having to support every single specific browser brands entirely.


[1]
Tangent on seeing Google's actual business (mal)practices,
by through the lens of how their browser works/abuse their use-ees: https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf

[2]
Or other Mozilla software suites like Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
for that matter.
--
Contains ventilated prose,
manually typed up in RFC 2646
"text/plain; format=flowed" whitespace encoding;
might read like poetry in some newsreaders.
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xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> writes:

On Sat, 01 Mar 2025, Caden Kray wrote:

I bet the reason is the typical one--- we'll run out of business if
we don't sell something.

Not exactly for Mozilla's case.

They have actually been receiving most of their monies from Google,
and I think we all know by now that what kind of business Google does
[1]; so it would not be that surprising that they are under constant
pressure to subtly (or not-so-subtly) sabotage their users somewhere
down the line.

"Follow the money", as the old saying goes.

Yeah. It seems we need to do things ourselves---period. We need to
avoid complicated software such as browsers because these are clearly
not software a small group can do. (Therefore, browsers fail.)

Some people would say that advocating for people to mass-donate to
Mozilla would fix such problem; but in this area, there is another
severe problem in their leadership and internal policy, that causes
the monies people donated to get funneled into... something else which
aren't development of Firefox [2]:

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla

Thus nowadays, I have rather been suggesting people who *really*
wanted to help out with Firefox not to do it by donating; but rather
by directly contributing the code and/or bug reports instead.

We can never be sure Mozilla won't turn against us either. I think what
we need is to really work on our independence. The web looks tough
right now, but there's the gemini protocol, which I think it fits nicely
with the hacker culture.

We ourselves don't need the web as it is. I can see a new Internet
culture being born outside of the web. This what the Internet was in
the beginning---hacker culture. We failed, though, to protect ourselves
from the invasion. Perhaps things will be different on a second round.
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On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 21:01:05 -0300
Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> wrote:

We can never be sure Mozilla won't turn against us either. I think
what we need is to really work on our independence. The web looks
tough right now, but there's the gemini protocol, which I think it
fits nicely with the hacker culture.

The unfortunate truth is Mozilla will either go broke, or sell out.
Either way they will be non-viable as a browser maintainer for our
purposes, leaving essentially a duopoly of Google and Apple.

We ourselves don't need the web as it is. I can see a new Internet
culture being born outside of the web. This what the Internet was in
the beginning---hacker culture. We failed, though, to protect
ourselves from the invasion. Perhaps things will be different on a
second round.

We're on round three or four depending on how you want to count Usenet
and BBS cultures.

I thoroughly enjoy Gemini, but like with evbery other smallweb related
thing, it needs more content that isn't the small web.

I do like that peertube seems to be getting traction as a youtube
alternitive.

We will do as we always have and just keep walking until there are no
more steps to take. Either the work will be done, or we will be.


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Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> writes:

On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 21:01:05 -0300
Caden Kray <ck1998@yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]

We ourselves don't need the web as it is. I can see a new Internet
culture being born outside of the web. This what the Internet was in
the beginning---hacker culture. We failed, though, to protect
ourselves from the invasion. Perhaps things will be different on a
second round.

We're on round three or four depending on how you want to count Usenet
and BBS cultures.

I still don't consider the USENET dead. Many BBS are, though, because
they closed it down. It's a pity, though. I think it's healthy for us
to have local connections---really local.

These local connections are now in Whatsapp, I think. Neighbors all
join a local Whatsapp group.

That's no good for thinkers, though. Thinkers need an NNTP post to
express themselves. But then we shouldn't mind people using
Whatsapp---they would belong here anyway. But my concern is what they
should be using more interesting software, instead of giving their data
to irresponsible companies. But such concern is of no use---people have
no idea about what's going on. And there's nothing really effective
that we can do it about it.

I thoroughly enjoy Gemini, but like with evbery other smallweb related
thing, it needs more content that isn't the small web.

The web was born with very little content.

I do like that peertube seems to be getting traction as a youtube alternitive.

Yeah---YouTube with TV integration is a great service. But, yeah, we
need alternatives. We cannot put our data at the hands of companies.
But maybe there's no other way?

We will do as we always have and just keep walking until there are no
more steps to take. Either the work will be done, or we will be.

We'll always resist. Quite true. We like to do what we're doing here,
so we'll always do. A serious concern, however, is that most of the new generations seem different from us. We grew up and studied the culture
of past generations. It's not clear the new ones are doing it. Maybe
the next ones will do it---but it's a concern.
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