I am shocked. Shocked! /s
GoogleMozilla shutting down yet another project:Unfortunate, but not unexpected.
Mozilla 2012: We’re winning the browser war and saving the web. You’re welcome.
Mozilla 2017: Competing with Chrome is hard. What if we break all existing extensions and never let people replace them all?
Mozilla 2021: Through inclusiveness and the power of positive thinking we will facilitate leadership towards in-depth studies of what we can do to improve social media.
Mozilla 2024: Running a small mastodon instance is just too hard, we give up.
Mozilla 2017: Competing with Chrome is hard. What if we break all existing extensions and never let people replace them all?
This is the one that broke my back. Understandable that XPCOM extensions had to go, but leaving nothing to replace them, and then going on to push their trash UI redesigns without giving us any recourse to change them back - that was just unforgivable.
Then again, that was still well before they started pushing spyware in their own browser, so in retrospect, those were very quaint times!
Mozilla in early 2000s: We’re glad we’ve broken you away from Internet Explorer’s chains. You’re welcome.
Just a little comment on 2021: It seems disingenuous, from their perspective. Steve Teixeira, In a lawsuit, is claiming that not only did Mozilla try to get him to fire employees who were disproportionately minorities, but they were within a group that was producing a profit for Mozilla.
In other words, Mozilla might have been preaching inclusivity publicly while practicing exclusivity privately.
Color me shocked
Corporate only pay lip services to the public? I’m so shock! Shock I tell you!
what is even happening right now
I don’t get why, I can’t see this be difficult or costly to run, but then again I have no clue, never ran a Mastodon instance.
I would assume that it’s not worth the small reach compared to running X / Bluesky / Threads accounts but then again, like I said, the cost must be super small. 🤷
Running the server probably costs about $100 per year, plus one person’s $180,000 salary
I’m not sure why they created one to begin with
If Mozilla doesn’t discontinue a Mastodon server with under 300 people, how will it continue funding the $65 million AI and venture capital investments they’ve been making?! 😬
How defeatist of you, Mozilla. Whatever happened to your pride? Oh, it went a long time ago when you make a big deal about going 3.0 and how you claimed to have improved Firefox’s performance. Been a long time, but Firefox remains ever more the same as it did way back then, just cluttered with more features that weighs it’s performance.
“Features”
The only thing you need to know about how Lemmings think about politics is that they hate Mozilla more than Google.
Lemmings are bashing Mozilla because they are expecting better from them, while I don’t even expect Google to not be evil
That’s precisely my point. Tell Lemmy you’re a leftist but not vegan? They’ll call you a murderer. Tell them you’re a leftist but not an anarcho-communist? Yeah I’ll bet you love capitalism and the human suffering it causes, you Chauvinist pig! Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator! (All things I have actually heard Lemmings say.) But tell them you’re a conservative and they leave you alone.
No matter what I do, I will never be leftist enough for people to be satisfied. The further left I let myself get pushed, the more flak I get for not being even lefter. On top of that, if I make even one step backward, like Mozilla deciding they don’t have the resources to moderate an entire Mastodon instance on top of everything else they do, I might as well have joined the enemy. But if I stop agreeing with them at all, suddenly I’m not worth harassing. It’s enough to push a boy right, it really is.
Thank you for misinterpreting my post and calling me a racist, @Communist. Unfortunately I don’t feel obligated to explain myself to you.
I did not call you racist.
But you’re using the same argument they’re using. I don’t see what I misinterpreted here, it’s literally identical to the comic.
You know what, no, I will anyway.
The more I advocate for unions, the more I volunteer at food banks, the more I encourage people to look into things like alternative voting systems that could break us out of the two-party system, the more I look like a juicy recruit to radical leftists, and the more criticism I get for not destroying everything in my path in pursuit of an anarcho-communist utopia in which personal belongings are a distant memory and vigilante justice reigns supreme. I still hold left-leaning values, but that “utopia” is something I will fight tooth and nail against. Leftists as an organization (a leaderless organization, but an organization all the same) have made it clear that if I’m not 110% for them, I’m against them, and that the way to not be harassed is to not act like I’m for them but partway.
I’m still going to volunteer at homeless shelters and pick up trash on the side of the road and secretly try to start a union at any store I work at, I’m still going to look for the most progressive candidate I can in every local and general election. I’m gay myself and apart from the annual potluck, I’ve never stepped foot in a church in the last five years, but if a leftist asks, I’m a devout Catholic, I think being gay is sinful, and I voted for Trump. Maybe then they’ll stop calling me a Nazi.
anarcho-communist utopia in which personal belongings are a distant memory and vigilante justice reigns supreme
Literally nobody, not even anarchocommunists, like me, want personal belongings to not be a thing. Marxism 101 includes a section on personal vs private property, the notion of wanting to abolish private property is not with the modern understanding of private property, marx made the clear distinction between private and personal property, and it’s quite simple, personal property is stuff that you own, private property is stuff that generates capital.
I don’t get why people keep thinking anyone would believe something this stupid, like do you actually think we’re going to take your toothbrushes?
but that “utopia” is something I will fight tooth and nail against
You clearly don’t even know what you’re fighting against. That’s probably why you get made fun of in socialist circles. Read theory, all you have is a clear strawman and whining that people make fun of you.
I’m a devout Catholic, I think being gay is sinful, and I voted for Trump. Maybe then they’ll stop calling me a Nazi.
This is you proving the point made by the comic.
Do you actually think we’re going to take your toothbrushes?
Not in the sense that they’ll all be confiscated, but in the sense that multiple anarcho-communists have told me that under their utopia, theft will not be a crime. Obviously, if someone stole something, they must have needed it more than you. They’ve also told me that under anarcho-communism, there will be no state, thus no laws, thus no justice system. If you are wronged, your only recourse is vigilantism – a point I can’t help but notice you quoted but conveniently glossed over. Almost like you’re trying to make a strawman or something. But I digress. Vigilantism doesn’t work (I’d be happy to explain why if you have trouble with that as well) and I’m still waiting to hear a single anarcho-communist propose an alternative.
This is you proving the point made in the comic.
That is you proving you did not read any part of my comment except the last two sentences. Does leftism only count if I do it in public? Does saying I voted for Trump to get people whose definition of conservative is “anyone right of Ursula K. LeGuin” to stop treating me like a soul who needs saving make me a bigot despite my actions to the contrary?
Not in the sense that they’ll all be confiscated, but in the sense that multiple anarcho-communists have told me that under their utopia, theft will not be a crime.
source: dude just trust me
They were probably saying there will be no reason to steal because resources will be plentiful, not that you can just take other peoples stuff and it’s fine.
They’ve also told me that under anarcho-communism, there will be no state, thus no laws, thus no justice system.
no they didn’t, a state is just a monopoly on violence in a given region, there will still be law and order through democracy and consensus, it’ll just be horizontally handled by the community.
If you are wronged, your only recourse is vigilantism – a point I can’t help but notice you quoted but conveniently glossed over
this is just nonsense, we just believe these things would be handled communally, not by authority, but by democracy. it got glossed over because it’s just as much nonsense as the toothbrush thing.
But I digress. Vigilantism doesn’t work (I’d be happy to explain why if you have trouble with that as well) and I’m still waiting to hear a single anarcho-communist propose an alternative.
democratically run courts with rotations, honestly there are hundreds of ideas, google it. Nobodies idea is what you’re saying, it’s just a strawman.
Does leftism only count if I do it in public?
No but it means if you do it wrong you’ll get made fun of. You’ve clearly never even read a single book on anarchism and have strong opinions about it.
If your opinions are based on complete nonsense strawmen, that explains why you keep getting made fun of.
The point of the comic is that absolute buffoons say they’re getting bullied and that’s the reason they’re getting pushed right, like you. It has no basis in reality, people are just criticizing things they should criticize, and since you don’t bother to do the necessary reading to understand why people are criticizing you, you just go “the left is mean wahhh”
The fact that your arguments are covered in socialism101 courses shows that you’ve never even bothered to make an attempt. Do you actually think socialists are so dumb that they never thought of these arguments? Do you actually think marx or kropotkin never came up with “but what if someone murders someone” on their own? They wrote all these books and they get dunked on by a guy who says “well what if someone takes my stuff?” in your imaginary world.
Can you point me to an example of that happening here?
Perhaps I should rephrase. They attack Mozilla (and users of Firefox) infinitely more than Google (and users of various Google products). I heard it said after Mozilla introduced their opt-out privacy-respecting ad tracking that users should “move to a more privacy-friendly browser like Google Chrome”.
This is true of Lemmy’s political stance in general. Tell them you’re a leftist but not vegan? They’ll call you a murderer. Tell them you’re a leftist but not an anarcho-communist? Yeah I’ll bet you love capitalism and the human suffering it causes, you Chauvinist pig! Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator! (All things I have actually heard Lemmings say.) But tell them you’re a conservative and they leave you alone.
Perhaps I should rephrase. They attack Mozilla (and users of Firefox) infinitely more than Google (and users of various Google products). I heard it said after Mozilla introduced their opt-out privacy-respecting ad tracking that users should “move to a more privacy-friendly browser like Google Chrome”.
One of those entities claims to be on the side of users. When it constantly throws those same users under the bus anyway, it isn’t surprising that it gets more hate than the entity that removed “don’t be evil” from its motto.
Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator!
It’s not our fault that fascists bleed when liberals get scratched.
I’ve never seen self-proclaimed leftists hurl more vitriol than when an openly-socialist labor organizer in my union said they were for freedom of speech (for humans) and generally supportive of firearm ownership. Absolutely wild reaction.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
- Karl Marx
But don’t you understand? Any language or policy the right adopts, we must abandon, even if, on its face (if not in the right wing implementation of it), it’s something we agree with. Otherwise how will we identify and shun right wingers? They could be hiding anywhere, you know.
It’s like when Bush Jr. pushed for the adoption of reading programs across America that focused on phonics, so people took a rebellious stance and taught kids “balanced reading” which taught kids to memorize words rather than the sounds that make up words.
The result: an epidemic of illiteracy to own the Republicans. Bush was/is a warmongering piece of shit but he was right about phonics being the correct way to learn reading.
Here’s one example of a mega-upvoted post that is critical of Mozilla:
https://lemmy.ml/post/13081759/9195853
I think it’s indicative not only of the prevalence of the view but also the quality (or lack thereof) of the arguments backing the view.
…he literally said firefox was better than most in the post? I don’t understand why you believe mozilla to be above criticism just because they’re better than google
and why bother criticizing a company so laughably awful as google, try saying you use chrome on a post, everyone will recommend you switch.
Where did that post indicate that Google was better?
People aren’t required to abruptly stop talking about the subject of their posts to also remind people that other companies are shit also. That’s absurd.
This must be the tech version of having to type up a 10,000 word essay on how Republicans are worse then democrats before you can type a single word of criticism against the Democratic party.
One can and should critique a company when they make mistakes.
What are you talking about? This is the Firefox community, not many people are going to stop mid-post to say “BTW I hate Google more”
… BTW, I hate Google more.
And you’re incorrect: the community for leaving Google is more than four times the size of the community about Google.
BTW I hate Google more
Just make a good browser… Thats all I care about from mozilla.
Well …
I understand that they need to diversify so that they’re not so dependent on Google’s default search engine money. I don’t know how they should do that.
But I’m not sure what they’ve been doing has been all that good of an idea.
well paying execs multimillion dollar salaries aint helping thats for sure!
They’re 80% dependent on google there is no choice. Mozilla’s behaviour since they got the google deal was the begining of the end. I honestly believe that due to Mozilla’s current leadership it would be best for open source developers to all refocus on the ladybird project. I don’t have any affiliation to that project and I understand how huge of an undertaking it is to build a web engine from scratch but the gecko engine is polluted by the Mozilla’s execs and by extension Google.
To make it clear Google controls Firefox by, in practice, owning an 80% share of Mozilla.
make their browser engine useable for 3rd parties and sell support, make an electron-like product and add premium features… there are so many browser-based products that people sell, and owning 1 of the only viable browser engines should be huge… the fact that firefox is still only barely able to be embedded is a travesty
it’d be especially valuable if they made a premium electron product that provided security/privacy guarantees, performance benefits, etc - they should siphon some of the profit off the number of for-profit companies that build electron apps
I kinda like the idea but I also kinda hate it.
I really wish PWAs worked properly cross-platform instead. :(
SSB was killed after it sat behind an about:config flag, then their telemetry (that most power users disable) reported folks weren’t using. But what average users would be using a setting they would need to poke around to find. It’s a real shame too since I want to say it was PeppermintOS that was largely built around PWAs.
That sounds dumb. :(
Pretty standard for Mozilla logic if you have watched the features cut over the years.
They don’t know how to do that and never did.
It’s always been “Uhhh let’s have people make Firefox accounts, yeah!” When, in this day and age, the last thing people need is yet another account to keep track of.
“Lets get into AI, yeah!” Said no one ever.
Like, is it too much to fucking ask for a simple, privacy-centric, security (not overreaching), performance priority browser?
I mean look around how many forks of Firefox that there are out there, having to do the legwork because Firefox isn’t that much of the shit it thinks it is.
I’ve never understood the argument. It seems to have kind of been collectively hallucinated into existence by waves of internet comment sections over the years. But these aren’t mutually exclusive, and nobody has made a case that the resources for these other features are compromising the ability to deliver core browser functionality.
They also seem to assume that it’s development decisions, rather than Google leveraging its search dominance and financial muscle, that are tied to changes in market share. I actually think these value-adds can be good, can punch above their weight and can, if they are smart in picking their spots, do so without necessarily compromising their ability to advance the development of Firefox.
And nobody ever stops, breathes in and out, collects the evidence and makes the actual case. It’s just kind of assumed, asserted, repeated, assumed again, repeated again ad nauseum. Because enough people have seen other people say it, so they say it too knowing it leads to upvotes.
The ones closest to citing evidence, thankfully understanding at least how a real argument would actually work, are also the most unhinged, which probably isn’t a coincidence.
Why would I take the time and energy out of my day to jump through hoops to prove my case. At the very likely chance that someone like you will refute it anyways and waive it off like you did with my comment?
Not worth it.
How about some A.I. bullshit in your browser?
with how many singular developers managed to do it based on Firefox when Mozilla couldn’t pull their shit together, idk why anyone would still be holding their breath. just switch to a competent fork.
most forks still use the firefox base
that’s what’s i said, but they’re all better functioning than firefox
But without the base they can’t operate
but there is a base, and it isn’t good. the forks are. you said you want a good browser. they’re not making it. the forks are good. idk what you’re arguing about.
Most forks take an ESR version and build on top of that. Who is gonna make that ESR base?
You’re saying the equivalent of ‘I don’t care about the Linux kernel cause Ubuntu is better and everyone should use that’ of arguments.
Not saying you are literally saying ^
have I said anywhere that Firefox should cease to exist or Mozilla shouldn’t do security patches or whatever because i thought we were talking about having a good browser experience.
Are they still running a matrix instance?
I wonder when they will stop that, too.
So they aren’t exiting the fediverse. The whole premise of the article is wrong.
I think “the Fediverse” is generally understood to refer to ActivityPub-based projects, or even more narrowly, “things that can be seen from Mastodon”. At least I understood it as such, even if that’s not technically correct.
Nah. Its federated services. Matrix is part I’d the fediverse. Email is too.
Wow! I didn’t know that Google and Microsoft are huge fediverse supporters! Email lovers ftw!!!
As of August 2024, diaspora* is the only actively developed project classified under the tradition fediverse term that doesn’t support ActivityPub.
I would be mad if this would be next to fall since I use it. I don’t self-host Matrix since it is too expensive built on a fundamental ‘eventual consistency’ model mirroring all text & attatchments for all usersmin every DM & room—not to mention the Python implementation server & even the Rust one use much more system resources than other open chat options. It’s the same for Mastodon specifically too which but Ruby this time—with eventual consistency chewing up GiBs of storage making small players shut down instances. I would not be surprised that it fell next just based on cost.
Wanting to get folks off proprietary garbage like Slack, Telegram, & Discord was the right idea but moving to Matrix will prove to be a mistake as nodes are too expensive to run therefore leads to the centralization we need to escape. With the poor performance of the flagship Element client too, casual users think it is too damn slow (literally takes 2 minutes to even get to a screen with text in my browser & it isn’t even done syncing).
Y’all fickle beasts. Not a few months ago Firefox was a cult
Like all products, Firefox still maintains a small core of uncritical, devoted fans. To them, Mozilla can do no wrong.
The problem is, up until a few months ago, Mozilla advocated for privacy and other public facing values that lined up with their manifesto. Now, they are breaking away from that, and the true believers are shifting too: becoming hostile to privacy.
The people who liked Firefox because of its privacy stance, or because they were looking for an alternative to Big Tech, on the other hand, aren’t 100% likely to become a true believer, and those people are the critics. Often, those critics have been around for years going on decades.
I see this as revisionist history. Mozilla has long been beloved for a whole host of FOSS reasons, that align with the same reasons FOSS enthusiasts like anything FOSS. I do think there are fanbases for things who think their object of adoration can do no wrong (e.g. Sneako fans probably). They are out there, but I don’t see that as being true of Mozilla.
I’ve seen supporters of Mozilla make nuanced points about it being an imperfect but important diversification of options that prevents Google from dominating the browser space, often in thoughtful interactions with fans of (say) the Brave browser or Opera browser over the fact that they rely on Chromium which is sustained by Google.
Those convos have more going on than uncritical adoration, and imo it’s important to let those nuances breath so that they, rather the oversimplifications, can be our primary takeaways.
Interestingly, while talking in mournful past tense about Firefox’s having lost their way, in this same thread there are people a few comments above denying that criticism of Mozilla is prevalent here. You guys should scroll up (or down) and say hello to each other.
I adore Firefox. Just tired of Mozilla trying features (FF Panorama) and hobbies (Notes) and then abandoning them
We aren’t fickle. We adhere very strongly to our principles but it’s easier to direct people to a name when they aren’t interested in understanding why.
Weird that they called it a “Beta”, like running a chat server you didn’t code is somehow an experiment. Just say you couldn’t be arsed running it anymore.
That’s a little cringe isn’t it?
I mean there’s just no way around it. And I’m the most unapologetic Mozilla fanboy you will meet. What was the point of making a server if it was going to just die a few months later.
You need to be in control of your projects and your vision at least enough to know if you can make a credible commitment to the thing you launch. And, like others here, I’m honestly kind of surprised that this, of all things, was too much for Mozilla to handle.
Hmm why cant they move to a pre hosted mastodon server
I guess hating Mozilla is very much in fashion. The tech chatterati have made it so.
They’ll move on, as they always do. I just hope Firefox is still here.
The issue is all signs point to them pivoting to AI and ad driven nonsense - they’ll move on, but if the product goes to shit so will I. The rest is noise.
Critiquing Mozilla when they make mistakes is not the same as hating them. It is healthy to keep these organizations accountable
And yet people are still angry when I say that Mozilla is malicious.
Closing down an instance you chose to run is malicious? If you cannot fully moderate it, it can tank your reputation. The labour cost isn’t insignificant and is not something they should be focussing on.
Why are they angry?
I don’t know. I haven’t asked them. I have just seen the downvotes on my post(s) that were related to bashing Mozilla on Lemmy.
did an AI become their CEO by now? dumb moz foundation.
