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Firefox plan to show ads and shopping in the near future in the browser as an opt-out
(bugzilla.mozilla.org)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Technology
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This is a weird one. On the one hand, we have Mozilla, the last remaining browser company not sucking at the teat of either Google or Apple and we all expect for Mozilla to somehow generate enough money to pay enough employees to stay competitive on the other hand we have the users who expect them not to do anything to try and leverage their userbase to create financial independence.
The problem with Mozilla remains the same problem that they've had for a while. Mozilla doesn't acknowledge the symbiotic relationship it has with its community and the community always over reacts, which means there's a chasm where simple things should be easy but they're not.
Take this for example, Mozilla only had to have a public facing discussion about this and then go and do it anyway.
Sometimes paying lip service works. But since they didn't, you have people like OP who feel like something nefarious is happening and in the end Firefox users lose out as things like donations being pulled hurt.
Mozilla already shows ads, as do all the other browsers, however unlike the other browsers, you have a fully functioning uBlock that can and will remove anything that the preferences don't cover.
Mozilla makes hundreds of millions from Google. Every single person could stop donating and they would continue along just fine (Well the CEO might need to take a 10 million yearly pay cut).
What weird is seeing people champion the enshittificstion of FOSS software.
And you don't see Mozilla's reliance on financing from its main competitor as a huge issue?
Eh.
The examples Doctorow user when coining the term were two sided markets, but if you actually read the original article for understanding, rather than to "well actually" on the internet, that the process being described is much more general than that, and is one of products or services becoming worse over time so that whatever value they provided becomes increasingly shifted toward shareholders.
This may seem weird in this case, still, because the only shareholder of Mozilla Corp is the Mozilla Foundation, but the principle still stands.
Moreover, you sound like a ridiculous pendant, because what's actually happening here is that Mozilla is turning Firefox into a vehicle for advertising, which means it's fucking entering a two-sided market... You're arguing that the sky isn't blue because it's night time at fucking sunrise.
Words mean whatever you want them to mean.
Only if you aren't interested in a conversation where all parties have a clear understanding of what's being discussed.
Did someone not understand what the original comment's poster meant with "enshittification"? It's not like he used a completely unrelated term.
Is mozilla is showing ads, then it is a two-sided marketplace.
That's not the difference between this and the usual kind of enshittification. The users are one side, the advertisers (and google) are the other. Nothing unusual there. The difference is that this time it's driven by desperate grasping at straws, rather than barefaced greed.
My post covers all of your points.
Mozilla works out in the open. They can't always nicely prepare everything before they head into a user dialogue, especially when people even dig up their Bugzilla tickets.
I would much rather have them continue to work in the open. That does much more for my trust in them than a flawless PR story...