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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A browser could theoretically be politically engaged by ensuring open web standards and accessibility etc. but this is not that, me thinks.
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.
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.
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.
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).
I don't think there was any notable "discourse on feelings" related to those things.