I haven't seen anything yet on whether Brave will support it, though if I'm understanding correctly, they won't have a choice since they're using Chromium. Hopefully I'm misinformed.
Ultimately I think we must permanently return to browser ballots back by the law, like the IE bundling fallout. Otherwise friction and incentives will continue to entrench one dominant player.
Mozilla, the browser, is great.
Mozilla efforts, such as Rust, have been historically great.
Mozilla leadership is currently awful. They focus is on the wrong things - web VR and low-quality foundational AI models. Maybe because they think the web is at risk of disappearing outright. But the true enemy is Google, and they're currently its well-behaved prisoner.
Mozilla can't bite the hand that feeds it, but someone needs to point the FTC, Congress, and the EU at Google. Everything they do, buy, and work on is to point an overwhelming majority of internet users at its ad products. Chrome, Search, Android, YouTube, Apple default search engine deal, etc. Google has become inescapable. And that's rather anti-competitive if you're trying to advertise your business or selling ad tech.
Nevermind that the web commons and standards are constantly in Google's blast radius for funneling everyone into their gaping maw.
It feels weird that I'm now grateful for how crap they are.
Microsoft and Apple dont have a good history so assuming there is something big here?
The average person is very likely to have malware on their computer, but not on their phone.
From what I understand, the arguments about self-preferencing kind of always get thrown out due to a more strict interpretation of the law. Did with Apple, and with Facebook when they were acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp.
I installed lineageOS, which is passes the Google SafetyNet check out-of-the-box. So most things just work, including my local Credit Union's app.
But lineageOS fails the CTS profile check on my phone. Fidelity checks this after you log in and shows a "For security reasons your account has been blocked..." message.
So I had to root the phone to install a CTS profile fixer, and then more hacks to hide the fact it was rooted.
After that Fidelity worked, but requested root permission every time I launched it until I figured out how to permanently disable that.
Netflix was similar, but not quite as annoying.
I don't see why it would be that difficult. The issue here is with websites that want to mandate it.
For example it is currently the reality in EU, that in order to use any of the native banking apps, a user has no choice but to expose themselves to privacy violations by either Google or Apple, i.e. US companies.
While at least one alternative exists, https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu..., these alternatives are not being used in practice.
I see no way of preventing this happening on the web as well, if the Web Environment Integrity API ships.
Note that "safety and security" has become an abhorrent phrase among many of us because it evokes the "authoritarian dystopia" that Google et.al. are creating --- we're more concerned about freedom and interoperability.
Is that sarcasm? Their computer is likely more secure than the jungle of manufacturer modified roms where who knows what's inside.
Assuming this gets implemented, users might start being unable to access certain websites or services because their identity is deemed "insufficient", which would move them to use a different browser that does not have this.
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The sentiment I seem to see is that anything short of perfect is failure.
Because their customers aren't security nerds that have smartphones with authentication apps.
They want people that barely get smartphones, or still use feature phones, to be able to access their services with some improved security workflows.
Maybe web is the right platform for these. But of course Google will use this to close things down.
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These kinds of discussions are frustrating to me since it feels like we've been dealt a very bad hand. But it's not just this hand, the dealer is firmly set on us only receiving bad hands in any game we play.
Like in a card game, this is the only hand that we'll get. What other corporation do we have to push these kinds of values? What other avenue do we have? It's sad that we've come to this situation, but if the choice is the currently perceived-to-be-failing Mozilla and no Mozilla, I pick the failing Mozilla.
Pocket, cliq, Push Notifications for Mozilla Blog without user consent, Mr robot, Firefox Suggest etc they are littered with mistakes and scandals and have never improved their governance or process.
I can give them a pass on technical decisions like Thunderbird or breaking extensions but when it's purely commercial it has to be judged differently.
When a shirt is white and clean, the smallest stain stands out.
Mozilla is one of the rare companies with a mostly white clean shirt.
It is been judged harshly, while we should rejoice that they have been doing amazing things for 20 years despite the competition being terrible people playing dirty.
If we keep doing this, they will be no more Mozilla in the world. Who wants to be the good guys if you are held up against impossible standards when your competitors are paid handsomely to destroy the world?
I know some groups that target perfect ethics: they do nothing, because it's impossible to do anything without screwing up sometimes.
IMO much bigger issue is that significant amount of non-banking sites that are now trying to shame user with "disable adblocker to continue" messages (easily bypassed) will start requiring this. Or Twitter/Reddit/etc., in the name of "fighting bots" of course, nothing to do with ensuring you are watching their ads...
Of course, there's also criticism for attempting those.
Seems like a good record to me.
Unless you have billions at a bank, I don't see why any bank would even consider changing how their website works because of a single customer. And, well, real billionaires probably don't care about not being able to use a website on Firefox.
I got codes via SMS when I installed those apps and I had to prove that I owned the phone number I was associating with the app.
They get hate only for bad or useless things (like the famous "independent voices") but a lot of love for the actual work being done, especially Firefox Containers, enormous performance improvements etc. I'm using Firefox on a daily basis and just the Containers feature make it so much superior to Chrome.
We're not holding Mozilla to higher standards than Google - we just have already discarded Google as an option.
Not collecting telemetry that many users have explicitly stated they do not want and even turned off at every opportunity is not a particularly high standard. Not wanting advertisements integrated into the web browser is not a particularly high standard. Criticizing that the CEO salary has been increasing to absurd levels while the browser has been declining and regular engineers are facing is not holding them to a particlarly high standard. Not wanting the last remaining competitive free web browser run as a commercial project rather than a non-profit foundation is not a high standard. Mozilla chooses to be shittier and shittier. Inaction would be better.
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The sentiment I seem to see is that anything short of sainthood is evil.
The answer of course is that relativism is not a good way to judge people or organizations. Mozilla chooses to do a lot of shitty things. They should be criticized for that even if someone else is worse.
The thing is, Mozilla shouldn't even be a for-profit corporation in the first place.
My bank calls me once every few months, if everything is ok, and if there are is something that is bothering me and could be improved, or if they can help with something. At first I thought it is some marketing program and some manager has to achieve some KPIs, but surprisingly, they did listen to suggestions (it took time, but they eventually did).
So you never know, if you never try.
[M. theresa...VLC foundation....Mozilla.......You.......................Microsoft.......................................Nazis]
Which is the scale of Mozilla "badness" compared to the rest, even you.
And especially in the ligh of the good things they do.
You can be a critic, but be so in balance with the good things, otherwise you are making doing good something so ingrate a lot of people will give up.
If you thing doing the right thing is easy, you have not been doing a lot of it.
Problem is that Chrome is massive. If Chrome decides it will go left, most of websites will go left.
If you want to compare with Google the list is way more subjective.
1. From what I've seen, the PSD2 APIs haven't really been created with end users in mind – there are non-trivial accreditation requirements on people/entities wishing to make use of those APIs, the expectation being that only professional middlemen will dally with those APIs.
2. The PSD2 APIs don't necessarily cover the full functionality of a bank's online banking functionality.
3. While you can probably still get quite far with "just" the ability to query the current account data and recent transactions, as well as being able to initiate payments, this doesn't sidestep the bank's authorisation requirements – meaning that unless you can use a hardware TAN generator or something like that, you're still dependent on the bank's app for payment and account access authorisation.
No. Not even close.
> while we should rejoice that they have been doing amazing things for 20 years despite the competition being terrible people playing dirty.
I reject the "other"-ness in this comment. I was a Mozillian. I was helping do those things. The notion that I should heap accolades upon a bunch of folks who are only now affiliated with Mozilla and who were not contributing during the era in which Mozilla was doing the great things actually deserving of the goodwill associated with its name? And who have themselves been positively poor torchbearers for that name? Condescending.
2023 is the project's 25th birthday. It did amazing things for about 15 of them—by which I mean the people who made up the project. "Mozilla" is merely a legal fiction.
Is there any threshold for mendacity that if crossed would bother you?
That was the intention behind my choice of words — representing the whole web, not just components of it or companies operating on it.
<>>23117242 >
There's no reason your question couldn't have been posted in a relevant (sub)thread, instead of here, where it's (i) not on topic for the current subject, but (ii) looks like it could be, and therefore (iii) has the same effect as moving the goalposts.
I stick to Safari and Firefox. They're not perfect but they're the only modern browsers that don't use Blink, which is what gives Google the power to make moves like this.
Besides, people aren't using relativism here. Relativism is the idea that nothing is truly good or bad, it's all a matter of personal or cultural preferences. That would mean that people were saying that that Mozilla's behavior about X, Y, and Z isn't really bad. But that's not really the argument here. People are generally saying that despite engaging in the bad behaviors X,Y and Z, Mozilla is still in balance better than Google, and arguably still worthy of some level of support. To phrase it in terms of Aristotelian ethics: "For the lesser evil can be seen in comparison with the greater evil as a good, since this lesser evil is preferable to the greater one, and whatever preferable is good". You're unquestionably correct that Mozilla should be criticized, even harshly so. But you can criticize a company (or person, or party, or country) and still support them. Or if short of support, still prefer them to the available alternatives.
Thats what we do, anyways.
1. Under her leadership Mozilla has lost virtually all of its users. It has been reduced to less than 10% of what it had before, maybe worse - I haven't kept up.
2. At the beginning of Covid, a time when remote work was on the rise and tech valuations were through the roof, a time when the browser was more important than ever, she took her largest payout and fired hundreds of employees. She was compensated at over $5M dollars, enough money to pay a team of engineers for years.
3. Firefox has utterly failed to capture Enterprise market, where Chrome has managed to dominate. I doubt most people are even aware that a corp managed Firefox is an option, they have done such a poor job marketing it.
4. Every initiative Mozilla has come out with has completely failed to gain traction. Something like a VPN could have been a great fit for Mozilla but they did nothing with it. Mozilla has been incapable, organizationally, of capitalizing on technology - the thing they're kinda supposed to do exclusively.
She has failed in every conceivable way as a CEO. She has failed in terms of the mission, she has failed her employees, she has failed her users, she has failed to be an example as a leader.
Mozilla, as it exists today, is a convenient project for Chrome to point to and say "look, there's competition" - perhaps the only reason why Google continues to fund Mozilla.
Microsoft and Apple are at least competently run and have incentives to push to reduce Chrome's power.
Business account is in different bank, and the communication there was much harder (obviously by someone not trained in communication and having to talk to me as unplanned part of their job). The fees are lower, though.
So it doesn't seem to be by the amount of $$$ on the account.
There's some nuance there, too.
It's "turned beige", in part, because people refused to use it while it was still "white". Mozilla has had to make the tough calculation of whether to be pure with zero users and therefore zero good impact, or to be beige to try to get some of these fickle users back and maybe have SOME good impact.
So, basically, people aren't satisfied when Mozilla is pure/idealist, and they aren't satisfied when it's compromising/pragmatic ("If they do that, I might as well keep using Chrome!").
I'm not letting Mozilla off the hook, or giving my blessing for every single decision that's been made. But, there's probably some utility to us taking the view of "just shut up and use Firefox" for the next N years.
Firefox's usage dropping from about 30% down to likely less than 3% today, with almost no mobile usage, should be seen as a severe failure.
This failure isn't just about the product's uptake, too. It's also about the Firefox developers losing meaningful influence over the way the web evolves.
I mean, Chrome (including Chromium, IIRC) literally collects and ships a bunch of tracking data to Google THE FIRST FUCKING TIME YOU LAUNCH THE APPLICATION.
Context matters. If Firefox did the Pocket nonsense in an environment where we had multiple decent free (as in freedom) browsers, then I'd grab my pitchfork. As it stands, I just can't feel the righteous indignation your comment is trying to rouse. It's truly NOTHING compared to the other options.
It's also about the loss of trust.
That particular incident, for example, was completely unnecessary. It involved a significant display of unbelievably poor judgment, and a total lack of foresight. It shouldn't have happened.
The fact that it did happen, despite it being such an obviously bad idea, raised a lot of questions and doubt.
It causes people to wonder what other incidents, which could potentially be far worse, might happen in the future.
It's remembered years later because it involved such a major loss of trust for so many people.
I can't really recall any decisions made that were unpopular with existing users, but likely to lure new users in. Ads on new tabs doesn't seem like something that would bring new users in. Pocket doesn't either, since iirc you could install the extension in Chrome if you really wanted it.
Most of the controversies I remember were either to increase Mozilla's revenue, or boondoggles like their mobile OS. My major annoyance was that the increase in revenue seems like it was spent on boondoggles or weird, unrelated charity rather than going back into improving the browser.
I'm still also a Firefox user, but it's like 99% because ads are not their primary source of revenue rather than any remaining fondness towards Mozilla.
It's remembered now only by a very small, though vocal, minority.
The solution is diversity and using browsers that respect users. Chrome only has the power to push this API because they own most of the market.
All valid concerns, but why post about them on the internet? Especially when it's nothing concrete--you used the words "questions", "doubts", and "might happen"? If someone is taking the effort to post FUD (literally) about Mozilla and "trust", why the hell aren't they using that same effort to post about Google or Microsoft and "trust"? Aren't those obviously much bigger problems?
Again, it's not wrong, per se, but I feel like it's bordering on some kind of astroturfing for people to complain about the fucking Mr. Robot non-story that happened years ago when TFA is about Mozilla at least signalling the right thing while Google is trying to be overtly evil YET AGAIN. I can actually type "Fuck Google" faster than I can type "Mr. Robot", so I'd have to have some kind of weird agenda or priorities to bring up Firefox's Mr. Robot thing.
But, also, bringing money in is proxy enough for being able to do "good" for whatever definition we'd like to use. So, money or users, I think my general point about compromising their ideals for pragmatism is still valid (not necessarily true or correct, but it's an argument that can potentially be made).
There is no perfect option right now, and Mozilla will never be that perfect option because they are human and at least three people working there probably want to make some money.
So yeah, lets just keep making them irrelevant so in ten years I won't have a choice and be FORCED to use the browser that says ad blocking is stealing and spoofing your user agent is a violation of the CFAA and all this other blatantly user hostile shit.
It's such clear whataboutism, to have ANYTHING to hold against the only web browser that isn't actively controlled by the people with billions of dollars a year incentive to actually harm how you use the web.
"Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page" (>>36077360 )
"Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage" (>>36085642 )
That's another incident that just shouldn't have ever happened to begin with, in my opinion.
They killed Weave (aka Sync 1.0; which was somewhat weird but simple enough to comprehend, reimplement and self-host), replacing it with an NIH-reeking over-engineered abomination that's the very antithesis of standard, open or public. Most people just ignored it as "that's Mozilla own infrastructure, they don't have to make it open, design it well, think of others, or anything else". I could not.
They tried to push a fundamentally flawed Persona/BrowserID standard that continued the trend to remove users from their "own" identities while claiming it's a pro-user pro-privacy move. I can see the logic, but I'm of firm opinion that it would've done more harm than good. I'm glad the project died without gaining any traction and WebAuthn (which has its issues, but where users are the source of their identities) took over. That's what BrowserID should've been, but Mozilla just went with the flow and refused or failed to fight for identity ownership.
It's things like those what made me regret using Firefox (but again, everything else is worse), not some home page sponsored links. That's where they stopped to differ from the rest for me. Mozilla used to be a beacon of doing things right even if it was challenging, fighting for a better web. And they became just another software company, that put their glorious past on all the ads (how they're so pro-everything good) while failing to live up to those high standards.
They had an user agent, but they butchered it and made it just a browser.
It's the lack of foresight and the lack of good judgment that I don't see getting fixed.
Both of those incidents should have been completely avoidable with even the most minimal of forethought.
I don't think that there's "a strong anti-Mozilla bias" here, as you put it earlier. The people affected by that incident, and by others, were probably among the most ardent Firefox supporters. After all, they were still using it long after so many others had already moved to Chrome.
Loss of trust is something that isn't easily forgotten, and it's a relevant factor worthy of bringing up in discussion.
I suspect those are mostly different groups. And my personal take is that Mozilla did indeed make that calculation... and proceeded to sacrifice the die-hard core userbase in order to get wider appeal, but they managed to not actually get the wider audience to buy in either, leaving them with nothing.
If I could/had to pay/donate for it - I'd gladly do, but it's virtually impossible.
It's a non-story because you had to opt-in to Firefox's "experiments" feature to get the extension pushed to you. Opting in to the experiments feature is *literally* granting permission for Mozilla to change the behavior of your Firefox browser remotely in between official releases. So, Mozilla had your permission to change your browser. I simply will not shed a tear for anyone who felt betrayed by something they signed up for.
And, by the way, I was also "affected" by the Mr. Robot thing because I also opted in to the experiments feature.
Furthermore, the extension did nothing harmful. It didn't even collect any data as far as I know. You know why Mozilla pushed an extension that didn't even collect any data instead of one that does? Because they were acting in a trustworthy way!
Sure, it was a faux pax. Mozilla thought they could be cute the same way a lot of old school FLOSSy, hackery, software would include amusing Easter eggs and jokes. It was inappropriate and didn't land well for a variety of reasons, but there was no reason to lose trust in Mozilla at the time, and there's *certainly* no reason to even bring it up today, years later, when just about every other tech company and computer product is trying their damnedest to spy on you, sell your data, prevent you from having root control of your devices, and squeeze subscription money out of you.
Again, Chrome starts tracking you the instant you launch it for the first time. Microsoft tracks you when you log in to Windows and occasionally re-enables tracking features that you've disabled. Mozilla pushed a silly "fun" extension to users who opted in that didn't collect any data nor make Mozilla any money.
This discussion is nonsense. If you truly don't trust Mozilla after the harmless Mr. Robot extension was pushed to you after you chose to allow them to modify your browser remotely, then go ahead and stop using Firefox- I don't care. But please stop spreading FUD.
Has there ever been a case of an underdog company/product actually gaining market share by becoming less different than the market leader? It always seems like a mistake from the outside, to me. I feel like an underdog is more likely to succeed by actually being different and attracting people who would prefer those differences. Why would anyone change from what they're currently using to an alternative that is almost exactly the same?
So many people recommend it, but I've been iffy on using brave. Thanks for giving me a little insight on your choices and reasoning behind it.
That said, I think income from Firefox's default search engine pretty much dwarfs any income that could potentially be gained from donations/buy-to-support.