Well yes, but it’s the patches that make them special. Every Firefox fork that disables Mozilla PPA by default is another browser that cuts into Mozilla’s attempt to resell private data to advertisers while marketing it as private (which is, I kid you not, a reason they say they needed it enabled by default).

And considering Firefox itself is still open source, it’s a completely valid browser to base a fork off of. Especially when the only serviceable alternative is Chrome right now.

The dot com bubble made the Internet explode, sure, but corporate sites weren’t the entire internet back then. There were far more niche sites, web rings, forums, etc…

…For now. Looks like they’re going to get rid of it too (which makes sense, because they copy Chromium’s codebase).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3

I think that’s the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it’s been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.

Mozilla’s PPA was developed in collaboration with Facebook. While we don’t usually think of that company as advertisement centric, they are, just moreso within their own walled garden of a social network.

parading around as pro-privacy frauds.

Here’s a frighteningly accurate prediction from The Register, written back in January:

…Baker notes: “We need to be faster in prototyping, launching, learning, and iterating … This requires rich data, and so we will be moving in that direction, but in a very Mozilla way.”

Surely not slurping telemetry?

According to the report, the “Mozilla way” is all about privacy, encryption, and keeping customer data safe. Hopefully, it will also be about innovation rather than scattering AI fairy dust over its product line.

disingeneous to call it adding ads

Who called it adding

With all due respect, Mozilla is now (and, for a while, has been) an ad company. When an ad company tells you ads are necessary, you should not trust them. Plenty of lousy things have been entrenched as social norms, but it is the job of the entrenchers to justify their existence… Which Mozilla is definitely not doing here.

Cory Doctorow: “Disenshittify or die!” (YouTube)

Frankly, I’m surprised it took them so long to say this publicly. For over a year, Mozilla has had a de facto conflict of interest when it came to their stance on advertisements, so take anything they say about their necessity with a huge grain of salt…

May 2023: Mozilla purchases FakeSpot, a company that sells private data to advertisers. Mozilla keeps selling private data to advertisers to this day.

June 2024: Mozilla purchases Anonym, an AdTech company.

I think it’s important to see that when Mozilla “follows its manifesto,” it sides with giant corporations to keep them from being held accountable for harm they cause.

Is that specific enough?

Did you read the first paragraph of what I wrote before responding to it? Because this…

Essentially it made it a pay-to-enter contest for AI, where the bar for entry was that you had to be a mega-tech-company

…is clearly not the case.

It’s the opposite: The bill only affects huge companies, not small ones.

And let’s use a little critical reasoning: Google opposed the bill. OpenAI opposed the bill. Amazon opposed the bill. The biggest megacorporations sent their lobbyists to stop this bill from getting passed. Do you genuinely think they were acting against their own collective self-interests?

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The 132 update caused a bunch of people’s toolbars to go haywire, so it seems like a worthwhile warning to put out.

The Gang Surfs the Net

Right, but does it manage to avoid those pitfalls I mentioned except by popularity? I know Monero is relatively private (discounting issues), but a lot of cryptocurrency is treated more like stock than currency by investors.

How does Monero increase value except by enticing other people to join in? After all, cryptocurrency is only worth money if people are willing to spend money to get it. If people ended up not wanting it, the value would plummet, like it has with so many NFTs and scams before it. It seems to me that by embracing any cryptocurrency, and you have any interest in it maintaining or increasing in value, you must advocate it, evangelize it.

Okay, we are making some progress. You and I both agree that Mozilla has changed into an advertisement company. Can we both also agree that this means they have a conflict of interest with advertisements now?

Do you also understand that it’s important to reassess someone’s opinion on something after the conflict of interest arises? For example, if a politician got a huge cash donation from a lobbying interest, would you actually be saying “well, the politician criticized the lobby once” and absolutely freak out if anybody said things needed to be reevaluated?

First you felt insulted, then you didn’t, now you’re fighting?

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I’m sorry you don’t follow the logic, but to simplify it for you, I’ll break it down: ever since Mozilla picked up an ad subsidiary, they became an ad company. Kind of like how Google is an ad company even though they only have an ad subsidiary too.

And because Mozilla is an ad company, we need to watch how they describe advertisements to us, because they have a huge conflict of interest. It would be bizarre, as you say, to act otherwise.

Do you still follow, or would it be more helpful if I made a post about it on this community to remind people how Mozilla has become an ad company over the past year?

Regardless, that is all I was trying to do: to get people to think a little bit. Stay curious!