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In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

wired.co.uk

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Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orders and purchases are different from donations and gifts.

The point is that they say they will use it for purpose X, but instead they use it for Y. A lie is a lie whether it is related to a donation or a purchase.

Mozilla is quite open about what they do and where the money goes, nobody is lying:

"The direct work of the Mozilla Foundation focuses on fueling the movement for a healthy internet. We do this by supporting a diverse group of fellows working on key internet issues, connecting open Internet leaders at events like MozFest, publishing critical research in the Internet Health Report, and rallying citizens around advocacy issues that connect the wellbeing of the Internet directly to everyday life."

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is not the kind of diversity I want! But on a more serious note, from the little I know he got fired because he supported banning same-sex marriage. Which is not just about 'opinion'. That's about discrimination and he should be called out for it.

He funded such a campaign, yes. With his private money on his free time. That is not discrimination. He even wrote sorry for causing hurt and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Your comment is a prime example of what's wrong with the tech industry in my opinion.

"private money" ... his salary, paid in small part by my donation to Mozilla, going to a cause that I definitely don't support. Seems we are full circle.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rather well-known saying. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance . The core point is, if you have a society that accepts anything and everything, that society will not end up with all the things, because it'll also accept people working explicitly to get rid of some of the things. It will instead end up with few things, being run by "dictatorship of small, intolerant minorities"[0]. Therefore,…

Maybe you're right, I think I may already follow this since I do not tolerate Mozilla's intolerance. I have never seen any more intolerance than in people who thinks social justice is important. I do not tolerate these peoples intolerance. I obviously do not accept anything and everything, that is why I am upset at Mozilla and their actions. > "dictatorship of small, intolerant minorities" This. This is what a lot of…

By all means, you are definitely oppressed at work for making a sexual joke. Let's ignore the fact that that joke may be seen as harassment of others in the office. You shouldn't be called a Nazi, but if you are contributing to an intolerant culture then the company you work for has a perogagitive to get rid of you.

And you are probably downvoted constantly because you are spewing beliefs and opinions that scream, "I would prefer to work in a Mad Men era office, than one that values and respects the opinions and beliefs of others."

Fact of the matter, our society is better by saying that beliefs about making a statement like, "there are only two genders", are inappropriate and have no place in modern society.

As always you are more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech, but that doesn't mean others can't exercise their freedoms to remove you from the equation.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if he wanted to donate to a diversity campaign, he'd donate to one directly. Wikipedia is a big one for this: the donation campaign is all about 'keeping our servers running', and then huge chunks of the spending goes on community feelgood stuff. I've nothing against diversity campaigning but if you were to treat donation like any other 'purchase' you'd be pretty miffed if you thought you were ordering a ch…

> I suppose if he wanted to donate to a diversity campaign, he'd donate to one directly. This interpretation of his comment is... generous. I agree that there's a legitimate point around wanting your donation to go specifically to browser development and not overhead or other side-projects, but it's pretty clear that he was using the word diversity contemptuously.

Perhaps OP feels that the specific strategy Mozilla employee for helping diversity is ineffective; in the same manner that refusing to donate to ineffective anti-poverty charities, is not the same as supporting poverty.

Edit: rather than trying to read OP's mind or surmise what they may be thinking, I'll give my own experience on this. I have seen companies spend money on diversity as lip-service, or targeting groups that don't really aid diversity much.

As much as I support female/LGBTQ/race rights and diversity, I suspect many companies I have been a part of would have got a better number of "units of diversity per dollar spent" had they spent money on people from lower socio-economic classes, or countries with poorer education/access to facilities (or maybe combined with the previous groups; I suspect the middle+ classes of female/LGBTQ/different ethnic origin groups are far better catered for than their working class counterparts).

But perhaps people don't consider social class or country of origin diversity? Perhaps "we hired lots of underprivileged people" doesn't give as much political capital? I'm not sure.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#206

Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE was discouraged by websites explicitly. "This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the Firefox userbase further. Note - This comment was typed on firefox. [1] https:/…

Firefox has a builtin user agent spoofer (not extension), and those helpful promotions just shut up.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#207
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes why would you not want companies investing in diversity? Especially if they are the interface to our online world?

Possibly because affirmative diversity could be seen as incompatible with meritocracy.

"Meritocracy" is an unattainable goal, like "utopia". It sounds good in the abstract, but "merit" is such a subjective concept that it's useless for any practical purpose. Every person's life is as much a product of random chance as innate potential, so there's no objective measure of merit by which a meritocracy could be judged.

I'm sure there's reasonable arguments against affirmative diversity in general or Mozilla's diversity projects in specific, but incompatibility with meritocracy is not a strong one.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He funded such a campaign, yes. With his private money on his free time. That is not discrimination. He even wrote sorry for causing hurt and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Your comment is a prime example of what's wrong with the tech industry in my opinion.

> That is not discrimination. Genuinely curious, how isn't that discrimination? Since when did it being his own money in his free time stop it being a discriminatory stance?

It may be a discriminatory stance, I am not certain since I am not an US citizen and haven't really dug into the details of what that law would imply.

It is not discrimination because there is not any individual being discriminated against. He did not use his position to discriminate against gay people for example.

He outright did the exact opposite and wrote that he was going to push for equality at Mozilla. I do not believe that he would discriminate anyone at Mozilla that was married to someone of the same sex.

I believe that a person can have professional courtesy.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#209

I don’t believe any of it will help. https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816

Wow, this is terrifying on a whole new level. This kind of invasion isn't anything new but I shudder every time I see it detailed. However, I don't see anything about Firefox there? Should we really automatically presume that Mozilla won't be able to deal with these issues just because other companies couldn't? (Or, let's be honest, didn't bother to/had incentive not to?)

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orders and purchases are different from donations and gifts.

True, but if I donate to a charity because I'm passionate about their mission of X and instead they spend their money on Y which is still a worthy cause, but one I'm less passionate about, I'm not likely to donate to that charity again - because my aim is to donate towards X. Hell, X and Y don't even have to be all that different. Did you know Make-A-Wish doesn't grant wishes for hunting or fishing, while other chari…

When you provide a general purpose donation to a charity, you're giving them a gift. You're entrusting them to do with it what they think is best. If you don't trust them to do the right thing, don't give them the money in the first place, or donate to a specific campaign if they offer such opportunities.

Unless they turn out to be deceitful, duplicitous, or otherwise exceptionally wasteful, second guessing and/or judging their decision making process from the outside isn't likely to be a particularly fruitful endeavour for any of the parties involved.

If you want to explicitly target a very narrow case, you need to donate explicitly to that very narrow case. There are NPOs and charities that provide this kind of explicit service[0], for narrow targeted funding where you control exactly where your money goes. If you donate to an organisation with a broader mission, you shouldn't have any specific expectations of where that money is spent.

[0] e.g. https://www.donorschoose.org/

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