Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would the project sustain itself? (Hardware and hosting costs)
Begging and government grants, like Wikipedia?
So why doesn't Mozilla go for government grants instead of getting money promoting Google Search?
Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
71–80 of 177 posts
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#72Hey all, Patrick here & one of the mentors for the Mozilla Builders "fix-the-internet" incubator https://builders.mozilla.community/ . We have 3 different offerings for this Summer. All incubator style, meaning you meet weekly or biweekly with mentors and we really try to help drive you from point A to point C. 1. $75k investment in a startup. MUST be serious about wanting to build something awesome and put in the ha…
Sounds interesting. Any more detail on what Mozilla sees broken about the internet and what a company would be doing to fix it? Your link gives some example types of companies but doesn't really define the mission. "Positive impact" is completely subjective. I have ideas about what this is all about but would like to see it defined by Mozilla better.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#73I think the conversation needs to change a bit. People just don't care in the current state. I've been toying with the idea of calling all this (seo/ads/blogspam/content marketing and the auto-twitter-bot-ira-shill-to-cause-controversy-and-mass-media-parroting-it-feedback-loop) "internet pollution" in order to get average joes to think about it differently.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten better but when I used to dig into that code for work some years ago it was near negligent incompetent. If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that works, as exemplified by every other profession, is credentials: lic…
If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with democratizing the Web. You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for you. Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.
Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but it’s generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than that and hire other lawyers to represent them.
> Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires
That is not an MVP.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#75Real talk, Mozilla; would you be interested in funding a privacy-oriented fork of Firefox with all the unnecessary extras (Pocket, etc.) stripped out? I’m thinking something just like Firefox, except unencumbered by Google or other corporate affiliations, etc. I think this would be the best first step towards any kind of “fixing the Internet”.
It's tough. People at Mozilla care so much about privacy, to the point that (when I worked there 2010-2012), they refused to do "services" the same way Google did (aka a login and a central server). So as a result, Chrome "just worked" and Firefox was completely unusable. The people at Mozilla really care about privacy. But they also have to build something people can actually use. That means finding a balance betwee…
> ...they refused to do "services" the same way Google did (aka a login and a central server). So as a result, Chrome "just worked" and Firefox was completely unusable.
I think Mozilla found the perfect solution to services. They provide a service and open source the implementation [1]. This gives a "just works" option (which is still probably setting a pretty high privacy bar because it's Mozilla) and a fully self-hosted ultra-private option for those who want to go the extra mile.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#76I thought Mozilla was already on financial life support itself. How do they have money for this?
Don't they get half a billion per year from Google?
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#77Hey all, Patrick here & one of the mentors for the Mozilla Builders "fix-the-internet" incubator https://builders.mozilla.community/ . We have 3 different offerings for this Summer. All incubator style, meaning you meet weekly or biweekly with mentors and we really try to help drive you from point A to point C. 1. $75k investment in a startup. MUST be serious about wanting to build something awesome and put in the ha…
Hi Patrick! At the risk of this comment appearing as if it might derail conversation -- this really is not my intent (the iniatiative sounds great; I'm unable to find the details I'm looking for on the site) -- are these Mozilla programs open to participants/startups based outside the U.S.? Thanks!
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's tough. People at Mozilla care so much about privacy, to the point that (when I worked there 2010-2012), they refused to do "services" the same way Google did (aka a login and a central server). So as a result, Chrome "just worked" and Firefox was completely unusable. The people at Mozilla really care about privacy. But they also have to build something people can actually use. That means finding a balance betwee…
> they refused to do "services" the same way Google did What services? > More specifically, though, what would you strip? Telemetry and the normandy/shield backdoor first of all. Then remove the google analytics from the about:addons page (or at least let adblockers work on it). Then let adblockers work on the mozilla pages. Then disable things like pings, beacons, etc by default and integrate more tor browser patche…
This is an underrated comment.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#79The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was lifted we started the descent into where things are now. It began with a lawyer posting an ad about immigration services to Usenet. It has come a long way since then. All the while, the web browser has supported always advertising, making it easier and easier to consume ads, buy and sell via th…
I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up whatever optimizations the current silent behavior allows. I'm sure Google would do everything to stop that from ever being standard though.
Re: Mozilla goes incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup early-stage investments
#80The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was lifted we started the descent into where things are now. It began with a lawyer posting an ad about immigration services to Usenet. It has come a long way since then. All the while, the web browser has supported always advertising, making it easier and easier to consume ads, buy and sell via th…
That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten better but when I used to dig into that code for work some years ago it was near negligent incompetent. If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that works, as exemplified by every other profession, is credentials: lic…
Regulation is a start. In the short history of the commercial internet, we have seen that any notion of "self-regulation" is a joke. The reason some of these particularly acute problems in your industry exist is because there is zero regulation. It is also why the industry is so profitable, and why those profits can be channeled to a select few particpants without much resistance. The conflict of interest that stands in the way of changing the status quo is insurmountable without having at least some rules. History so far has shown there is no practical way to restrain this type of activity without some legal basis. No amounts of money from advertising and investors are going to solve these problems.
No one wants regulation but without it, a few large companies are going to be the ones making the "rules". The future of the internet's design will be crafted to fuel their continued survival. I have been watching this happen since the birth of the web. It is easier to see when you do not work in the industry.
Imagine if advertising did not subsidise your work and you had to sell your software. How much would people pay? Yes, there would be motivation to write original, quality software. But this is a terrifying idea to today's software "engineers". The hell with good software, they want to get paid. Advertisers can make that happen.
If someone really believes the internet and advertising are like chocolate and peanut butter -- they go great together -- just look at what has happened to "news", a profession that, like today's "tech" industry, relies on advertising to survive. Every day people come to HN to complain about the ridiculous headlines, bias, sensationalism, etc. We are losing serious journalism. We are also losing serious software. From where I sit, we are losing a lot. Whatever we are gaining seems like a poor tradeoff.