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Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

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Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#161

Post by abnercoimbre »

horeszko wrote: post #152

I suppose now is a good time to ask if there are any good _non-corporate_ open source browsers out there? Seems to me that businesses operate within an incentive structure that will always encourage them to take maximum advantage of users and do anti-user things no matter what their original goals were. The non-corporate part is key imo (see Canonical, Mozilla now etc.)

We're not getting anywhere without the social support for it. Virtually all tech conferences are corporate-funded, for example, so they're not going to praise independent browsers. Conversations get stifled.

Self-plug but my indie conferences [0] promote software that respect the user's quality of experience. One of my favorite presentations that we've featured is SerenityOS (including their open-source browser) which made headlines at the time. [1]

[0] https://handmadecities.com

[1] https://vimeo.com/641406697

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#162

Post by roelschroeven »

logdap wrote: post #4
wlesieutre wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!" At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback…

Mozilla management are malicious snakes. This isn't the first time they've tried something like this and it won't be the last. Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening. They're testing the water for even more ads in Firefox, trying to normalize this until people stop complaining. Keep the heat on them, don't give them an inch or they'll take a mile.

If they keep doing things like this, people will stop complaining. Because they drive users away, and there will be nobody left to complain.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#163

Post by pessimizer »

warkdarrior wrote: post #105
mozman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct answer

Why would Google try to prop up Firefox as a competitor? Both Safari and Edge on desktop are twice the market share of Firefox, so the browser market is competitive enough without Firefox. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

Safari and Edge (which is also Chrome) having twice the dismal market share of Firefox doesn't make the browser market competitive. Safari is an appliance delivered exclusively on machines manufactured by a single company that holds a small, though luxury, part of the market. Edge (is Chrome, and) is only available on one OS [edit: I'm guess I'm wrong about this, didn't imagine that Edge would be available on Macs.]

Firefox is the only "credible" competitor, although Firefox's only profitable customer is Google itself.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#164

Post by kirbyfan64sos »

Animats wrote: post #96
lelanthran wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. The current crop of "leaders" have a vision that does not include Firefox being the best browser it can be. Trust me, they're politically aware of what they are doing, and are only gauging outrage now. Give it some time and they'll figure out how to leverage the outrage, as they did before. Never let a good crisis go to waste, and al…

> The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. Mozilla got rid of their founder, Brendan Eich, for donating to a California initiative against gay marriage. Now we see what that costs us.

Yes, because Brave is the model of ethics! Oh, wait a sec...

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#165

Post by pessimizer »

orangecat wrote: post #127
letsdothisagain wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hanlon's razor only makes sense if you're a teenager posting on reddit. Just world theory and all that. Once you get into corporate politics it's the exact opposite. God help you if you ever get into the nuts and bolts of governmental, or gasp intergovernmental politics.

Eh, from my experience in several large companies there's some malice, but there's way more incompetence.

From my experience, companies are happy to strategically feign incompetence, blindness and deafness.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#166

Post by pixelbath »

_xivi wrote: post #150
whatshisface wrote: post #116

Well, I'm not going to use Chrome, but I guess WebKit is okay... what browser should we be using now?

Arc

Ah, yes. The closed-source, single-platform, invite-only browser made by a company nobody's ever heard of outside the startup ecosystem.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#167

Post by pessimizer »

logdap wrote: post #4
wlesieutre wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!" At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback…

Mozilla management are malicious snakes. This isn't the first time they've tried something like this and it won't be the last. Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening. They're testing the water for even more ads in Firefox, trying to normalize this until people stop complaining. Keep the heat on them, don't give them an inch or they'll take a mile.

> Each time they issue noncommittally apologies

Introduced by a bunch of gaslighting that it isn't actually happening or isn't anything different that what was always happened, then interleaved with accusations of bullying and entitlement directed at its userbase.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#168

Post by lelanthran »

kirbyfan64sos wrote: post #164
Animats wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. Mozilla got rid of their founder, Brendan Eich, for donating to a California initiative against gay marriage. Now we see what that costs us.

Yes, because Brave is the model of ethics! Oh, wait a sec...

> Yes, because Brave is the model of ethics! Oh, wait a sec...

Short answer: Well, compared to FF and the fine article that we are commenting on ... yes, it's certainly a model that FF could adopt!

Long answer: I don't see ads in Brave. I don't recall even installing any third parties to block ads. As far as the adtech space goes, Brave is indeed more ethical than FF (or Chrome, or Edge).

Now if you are of the view that, ethically, blocking ads is a bad thing, then I'm afraid we cannot actually discuss this any further, because there are very few arguments that will get me to change my mind about blocking advertisements, not least of which is the ad under discussion, i.e. "FULL-SCREEN-IN-YOUR-FACE-COVER-EVERYTHING-AND-STOP-THE-USER-FROM-DOING-ANYTHING-UNTIL-THE-AD-IS-DISMISSED" type of ad.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#169

Post by pessimizer »

93po wrote: post #130
Sunspark wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would have been a cost to keeping him as well. There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool available to Mozilla.

Jeff Bezos donated more than Eich in 2018 to Cory Gardner, who is anti-equal marriage, anti-LGBT+ discrimination laws, and against same-sex adoption. It's interesting we don't hold the same standard to Bezos, or speculate that Bezos' donation affected his hiring pool.

It's not interesting at all. Exactly who was going to fire Bezos from Amazon?

Also, I know this is the internet, but disapproving of one person doesn't mean that you're promoting another random person that wasn't even part of the conversation. If you want to bring Bezos in, at a minimum you're required to find a single person, living or dead, who thinks that Bezos's donations were fine but Eich's were terrible.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#170

Post by pessimizer »

slater wrote: post #106
pwdisswordfishc wrote: post #19

> The most recent relevant report on Mozilla’s bug tracking platform received the "RESOLVED WORKSFORME" tag Typical Mozilla. At this point I don’t know why they even allow bug submissions from the public at all.

Now changed from WORKSFORME to FIXED https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158 Nothing to see here, folks! (until marketing comes up with its next blunder)

I'm pretty sure "WORKSFORME" was somebody trying to be so aggressively mocking of users who complained that they forgot there was an actual bug in the ad.
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