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Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#5
post #2

It’s too bad they can’t raise enough from donations to avoid this downward spiral.

They most likely had plenty.

Instead of leading Mozilla down a couple highly-focused paths, their leadership decided to take every single path, including social issues and more that have nothing to do with technology, web browsers, or the things that make Mozilla money.

The worst part is, they half-assed almost all of those distractions too.

Today, Mozilla is kind of like those Hollywood Actor memes - doesn't know when to say no and continues to dilute their brand in the process.

Mozilla is a flailing, dying beast because of gross negligence.

Now, Mozilla says they're going to change online advertising! Yeah, no they're not... more distractions.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#7
Ladybird can't happen soon enough. I've been a ff advocate for many, many years and it pains me to say this, but I've had enough now. I don't want my browser to be made by an advertising company.

I wish Mozilla the best. It would be great if they could be successful in advocating for web ads that consist of, say, a jpeg and an href, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#9
That's all flowery happy-talk, but lurking in the background is the reality that Firefox's main revenue source (Google) is clearly going away and they need to replace it. It seems they've decided to replace it with advertising and everything else is them trying to justify that decision in noble terms.

> we do this fully acknowledging our expanded focus on online advertising won’t be embraced by everyone in our community

I'm glad that they acknowledge this! And deciding to to something that is unpopular isn't a sin or anything. They can do whatever they like. I'm just a bit saddened that this direction means that my trust level with Mozilla and Firefox has to be greatly reduced.

But times change, and often for the worse. Such is life.

Re: Mozilla becoming active in online advertising

#10
post #6

It's hard to look at this as something other than a trigger for inevitable conflicts of interest, and the same enshittification spiral Google experienced.

> the same enshittification spiral Google experienced

This is exactly what comes to my mind. When Google acquired DoubleClick, they positioned it as a net good for everybody in terms of privacy. DoubleClick was notoriously awful in those terms. Google said (and people, including myself, believed) that by owning them, Google can make them into something better.

Instead, DoubleClick made Google into something much, much worse.

I would love to hear from Mozilla what they're doing to avoid a similar fate.

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