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Firefox plan to show ads and shopping in the near future in the browser as an opt-out
(bugzilla.mozilla.org)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Technology
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This is a weird one. On the one hand, we have Mozilla, the last remaining browser company not sucking at the teat of either Google or Apple and we all expect for Mozilla to somehow generate enough money to pay enough employees to stay competitive on the other hand we have the users who expect them not to do anything to try and leverage their userbase to create financial independence.
The problem with Mozilla remains the same problem that they've had for a while. Mozilla doesn't acknowledge the symbiotic relationship it has with its community and the community always over reacts, which means there's a chasm where simple things should be easy but they're not.
Take this for example, Mozilla only had to have a public facing discussion about this and then go and do it anyway.
Sometimes paying lip service works. But since they didn't, you have people like OP who feel like something nefarious is happening and in the end Firefox users lose out as things like donations being pulled hurt.
Mozilla already shows ads, as do all the other browsers, however unlike the other browsers, you have a fully functioning uBlock that can and will remove anything that the preferences don't cover.
Mozilla makes hundreds of millions from Google. Every single person could stop donating and they would continue along just fine (Well the CEO might need to take a 10 million yearly pay cut).
What weird is seeing people champion the enshittificstion of FOSS software.
That's not the difference between this and the usual kind of enshittification. The users are one side, the advertisers (and google) are the other. Nothing unusual there. The difference is that this time it's driven by desperate grasping at straws, rather than barefaced greed.