HN user
"I know it’s been a long day and that many of you probably haven’t slept in 24 hours. We know that the days to come will be filled with the screeching voices of the minority."
It seems kind of tone deaf to not acknowledge that people have real concerns about the unintended consequences of enabling this.
...seriously? Apple? Apple is your privacy company? And you were just complaining about telemetry and pushing updates and DRM. Ugh.
My Original comment:
At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple).
Way to take things out of context ;)
what does that have to with any of the above? Also the EU and many other orgs are thinking about the same thing. The Internet is new and we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation. I'm going to make the best assumptions about you, so I'm hoping you can see why experiments in that realm can be advantageous.
I guess maybe you should look into the black mirror before you think about censoring others (I guess you are in favor of speech for me and not for thee). You already spread misinformation with the redaction of my original comment.
DRM > Again, a necessity. You cannot watch most news online without DRM. Supporting DRM is not the same as campaigning for DRM, which brings me to the biggest surprise I found in your comment of all the others...
More false information being spewed. I have never been prompted to install the DRM plugin on any (mainstream) news site that I've visited. Point me to just one.
Terrifying, really. They want to make an ~educational pamphlet~.
Cherrypick much?
Mozilla’s Open Innovation team will work with like-minded technologists and artists to develop technology that combats misinformation.
Goes hand in hand with:
...cognitive bias, belief echos, and algorithmic filter bubbles.
Mozilla will partner with global media organizations to do this, and also double down on our existing product work in the space, like Pocket...
I would have less of an issue with this if traditional media organizations where less bias and publicly retracted stories or incorrect information. It seems that, in modern times, the bar for what counts as real journalism is quite low and breaks down when journalists and media organizations won't admit when they are wrong. Mozilla is also a bias organization since Brendan Eich was forced to resign[1] just because he donated his own money to an unfavorable organization. As a gay man, I don't want to live in a world where people are not allowed to express how or why they feel a certain way about a given topic. Mozilla* is not the right organization/company/project to combat the problem of "fake news" or assert that they are.
With the long laundry list of issues with Mozilla, they are not* in any position to take the moral high ground when it comes to the issue at hand (tracking/telemetry) or in the case of being the gatekeeper of the truth.
.. > Very reluctantly joining other browsers is 'pushing'?
They were in a position to say no but they always seem to take the "everyone else should stop doing this thing except for us" route. The choice they made sure did not help their market share in any way (since that is what many argue).
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mozilla-ceo-resignation/m...
The telemetry is opt-in...
It is not "opt-in". The popup tells you to change those settings and if you don't do anything, it is on. Just by unchecking the box in settings does not turn off all telemetry.
Calling studies "malware" is just disingenuous.
I guess you don't remember the "Mr.Robot" incident[1] that we were not suppose to know about and many did not consent? Pushing an update with "Studies" enabled by default and then pushing this malicious software is not consent!
I don't see what MITI has anything to do with the rest.
Mozilla* is not in a position to be calling out other companies when they themselves are guilty of doing the exact same things.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/16/firefox-mr-robot-extensi...
The posturing is quite strong with the Mozilla Foundation. It is quite laughable that the Mozilla Foundation would take this "holier than thou" position, considering that they (Foundation + Corporation) are pushing : tracking (telemetry), ADs (Pocket), malware (studies), MITI[1] (Ministry of Truth) and DRM (EME) in Firefox. The sad part here is the fact that the Mozilla community does not seem to care one bit about these issues[2].
At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple). The Free Software / "Open Source" community has a critical problem with project supporting organizations pushing for things that undermine privacy, security and freedom to make a little bit of cash. If we don't address these issues now, it might not be possible to fix them in the near future.
[1] Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : http://archive.is/jcJWg
[2] For those who say : "you can turn these things off", this is not an excuse! Telling a new user that they have to fiddle with `about:config` settings out of the box is not acceptable.
Creating a single entity who gets to control what is true from its point of view?
Mozilla’s Open Innovation team will work with ["like-minded"] technologists and artists to develop technology that combats misinformation. Mozilla will partner with global media organizations to do this, and also double down on our existing product work in the space, like Pocket, Focus, and Coral.
Firefox is the gatekeeper to the web for many and if Mozilla or this initiative is going to inject their bias in the browser, then it means that anyone that Mozilla or the Mozilla Information Trust Initiative disagrees with will get censored or their speech altered. No organization that is run by humans can make the claim that they won't have a bias one way or another. In order to have a free society, we must have the freedom to express any idea (no matter how stupid they might be). People have become too lazy to look at other sources or challenge what they hear. Ideas need to be challenged in the open and be able to hold their own weight. We should not need an organization or a browser making those calls.
This will be the first version of Firefox that I won't be using. The final straw with me was the "Studies" integration. I've wanted to stop using Firefox since Pocket and EME was integrated, but I have failed to find anything else that works for me. I can no longer pretend to trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Firefox team, given their track record over the last few years. In our current era, the browser has become a critical piece of software and it is dangerous to trust an organization who wishes to censor [1][2] and track users.
[1] Brendan Eich https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce...
[2] Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : https://archive.fo/jcJWg
How do we know that they would not be collecting even more info on us by making such a request?