• XLE@piefed.social
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    23 hours ago

    This is a bad article. Embarassingly bad at points.

    The author claims Firefox is good because of only one reason: inherent moral value to be Not Google.

    Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

    But when Mozilla returned to Twitter - basically tweeting out an apology - the author suddenly forgot to hold Firefox to that single standard, and created an excuse for why they had to ditch the moral high ground to pursue user growth:

    I’m sure the reason Firefox is on X is because they’re hoping to reach out to new users… they desperately need to reach out wherever they can.

    • If Firefox’s only claim to fame is to be Not Big Tech, it has to not follow in the footsteps and align itself with Big Tech.
    • And if Firefox eventually makes itself ethically indistinguishable (or worse!) than the corporate alternatives, then it loses its reason to claim even moral value.

    Here are some other thoughts.

    The latest [complaint] was a post from a prolific blogger who has switched to Vivaldi because Firefox is now on X. He is somehow able to reconcile this with the fact that Vivaldi is also on X…

    Probably because Vivaldi doesn’t spend a ton of its time and money marketing itself as an alternative to big platforms. Maybe because Vivaldi realized talk is cheap and put it into action by hosting their own Mastodon server. Maybe because when Mozilla went back to Twitter, they did it with their strange apology.

    the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises. It makes me wonder if it’s a bot campaign by Google

    “Everyone I disagree with is bots” is the lowest point of this whole post.

    you desperately need to help [Firefox].

    The author of this post must not know that it Mozilla has rigged the game in favor of Google: you cannot “help” Firefox with a donation. That money only goes to the Foundation, which is currently spending their time lobbying against antitrust legislation. Only their corporate partners (read: Google) can give money to Firefox.