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1602 points rebelwebmaster | 9 comments | | HN request time: 3.364s | source | bottom
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dblohm7 ◴[] No.24122017[source]
[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.]

One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards.

OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at the corporate doublespeak in that press release. Fuck Mozilla, I'm switching to Chrome."

Really? That's what's got you bent out of shape?

Sure, Mozilla has made mistakes. Did we apologize? Did we learn anything? Did we work to prevent it happening again?

People want to continue flogging us for these things while giving other companies (who have made their own mistakes, often much more consequential than ours, would never be as open about it, and often learn nothing) a relatively free pass.

I'm certainly not the first person on the planet whose employer has been on the receiving end of vitriol. And if Mozilla doesn't make it through this next phase, I can always find another job. But what concerns me about this is that Mozilla is such an important voice in shaping the future of the internet. To see it wither away because of people angry with what are, in the grand scheme of things, minor mistakes, is a shame.

EDIT: And lest you think I am embellishing about trivial complaints, there was a rant last week on r/Firefox that Mozilla was allegedly conspiring to hide Gecko's source code because we self-host our primary repo and bug tracking instead of using GitHub, despite the fact that the Mozilla project predates GitHub by a decade.

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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[] No.24125514[source]
I certainly don't think the corporate doublespeak is reason to switch to Chrome, but I do think the corporate doublespeak in this announcement is just awful.

When you're doing a layoff, just announce the layoff, show compassion to the affected employees, and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement. Putting stuff about the fight against systemic racism in the opening paragraph of a layoff announcement is just inviting a tidal wave of eye rolls.

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vages ◴[] No.24126092[source]
I have to respectfully disagree. It is common for leaders to re-state their entity's reason for being as they bring bad news. See Churchill's speeches during the battle of France, for instance.

I think this opening was well-written and clearly communicated Mozilla's purpose. You can blame it for being populist, but don't hate the player, hate the game.

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chappi42 ◴[] No.24128895[source]
The opening, coming from a super well paid CEO, pissed me off. I need a good browser, maybe with accompaigned products but no save the internet, racism, bl, etc. Most likely won't ever support Mozilla with such language.
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1. collyw ◴[] No.24129717[source]
Agreed i was pissed off when they started injecting politics into my browser recently.
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2. espadrine ◴[] No.24130085[source]
Did you police yourself? It seems you replaced a word you intended with the word “politics” to be PC.

Mozilla has always been political. It was born so. Why do you think Jamie Zawinski got Shepard Fairey to design its logo? The Mozilla manifesto is full of political statements. Do you remember the fight against DRM? Net neutrality? SOPA?

Often, people that speak like you mean “speech favoring equal treatment” instead of “politics”.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-hi...

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3. baq ◴[] No.24130235[source]
By politics do you mean things irrelevant to browsing experience or things you disagree with?
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4. Nextgrid ◴[] No.24131021[source]
There's a difference between politics to improve Internet-related things (like fighting DRM, SOPA, or promoting net neutrality) and other political issues that while important are completely irrelevant to a browser development company.
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5. s0l1dsnak3123 ◴[] No.24131070[source]
Exactly. Everything in the world is political: Firefox was a political statement from its outset, Mozilla is a political entity, and also - and I've yet to see an argument from anyone against this notion - Mozilla is overwhelmingly a force for good in the world. Lots of people on HN really struggle to accept this, because it goes against their own (libertarian right or anarcho-capitalist) political perspective.
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6. ◴[] No.24131305[source]
7. finnthehuman ◴[] No.24131383{3}[source]
People complaining about "politics" are often complaining about political scope creep.

If I keep that in mind while listening/reading people complaining about "politics" it is often the smallest change to their stated message that would make it clear and internally consistent. So I ask clarifying questions to see if their complaint is poorly articulated rather than picking at their words to defend the thing they're criticizing.

8. def_true_false ◴[] No.24131420[source]
They used to care about freedom, now they care about a bunch of vaguely defined stuff aligned with (some of) US left. Being from outside the US, to me this change and the speed of it seems extremely jarring. I mean just look at their messaging in new tabs -- do I really need my browser telling me that "It's okay to like Facebook" or that "Tech (people? companies? projects?) has a responsibity to [...]" ? Thanks, Mozilla, I guess I wouldn't have used it if not for your permission (/s). Does anyone even read these fucking things before they push them out?
9. Nextgrid ◴[] No.24141846{3}[source]
I'd like to add that Mozilla has relatively limited resources and it's more worthwhile for them to focus on issues that are directly related to what they do (the web) instead of unrelated social issues.

Furthermore Mozilla has the expertise, connections and brand when it comes to the web they can use as leverage to solve web-related social/political issues, but might not have much leverage for unrelated issues so the risk/reward ratio will not be in their favor.