What, it was a bad idea to give control of how the Internet is rendered to an ad agency? Who could have seen this coming?
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Well obviously it was fine because they had a secret motto not to be evil which is basically impossible to backtrack on.
Wait, what's that? They backtracked once it was no longer profitable? π²
Making most of the internet dependent on ad revenue was a bad idea in the first place.
Not for the ones who concocted that conceit (google).
Now all we can do is convince as many people as we can to use firefox instead of putting up with this bullshit.
It's far too late for that, and it won't work anyway.
Frankly, this is where regulators are supposed to step in. They won't, but if it were working as it was intended to work, they'd have stepped in long before now.
This will probably be another case of the European Union having to save our (the U.S. and others) collective asses from corporate overreach.
With that mindset, nothing will ever get accomplished. As Louis Rossmann often says: We, the people, are who can change the culture and that's what matters most.
Waiting for government to act is a recipe for disaster. Governments react to angry people.
I am under no illusion the challenge we face, but I ain't going to roll over, I will keep pushing. Give up if you want, but telling everyone to give up and you choose to become a stooge of the oppressors.
this is where regulators aew supposed to step in.
EU should come back to the rescue.
It's the only thing that has a chance of working. Us few Firefox users have no chance of weighing in the balance, we'll just be cast aside. And the US won't do anything, as usual.
tbh i think other government bodies should follow UN too, as far as i know they have been the only governing body that voices concern whenever tech companies become too greedy.
The EU isn't some magical force that only does good for privacy. They had their own fair share of scandals and pretty much all regulations regarding privacy and data collection conveniently omit duties and responsibility for governments and such. They just realized that in an information age information is power. And they want that power for themselves and not some large state-like corporations. Which can be a win for us, sometimes, but it's not a silver bullet.
This in particular is actually something they might like, because it would allow them to ensure "safe" environment for ... whatever they want. With convenient tracking and anything else should they desire so.
The regulators are on their side... government is not your friend.
No, Lobbyist that have money and "good intention" that influence governments are evil. Informed Government officials are actually capable of doing stuff for the citizens.
Someone who doesn't work in tech rarely knows much about it, so those are few and far between.
If our regulators didn't have loaded diapers and ask stuff like "how to convert to .jpg", they surely don't see the issues here.
You mean the nonprofit company that is dependent completely on a contract with google to stay solvent? Ya, firefox will definitely never be pressured by google... Bruh
@AvailableFill74 @nottheengineer source π΅π»ββοΈβ
βOne thing Mozilla does have going for it is a lot of moneyβmore than $1 billion in cash reserves, according to its latest financial statement. The primary source of this capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments, which started in 2005, have been increasingβup 50% over the past decade, to more than $450 million, even as the total number of Firefox users has plummeted. In 2021 these payments accounted for 83% of Mozillaβs revenue.β
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf
Well color me surprised.
Where's the "in secret" part?
You mean because what they proof-of-concepted or drafted privately wasn't publicly visible 8 days earlier?
I don't get it.
add to that - just from https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/1051714
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd
Please comment any information under this post and create cross-links at any possible posts - to create comprehensible information source.
Is that Googleβs head of marketing in the photograph?
Gotta love the open source licences (when we have libre licences). At least Google stand as a good example on why open source licences are not a good option in comparison to free ones (we have BSD vs AT&T too as an example).
How does Google/AT&T stand as an example that free is better than open source? That makes no sense..
It does encourage informed people to use open source alternatives though.
By mentioning AT&T I'm talking about the sue against BSD on 90's (which started a limbo for a lot of open source software developed at universities). That sue started the free software movement ( that is usually mistaken by open source) and all the *nix derivates. For example foundation of FSF, GPL License, GNU, Linux, etc.
Then on 20's Google wanted to implement a similar software development scheme, but with the possibility of making privative any piece of software as they wish without further notice. So they created an open source license (that doesn't protect the software) and spread the concept around the world.
Now we get surprised when Google suddenly makes private a part of source code that it's designed to implement DRM measures on the web. But we knew that this was going to happen.
We already seen this behavior on the AT&T vs. BSD sue. But well, only humans fall 3 times on the same stone.
Free software licences were created to solve this problem. Yet their meaning has been forgotten, and companies have spread open source as the "right" movement just because it benefits them, but not the user.
Interesting!
I will have to do more research on that and investigate more into open-source vs free software as well as their origins.
Thanks for the insight, sorry if my previous comment felt snide!
All cool. It's just sad that Netscape succeeded putting open source on the same bag as free software.
These are good reads:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution
Much appreciated!