this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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[–] csolisr@hub.azkware.net 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Considering that the two projects funded by Cloudflare are headed by known bigots (Andreas Kling and DHH), it makes me distrust Cloudflare even further.

[–] aliteral@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate on why they are bigots? Im interested.

[–] csolisr@hub.azkware.net 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Both developers have been actively hostile to DEI initiatives, and at least on the case of DHH, also coddling with ultranationalism viewpoints.

On Kling: hyperborea.org/reviews/softwar…

On DHH: tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-c…

[–] aliteral@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How can there be so many pieces of shit working in tech? It baffles me. The space were everything is in constant motion and "innovation" has this sorts of people being vocal about their fascism.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 days ago

Easy money, easy power, easy delusions of grandeur I'm guessing. Pick any two of three.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 6 days ago

As the top comment on the Hacker News thread notes,

Cloudflare clearly wants to move us to a future where only approved browsers are allowed to access the web... an independent open source web browser is obviously against that ethos.

I'm suspicious on that basis alone.

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 2 points 6 days ago

Really hoping this project goes well and has a strong start.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 193 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cloudflare and "challenging the status quo" in the same phrase ?

[–] Damage@feddit.it 74 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, the browser status quo. I guess they want their own Chrome.

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 62 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Its sponsorship only of an open source browser, with no telemetry, advertising, crypto, etc, etc built in.

Sponsors get listed as sponsors, thats it.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 19 points 1 week ago (16 children)
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[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 74 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Cloudflare has announced its sponsorship of the Ladybird browser, an independent (still-in-development) open-source initiative

Is it still independent?

[–] shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 85 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, and their donations are limited to 100k a year per corporation/organization, so there cant be a company who comes, donates 20million and then tries to gain control of them through money

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, and their donations are limited to 100k a year per corporation/organization

Interesting that they did that.

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[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 58 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yes, it is still independent. Cloudflare is just one of the three Platinum sponsors. Other two are Shopify and FUTO. Proton is also a sponsor, but in Gold tier, iirc.

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[–] Sina@beehaw.org 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think It's on their charter that no matter how much corporate money they'll get they'll never accept any outside influence just the same. The donators are amply warned to not expect anything other than development as usual or faster.

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People always imagine this as "I will pay you $100 to kick the puppy" and of course they would never.

But what actually happens is that you have a long-term donor. You rely on their help (they're paying for you to be able to hire a nice college intern who's really smart and has been fun to have on the project). They never tell you what to do so you see them as more of a friend than anything else. It's perfectly normal to get some lunch with friends and talk. You're stuck on some problems and they have some good connections that help you out. That might even be worth more than $100k, but it's not money at all so it's OK that they're helping you like this. They also talk you up, which is like free advertising except you didn't ask for it so that also doesn't count. Anyway, at some of the lunches they're telling you about what's going on with them and there's some problems they're dealing with that you could help with. They don't ask for help, of course, because they know you're independent. But being independent means it's OK for you to do what you want. Even help a friend out who didn't ask for help so they're not influencing you...

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 64 points 1 week ago (6 children)

This is very encouraging:

Ladybird uses a new browser engine called LibWeb that is being created from scratch by the development team.

Browsers that rely on Chromium / Blink rely on Google. Firefox relies on Google for its funding, so any browser based on Gecko relies on Google. If they can make a browser engine that has rough feature parity with Chromium but doesn''t rely on Google that's very healthy for the web.

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago (12 children)

You do know the difference of "built by" and "partly funded by", right?

What exactly is your problem by Mozilla/Firefox being partly funded by Google?

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[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Ironically, we already had that - Microsoft's first version of Edge was using their own engine. On release, it had the highest W3C compatibility score.

Google started shitting on it (including things like serving clear HTML version of Gmail because "the browser is outdated" if it detected the Edge user agent) and massive self-delusion campaigns of "Edge is just Internet Explorer" eventually killed the thing and forced MS to switch to Chromium.

I have Ladybird installed and I check it out every now and then, but I honestly doubt that a bunch of random developers will succeed where Microsoft failed. Unless Cloudflare somehow chips in and forces Google's hand into compatibility, but I don't know if even they are big enough to do that.

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[–] KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Firefox relies on Google for its funding, so any browser based on Gecko relies on Google

Google introduced Extension manifest v3 to effectively to kill/handicap AdBlock extensions.

Mozilla, though getting funding from Google to make google its default search engine, officially decided to keep supporting Manifest v2.

Adblockers are direct challenge to Alphabet’s ad revenue which is still their biggest cash cow.

That speaks a valume about how much control google has on Mozilla decision making process.

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challenge the status quo by partnering with the status quo...

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (18 children)

ladybird browser coming up with status quo integration so they challenge status quo.

it's like these browser devs have no idea what people actually want in a browser.

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Challenge the status quo in a Snowpiercer fashion.

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[–] thelittleerik@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (5 children)

You are not much challenging the status quo by partnering up with the NSA.

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[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Still, it’s hard to understand why Cloudflare chose to back exactly Omarchy.

Maybe the developers in Cloudflare use it? Also weird because Omarchy's default browser is Chromium I think. The webpage didn't list the default browser, so not sure about that.

[–] mondoman712@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] railway692@piefed.zip 33 points 1 week ago (16 children)

Anyway, Omarchy and Ladybird are both run by fascists. Omarchy makes this pretty obvious from the outset – on the home page the big YouTube poster image prominently features SuperGrok, which is a pathetically transparent dog-whistle to signal alliance with Elon Musk’s fascist politics. Omarchy is the pet project of David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, who is well known as a rich fascist weirdo.2 One need only consult his blog to browse his weird, racist views on immigration, fat-shaming objections to diverse representation, vaguely anti-feminist/homophobic/rapey rants on consent, and, recently, tone-policing antifascists who celebrate the death of notable fascist Charlie Kirk.

Speaking of tributes to Charlie Kirk, that brings us to Andreas Kling, the project lead for Ladybird, who tweeted on the occasion of his assassination:

RIP Charlie Kirk

I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists.

– @awesomekling

I was not prepared to learn these things today.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

most people outside the us have never heard any of kirk's talking points. if you only know that he is a conservative debater and use your normal (non-us) definition of "conservative", then "people should not die for their opinions" is not a controversial take. i'm not saying that's what's happened here but it's the most likely situation considering klings history.

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[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (22 children)

How much you want to bet Cloudflare went to them and was like 'hey either work for (sorry, "with") us or we declare you a "suspicious" traffic source and block you.'

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[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago

pack it up folks, we've been compromised

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Giving how apple adjacent the project is I have never had much faith in it being able to truly become an alternative to firefox.

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