Before some emotions getting high on the title and the website, here are a few things coming from me
- Not my title of choice.
- I do not like this user or his page because he practical calls every Browser spyware, you do not need to believe me on this, just check other articles from him.
- He has some valid points but others are pure nonsense which is the reason I dislike the user, he often lacks proper research on topics he links he mentions.
- Do not make more drama out of it then it is. Thanks.
- Do not bash the author, it is his opinion. Valid findings are okay, of course. This also goes vice-versa, sure thing.
Update
So I do want to take to heart everything you said about you not personally agreeing with the title or some of the arguments. Duly noted.
But boy oh boy, you were not kidding.
First, that’s an awful lot to have to demonstrate. There’s a lot of unnecessary rhetorical flourish.
And second, this is just an awful, awful lot of preamble. It’s a lot of saying without showing. I used to have a website as a teenager and I kind of wrote like this.
So they’re a little too drunk on their own supply, and their indictment of Mozilla isn’t really what they’ve done, it’s more of like a JV debate team argument about what is implied by this and that, also a very teenager thing to do.
What then follows is an awful lot more preamble with none of the offenses explained, and then, the starting point is to just read through ordinary boilerplate language and a privacy policy, and to write a bunch of incredulous reactions about how it’s all a facade, still not really making any argument.
It finally, at long last, gets to some real points, when it surveys varieties of location and tracking data, clear gifs, and Google recaptcha things that Mozilla uses, which I think is helpful to know and worthy of discussion. Although the conclusions drawn from these, “Mozilla staff is incompetent”, “Mozilla hatew their users”… is just nuts. This is all written by a kid, I think.
I guess what would be helpful is if all of this over the top language is thrown away and someone with more patience picks out whatever the key arguments are. Then they could be restated somewhere else.
I actually agree that the author of the mentioned article often fails to connect the dots because e.g. automatic security updates, enforces or not, is a security feature to ensure that the user really gets the latest version because e.g. the Windows eco-system has no easy way to ensure that. After decades Windows OS gets now finally an imitation of Linux Store system trough winget but that requires several things + you need to trust MS once again.
However, I think he has some valid points but you should not let him get some air when he talks about technical stuff or COVID and things that are slightly controversial because you can easily misinterpret them in both ways. I found it weird that at the end of his article, when he had no steam left that he then started to connect his past articles that are irrelevant into such Mozilla article, I speculate that he knows that this gets some attention and then used his chance to promote other articles, but this is just my speculation.
I do not think he said that Mozilla hates their own users, but he gave some examples that they made some wrong judgment calls based on a popular example. I mean that was true and applies to basically every platform as well as cooperation, sometimes you do handle things badly or not as people expect from you but what he said about Filipus Klutiero was true an actual in the scene a scandal at that time. I do think Mozilla learned from that because I never heard that happened again.
He should have been a little bit more polite and objectively and remove his own opinion from this, otherwise it looks too based to be taken serious, and this is simply a serious thing to clown around with.
Well he says the following:
Yeah, he wrote - Mozilla staff - and not Mozilla and everyone who is connected to it.
Based on that example I would also come to the conclusion that - they - handled it badly at that time. With they I mean whoever actually really was involved into this.
I also do not know if that was a single staff decision or if that was reviewed by others. He is a bit harsh and it reads that he generalize this, but I do not think that was his intention. I guess he meant, based on his given example that this particular staff did not liked Filipus Klutiero opinion, but this will remain a secret since there is no evidence for or against such conclusion.
I would rule against staff here because they are biased, one way or another and it makes more sense that you ban the ones who do not agree with you or your program because it possible make Mozilla or their staff look bad. But it already looked bad so or so, so whoever had the saying, he simply made a judgment call.
I don’t think there’s any normal usage of the English language where Mozilla doesn’t encompass “Mozilla staff.”
Mozilla as cooperation and staff, CEO, developers, fans, haters etc might have other inertestes. This is not the same and a oversimplification + generalization what you simply wrongfully interpret here. Staff is typical admin, mod … depends on who was involved, which we simply do not know.
There are thousands of articles claiming Google is evil, would you assume here every worker that works for Google is evil, no it is just to show the whole point. There are interests coming from CEO, Staff, developers, etc. In that given example the admin, mod or whoever was behind might had an interest to protect Mozilla here. Protecting interests is by default nothing bad but it can get bad if there are things connected to it, ethical implications etc.
I already said we do not know the whole story and never will.
I’m sorry, you’re just dead wrong here. In normal everyday parlance, references to Mozilla include their staff.
That’s consistent with how we normally talk about companies in pretty much any context.
Not according to articles that flying around the internet.