• ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?

    There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)

    • mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.

    • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.

      • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.

        As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            I like LibreWolf! But while they may be the natural successor to a folded Firefox, they would need to beef up dramatically to actually be the stewards of the codebase. Right now they do a good job at removing stuff, but setting a direction for a browser than zings with users requires a fully fledged product org.

            Firefox is caught between those two worlds.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          3 months ago

          I actually think it’s a good thing they are seeking other income sources. After all Google is both their competitor and main income source while being under investigation by the government. Firefox barely manages to keep up with Chrome as-is. Nevermind if they had a team a fraction of its current size. It’s just not really practical for a project this size and scope to have a small plucky team. It needs a big organisation of some kind behind it. Ideally one like Google or Microsoft who can pull income from more profitable projects to pay for better browser engineering. It’s also needed so they can have a say in web standards. An organisation like that also has more ways to make money from their browser like with ChromeOS and Android. Firefox actually tried to make their own smartphone OS, to be honest I am annoyed they didn’t succeed. It would have given us a real alternative to Android while giving them needed income.

        • Kayn@dormi.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          3 months ago

          Your money is honestly better spent donating to new efforts like Ladybird or Servo.

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            Is Servo independent of Mozilla now? It’s instructive how much they swayed when Mozilla cut them away, but seems they’ve found a new team to steward it.

            Ladybird I hadn’t heard of so thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check them out.

      • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations

        because Google pays them so that they keep offering Google as the default search engine. now that Google has been declared a monopoly, they might not be allowed to do that anymore, which means Mozilla loses its funding.

        • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          Mozilla’s funding did mostly consist of the Google partnership (86%), but as you can see, it’s not their only source of income. And you really don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser, which is open source, which also gets community contributions. This is made pretty obvious by their current revenue (>$1,000,000,000) and their CEO’s whopping $5.6 million salary.

          Don’t donate to a shitty for-profit that masks itself with their non-profit company. Instead donate to something like Ladybird, whom are currently in early development but have no plans on adding features that actively spy on you (FakeSpot, Pocket), and they don’t need $500 fucking million to develop a web browser.

          And if you’re going to talk about Mozilla’s social work, just don’t. I’ve already seen it.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. “And you don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser”. Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else’s web engine. Firefox aren’t doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else’s engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.

            The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple’s WebKit only from Google’s advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn’t even start that engine themselves? It’s based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape’s code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.

            • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              3 months ago

              Thank you. Yes, they are also developing their own web engine, which is a very complicated piece of software because of the current sad state of the web. But it doesn’t excuse any of the things I mentioned, and web engine development still doesn’t suckle up that much money as we can see from their current revenue and other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

              I do not mind Mozilla starting other projects, but if you’re talking about FakeSpot or Pocket which are getting integrated into the “more private alternative to browsers like Internet Explorer, and now Chrome” by the “non-profit” whom “prioritize people and their privacy over profits”, I think you need to take a look at those privacy policies I linked in my previous comment.

              I agree with you on your last paragraph, but there are some things I’m bothered with. Mozilla is (or was) a company that focused on one thing, their web browser. Apple and Google are (and were) different, in that they have a vast range of products to maintain. And Gecko is most definitely inferior to Blink in terms of speed, although I’m not familiar with any of their “modernity”.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                I’ve read the one for fakespot. Given what it’s designed to do then having your purchase history makes perfect sense. How else are they meant to make recommendations? If you really have a problem just don’t use that service. The only real criticism here is the name doesn’t imply they also make product recommendations. Nevertheless they explain that on the website.

                I have skimmed the pocket one, and as far as I can tell they aren’t doing anything dodgy. Keeping information only to provide the service, and some anonymised analytics to see how it’s actually being used. The later is needed to direct development effort.

                In summary: Not everyone is out to get you. Some information is needed to provide services.

                Edit: sorry for there different comments, wanted to come back and do more research before I finished making a statement.

                • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 months ago

                  Okay, what does a sweepstake or a contest have to do with a browser extension, made to spot fake reviews. Trade shows? What?

                  I did take a look at this privacy policy before to check if the extension was worth installing, but holy fuck I didn’t see that.

                  And they collect a lot of things, supposedly “automatically”. I have never developed a browser extension, but does the browser force this information on the extension? Do they just look at their data collection and find the geolocation of their users, how they accessed the extension download page, browser specifics etc.?

                  They also sell your “automatically collected” geolocation data, “internet or other electronic network activity”, “inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer”, and “commercial information”. I’ve quoted the three data selling points I really don’t understand, since their “descriptions” aren’t very descriptive. But if we are to fully trust the lawful descriptions they provided, I hope the extension stays at 40,000 users really.

                  FakeSpot’s privacy policy

                • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  Yeah, no problem at all. This is a lot better than people downvoting and not actually talking about what they disagree on. Felt like r/apple.

                  Reading it again, Pocket’s privacy policy is actually not that bad. Thankfully it was not one of those 100 page ones that are made to confuse the shit out of consumers, but I have a slight problem with it.

                  Personalized Advertising: Some Pocket web pages have ads. With your consent, Pocket’s ad partners will place advertising cookies on your device to personalize the ads you see here and on other websites.

                  How does this consent exactly work? Is it just a simple check you have to tick in your account settings, or is it one of those cookie banners that require you to untick 800 advertising partners to “not give consent”? I’m not exactly a Pocket user so I’m a bit ignorant about it.

                  Though there doesn’t seem to be another privacy concern with Pocket. It seems I had misconceptions about their practices.

                  The one other problem I have with Pocket though is, it’s not a feature that should be in a browser, it should be an extension. They have already made a lot of extensions for features that not all of the userbase might need, even FakeSpot is currently an extension (approximately 40,000 users). I guess this is a whole another argument though.

                  I will write my thoughts about FakeSpot in another reply.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                3 months ago

                Oh also the devs behind Ladybrid are apparently against anyone who isn’t male using their technology. People tried to change masculine pronouns in the documentation to neutral pronouns just to be more grammatically accurate, and it started a whole chain of GitHub arguments arguing the change is “political”. Apparently it’s political not to imply that every computer user is a man.

                • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  There are many software from bigots and shitheads that still get used, being seperated from their creator (e.g. Hyprland, I guess you can put here some social media platforms like Xitter if we’re not only talking about open-source software). Although I prefer not using or supporting such software, I’ve not been able to find what you’re talking about. I’ve tried searching “ladybird pronoun controversy (forgive my search engine skills)” and other similar sentences but nothing really related pops up, so it would be great if you told me your source. Thank you!

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                3 months ago

                other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

                Notice the word efforts here. No one has actually succeeded yet despite multiple attempts, some even by Mozilla themselves like Servo. Ladybird is not a fully functioning browser yet. Are they anywhere even close yet? Even if they are close it also has to be fast. Google and Mozilla have spent quite a bit of time, money, and effort making their JavaScript engines as fast as possible.

                I will have a look at some of the links you have given, but honestly I think most criticism thrown at Mozilla isn’t anything close to what the alternatives are guilty of, and is mostly done by conspiracy nuts. The kind of people were Mastodon and Lemmy is their only social media, and refuse to own a modern smartphone that isn’t running custom firmware.

                • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  Ladybird is fairly new. Just like how Mozilla didn’t get Gecko to this point in 1 year, Ladybird will take years of development to become a reliable browser and browser engine.

                  I pretty much agree with you. The alternatives are far worse. Seeing Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge being literal spyware, other Chromium-based browsers cutting out support for content-blocking extensions Firefox is vastly superior to them in terms of privacy. Although that still doesn’t mean Firefox is good, at least if we’re past talking about web browser engines etc., using another Firefox-based browser which is less bloated (Firefox Sync off by default, no Pocket, no recommendations in Addons tab), more privacy-friendly (all telemetry off by default, uBlock Origin installed by default, some hardening options from about:config enabled by default) seems to be the best choice currently, since other options like GNOME’s Epiphany and KDE’s Falkon sucks, if we’re being honest.

                  And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.

          • fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            If you have anything to say against the things I have said, please follow these instructions; stop downvoting, slowly take your mouth off of Mozilla’s balls, and try to actually engage in a constructive conversation on why the things I said were wrong.

    • piracysails@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.

    • Tilgare@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      You’re absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla’s revenue is from Google’s paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it’s anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.

  • Tired8281@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I wonder if we trained an AI on the entire corpus of articles about how Google is gonna kill adblocking, if we could keep these articles going after most people switch uneventfully over to Lite.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.

    Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene

    • s_s@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Google says Manifest v3 is being done “for security reasons” but what they don’t say is that it’s not for your security.

      It’s a Judge Dredd situation.

      Google is vertically integrating the roles of content provider (ads) and content server so that web pages load exactly the way the page’s developer expects them to. This necessarily excludes things that selectively filter content, like blockers.

      They’re essentially taking an open framefork for the web and replacing it with interactive pdfs, that show exactly what the web developer wants, and collects exactly the information the developer wants to know about you.

      If you think you should have more control, use Firefox. Anyone using Chrome is complict at this point.

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Ublock origin isn’t the only ad blocker out there. If you like Ublock origin, use Ublock origin lite. It’s fully V3 compliant.

    • mihnt@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Oh yeah, I have a feeling we’re about to see 2000s level bullshit on computers/phones again.

      • dan@upvote.au
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        The majority of people already don’t use ad blockers though. The Chrome Web Store says that 34 million people use (used?) uBlock Origin, while it’s estimated that around 3.3 billion people use Chrome. If those numbers are correct, only around 1% of Chrome users use uBlock Origin.

          • smb@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            its not just ads and malware, and its not only about beeing sorry for them. ads are also manipulating how people think. not only the obvious things like “that product is good”, but also that products in general would help (with problems you didn’t have). and the format itself of ads (even without considering its contents) already has a changing effects on the minds of those who watch it. i am thinking of some parts of neil postmans thoughts about television back then and i guess there is plenty of possibilities to make a realistic conspiracy theory out of it why exactly the most poisonous parts of television are replicated to the internet with massive force even though everyone ignores ads in the net. i like theories

            unfortunately, feeling sorry for them does not help society to stability. 😥

            • dan@upvote.au
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              3 months ago

              What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

              • smb@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                3 months ago

                What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

                its not about paying for the site a user uses, its about paying those who run the site (and less to pay for someone only “managing” the site by doing actually nothing)

                maybe these could be alternatives:

                • patreon
                • flattr
                • micropayment in general
                • donations (somafm runs on donations)
                • link to shopping platforms (musicians on somafm mostly have links to the songs on amazon that you see while playing the song for free)
                • communities, like FSF, local groups
                • some small payed supporter part (like lwn.net) while the important stuff that makes the win-win of the site is free to use
                • maybe the list from this page can help too: https://kinsta.com/de/blog/patreon-alternativen/ Kickstarter Indiegogo Podia Sellfy Buy Me a Coffee Memberful Hypage Ko-fi Substack Kajabi Gumroad WooCommerce Mighty Networks MemberPress Uscreen

                maybe even a combination of multiple of those *whoa!!! mindblow!!! could be a good choice to allow usersvto choose how to contribute.

                so really only choosing to offer exactly one option that also puts all users at a real risk of real attacks where they can get ripped off of all or lots of their real money and data for the sake if earning 0.003 ¢ per each putting them at high risk is not really what should be done, or do you personally profit from their users high risk and are thus completely okay with it? hope not.

                if you have to earn money with your project or whatever, why not offer several options to choose from? why only one? and while we’re at it, offering an ad-free “membership” for 400 times the price of what they would earn by the same visitor with ads like they try here sometimes, does not make any platform look good, but the opposite.

                there are many platforms that i would pay for monthly and i would spend much more money alltogether than now on that if their price would not be artificially pushed into astronomically heights per service…

                there is one project where i do donate each month a little bit via recurring bank transfer since years. my transfer says the name of the project and “donation” thats pretty easy to setup for both sides, but too complicated for those who pay designers money so they can place the ad layers on top of the 400 other layers of spypixels and navigation controls… really ? lol*

                if those you are talking about cannot afford to have a bank account for some reason, i guess they also cannot receive the revenue of ads on their webpages ;+)

                saying there are no alternatives to ads is rather a candidate for the lamest excuse award ;-)

  • Cpo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’m in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.

    I’ve had enough of Google pushing features like this.

    • Tilgare@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Having ublock on mobile is such a breath of fresh air. I wish I had made the transition sooner. I knew this was coming and completed my transition a few weeks back so I could abandon Chrome on my own time table and not on Google’s. Other than a little headache trying to find extension replacements for pc, I’m LOVING it.

    • zarenki@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that’s when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it’d break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their “Quantum” overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.

      I’m a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.

      • uranibaba@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I remember the Quantum release. They remade how the browser handled tabs, and with the new release you could handle (almost) unlimited number of tabs. I tried this buy opening as many tabs as I could, it worked flawlessly. I can’t even remember how it was before that, except that it was RAM intensive.

      • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        I use Firefox as my main on my home pc. I keep running into things that don’t work on Firefox. Not by saying they don’t, just by throwing errors that make it sound like I put the wrong data in a field. Is there some magic extension to fix that?

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Ive been testing out ungoogled chrome with uBlock, and it still seems to be working. But I think I’m going to add Waterfox along side of my Firefox to look at that one also.

      But I’m also not sure you can install uBlock anymore from the Chrome repository either.

  • zanyllama52@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I imagine most of us here already don’t use Google Chrome, but I’ll be spending some time proselytizing on the behalf of Mozilla for Firefox with the folks I run across.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?

    Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!

    XKCD Comic depicting a conversation between someone who send an essay in dot doc, MS Word format, and another trying to convince them to use open source alternatives.  The first person is abusively unconvinced, doesn't care about ensuring we have good software infrastructure and dismisses the open source advocate as smug and "probably autistic".  In the final pane, the first person runs to the open-source-advocate second person panicking about facebook taking over everyone's social lives and doing evil things with it, in response to which the second person simply plays their "world's tiniest open source violin" as a clear "i told you so gesture"

    • Eyron@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, it’s still much better.

      Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.

      • Firefox User
  • Netrunner@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I pulled the plug on allowing chrome user agents on my domain.

    Granted its tiny but I’m making people switch.

    This is the juncture.

    P.s. yes I know the cavaets all my services work fine tyvm.

  • dandu3@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    As long as chromium keeps it I’m fine. I use edge, why should I bother with downloading another browser when the one it comes with is identical?

    • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      I can’t listen or look at this man anymore after seeing him scrape shit off his feet and eat it in front of a bunch of people. 🤢

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        He has went on record multiple times saying having sex with children or family pets is fine. Eating his foot gunk is the least of my issues with him.

        That said, when it comes to warning about software, he was pretty bang-on.

        • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          3 months ago

          How is it that you’re so well-versed in all of Stallman’s negative quotes (from over a decade ago), yet conveniently omitted the fact that he later retracted those statements?

          On September 16, 2019, Stallman announced his resignation from both MIT and FSF, “due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations”.[124] In a post on his website, Stallman asserted that his posts to the email lists were not to defend Epstein, stating "Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve called him a ‘serial rapist’, and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.

          The FSF board on April 12 made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.[133] Following this, Stallman issued a statement explaining his poor social skills and apologizing.[134]

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            You mean when he had an epiphany and changed his mind 2 days after his job became under fire?

            Gee, I dunno. Maybe because it was a clear last-ditch effort to save his job, rather than because he genuinely went from his decades-held (and publicly-championed) view that sex with children is ok to sex with children is rape, by sheer coincidence, 2 days after people started requesting he step down over Epstein comments?

            It was about as convincing a statement from Stallman as when Zuckerberg says he cares about privacy.

            Do you genuinely believe him when he says he changed his mind? It’s an awfully convenient timing, even you would have to admit.

            And can I also ask - are you only looking favourably at him because you like him? If Andrew Tate, just before his court case, came out and said that his views on women are wrong and he doesn’t believe that stuff anymore, would you believe him? It seems to me that you’re likely sweeping Stallman being pro-childrape under the rug, because he happens to have cool ideals when it comes to software.

            • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              3 months ago

              Well, this was quite a ride. I’ve spent far too long thinking about this than I’d like to admit, so I’m just going to cut it off here and see how it goes. My apologies in advance if it’s a bit incoherent, but I to be succinct, yes, I stand by RMS because I think he’s a special character and worthy of further consideration than most other people. If you’d like to understand why, well then read on…

              You mean when he had an epiphany and changed his mind 2 days after his job became under fire?

              I think you’re being a bit uncharitable. He was fired by the FSF, then hired again a couple months later. There was plenty of time for reflection between that period. And I think it’s safe to say that the many people that support his ideals had discussions with him, and hopefully educated him on why many of the things he said was wrong, and why many of the things he thought were misguided, and how they could have caused harm.

              Gee, I dunno. Maybe because it was a clear last-ditch effort to save his job, rather than because he genuinely went from his decades-held (and publicly-championed) view that sex with children is ok to sex with children is rape, by sheer coincidence, 2 days after people started requesting he step down over Epstein comments?

              RMS has always had terrible social skills and a terrible inability to understand other people’s emotions. He has always thought other people are like him, and think and act and feel the same way he does to everything in the world. He hasn’t (or hadn’t) yet realized that not everyone is like that.

              But perhaps after talking with others and learning about it, he decided to change his mind and his ways. So yes, I think it’s entirely plausible that’s what happened, similar to how Linus Torvalds did when he realized he needed to calm down his tone on the LKML.

              I’m not telling you what to believe and people are free to believe whatever makes them happy. But personally, I think my proposal is far more realistic. RMS has always been a man of principle, so if you think he would just forget all of his principles for a few moments to get a job, then I don’t know what to tell you.

              It was about as convincing a statement from Stallman as when Zuckerberg says he cares about privacy.

              I don’t think these are comparable. Zuckerberg has a very well-vested conflict of interest when it comes to safe-guarding privacy. I don’t think RMS’s beliefs on paedophilia influence or affect his opinions on Free Software in any way whatsoever, regardless of whether he works for the FSF or not.

              Do you genuinely believe him when he says he changed his mind? It’s an awfully convenient timing, even you would have to admit.

              Sure, I could admit that - I could imagine nobody would want to have to explain to him why paedophilia is wrong, but maybe when people realized how important he was to the Free Software movement, they realized how urgent and crucial it was to make him understand these things. I can easily see why it didn’t happen earlier than that.

              So yes, people do change their ways. I myself have evolved a great deal over my lifetime and have no reason to believe that others can’t as well. Has RMS gone back to championing his old pro-paedophilia talking points now that he’s back working for the FSF? How should one interpret that?

              And can I also ask - are you only looking favourably at him because you like him?

              I’ve met Richard once and he was a very kind and interesting person. But that said, I wouldn’t want to be around him any more than that, and a few other people I’ve met have said the same. Interpret that how you will. You are attacking me of showing bias and favoritism, but I think you’re just projecting your negative bias against him and getting angry because you want to pretend that the other side of the story doesn’t exist, or that there are less nefarious ones than what you’d like to believe. Maybe it sounds like I’m defending him - to an extent, I am - but I think it’s more important to make it clear that the situation in this particular instance could be a lot more nuanced because RMS clearly is a very different kind of person from you and me.

              If Andrew Tate…

              I have no clue who that is and I honestly don’t care.

              But what really makes a difference to me, and why I would put RMS is a separate category, is honesty and integrity. I happen to think RMS might be one of the most honest people on the planet. Have you seen his commitment to Free Software? Have you seen how much software he’s written and how much of his life he’s dedicated to his cause? Have you read the hoops he goes through like the kinds of computers he uses, in order to live by his principles?

              Can you honestly tell me that it’s all just a farce that he would give up for one measly job???

              So yes, I think your accusations are way off base; I would side with you 99% of the time if we were talking about someone else, but given RMS’s demeanor and the kind of person he is, I think it’s pretty easy to see that he falls in the .001% of the population where you have to give him an honest second chance.

              I don’t think the fact that he is a very… special person can be denied. I think it’s pretty clear that RMS is a very different kind of person, and I don’t in any way excuse his behaviors. But he thinks that what he says about Free Software shouldn’t be discounted because of how he feels about other things, and he’s right. That’s just an ad-hominem fallacy. Maybe that logic doesn’t appeal to the masses, but to people who understand why Free Software is important, we should still be able to make that distinction.

              It seems to me that you’re likely sweeping Stallman being pro-childrape under the rug, because he happens to have cool ideals when it comes to software.

              To an extent, yes, unfortunately. And it’s not because I agree with any of those stupid things he used to believe. It’s more because I don’t want to talk about RMS. What’s really more important is Free Software.

              What really gets me angry is that we can’t have conversations about the importance of Free Software anymore without people talking about child rape. Yes, it’s unfortunate, and I think if RMS knew that his comments would have had such a negative effect on the Free Software movement, he probably wouldn’t have said them. And it is painfully obvious that he did not know this of course - he’s the kind of person who doesn’t yet realize that not everybody in the world is like him, and does not realize that people will attack how you feel about one thing because you may have reprehensible view about other things.

              So I really wish we could keep discussions about Free Software about that, because otherwise, we are enabling the Googles and Facebooks and Twitters of the world to distract our attentions while they steal our creations and liberties to make us digital peons. I think we do a great disservice by having this conversation every time RMS comes up.

          • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            Those issues are ones that it’s hard to just walk back with a mea culpa, especially when the apology comes precisely when it starts to impact your career.

            • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              3 months ago

              Stallman spends decades publicly-championing adult-child sexual relations on his personal blog and using his work email address.

              Stallman later comes under fire for strange comments about Epstein’s underage girls/clients. Some people say he should step down, as his poor image jeopardises the effectiveness of the FSF.

              2 days later, Stallman has a sudden change of heart. Child/adult sexual relations are wrong. Children can’t consent.

              Some Linux nerds: “see, he’s changed his mind, he’s a different man!”

              How ready people are to treat celebrities as deity-like figures is scary to me. Just because Stallman has some great FOSS credentials doesn’t mean he can’t be a total POS in other areas. People bend over backwards to defend him as some saint who can do no wrong, even to the extent of trivialising child rape. It’s scary what a bit of celebrity worship can get people to do.

        • Mike@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          3 months ago

          Post the link to him saying that having sex with children is okay

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            “The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”

            RMS on June 28th, 2003

            "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "

            RMS on June 5th, 2006

            "There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.

            RMS on Jan 4th, 2013

            You can find these on Stallman’s blog, which I believe is Stallman.org iirc. Just go to the dates I provided.

            • Mike@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              3 months ago

              I cannot find any of this on his blog, why didn’t you just link to his blog?

                • Mike@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  You pasted the domain not an actual blog post link. And you’re the one making these claims about him on a forum, does it really surprise you when someone asks for the source? Sorry you had to google something.

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Too bad he spent all his energy getting Linux users to say GNU/Linux instead of talking about the real issues

      • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Just because that’s all you ever listened to doesn’t mean that’s all he ever said.

  • ansiz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I wonder if the DoJ actually does split up Google if separating Chrome would make any difference with behavior like this?

      • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Chrome is used to get a tighter grip on the www and form it to Google’s vision (one that is very anti consumer). If Chrome dies, it would be a net benefit for all.