This is such a braindead fucking take. Companies should explore new technology not just take a look at the current popular opinion and run with it as absolute fact. The majority of this post is literally just using AI as a boogieman, oh no they’re creating jobs that relate to AI! The company is over!!!
They saw three roles that mentioned AI and took that as absolute proof that Mozilla has “fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads”. Grow the fuck up. The internet takes money to run, ads are an inevitability so no shit a major browser company has someone managing that aspect of their browser…
I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads
oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!! THat’s a THIRD of the cOmPaNy’s listings!!!
Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory
N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25
That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn’t mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.
But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.
I’m ok with them chasing ethical applications of AI. I’m more tired of their half-assed efforts to chase every shiny new object over the last few years. It feels like as a non-profit, they should be comparatively immune to chasing the same transitory trends that other shareholder-owned companies are obsessed over. But it seems like for Mozilla, they have an even shorter attention span than their corporate competitors. We’ve seen them chase after crypto, metaverse, augmented reality, Firefox OS, and now AI. All of those efforts fizzled out with a whimper.
That crypto one isn’t even a project, just that they used some service to handle crypto donations for them. It is weird though that they think they can just walk into a successful space without offering anything new and still expect to get users.
It’s a shame FirefoxOS didn’t gain enough traction.
Sure, but the only way to counter AI spam in the dead internet might be to have your own local AI model to filter junk out. And that has to be with the browser.
There is also cookie consent spam, ads and newspaper “notify me” shit that probably can only be fixed with AI.
Your take is that Mozilla doesn’t think before they adopt, except people here don’t think about what not to adopt either.
Thinking before they adopt is hard to do. I understand some experiments get cut. But I’m not sure they are thinking even after they adopt. Thus the half-assed delivery and constantly abandoning projects before they get a fair shake
That is the first time I’ve seen South Africa listed separately from Africa
The brain-dead take is that companies should explore new technology. Without any qualifiers on it (i assume there aren’t because you didn’t add any and you applied it to ai). That’s how we’ve ended up with such a huge amount of waste, pollution and theft from small independents.
Even if we just narrow it to the field of AI, the waste and environmental damage from just this kind of tech is just absurd.
Let’s add to the downsizing ai causes, the pathetic service disruptions and inevitable decline of a company’s reputation from using such a thing and its nothing but a waste.
I mean, I understand this argument, but Mozilla is still vastly superior to the alternatives. And as others have pointed out, even if Mozilla kicks the bucket, Firefox is open source and forks exist.
Mozilla has been making a lot of questionable decisions, but they are nowhere near the point-of-no-return yet. Mozilla is still a company, and companies make corporate decisions.
AI + Ads = AIDS.
Just say no, kids.
Only a good AI can stop a bad AI with a pun
So they probably scrolled through a page of job ads and cherry picked a few so they could talk smack…
You can do this with any company
I looked at their jobs list and counted 35 jobs. Of that I count 9 that are AI-related and 4 that are ads-related. The list also includes a few generic jobs like “Chief of Staff”, “Client Analytics Manager”, “Staff Test Engineer” or “Fixed-Term Social Media Trainee”.
Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.
You can’t do this with any company. The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.
First off, keep in mind the post we’re all responding to is trying to use these listings to paint the entire focus/future of this company with a single brushstroke, as that is relevant context.
I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads
that statement right there.
Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.
oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!! THat’s a THIRD of the cOmPaNy’s listings!!!
Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory
N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25
That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn’t mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.
But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.
The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.
Here you are telling on yourself. Ads, whether you like it or not, are a huge piece of how the internet funds itself. As Mozilla is essentially the second largest browser after chromium-based ones, you absolutely need someone managing how ads integrate with your browser.
For example, there is a HUGE amount of people that don’t want to mess with ad blockers and such and want a browser to protect them outright, Mozilla can do this with things like privacy-preserving attribution to protect user data while still serving ads in good faith.
Yes, it is so very easy to say FUCK ads, they don’t belong on the internet… until you want to host something and suddenly the costs can get real big real fast.
And another thing, you say “correct number of ads people working at firefox is 0”
You can’t do this with any company.
by this, do you mean cherry pick open listings by a company and pretend that those open listings are indicative of not only the companies focus but also their general distribution of efforts? Because that’s all you’re doing with this comment.
0 would mean they already have all those positions filled
No, worries. We will always have forks. Mozilla wins simply by having their only competitor be Google.
The problem is they have to come up with a new source of income now that it looks like Google’s payments to be the default search engine to them are illegal.
That’s like 90% of their revenue, so they’re panicking.
They could make a web server and sell support for it.
AI -> ADS
AIADS
AIDS
people been saying the ships been sinking since netscape. version 130 now
It has been sinking. Adtech is cyber warfare. They sold out. https://make-firefox-private-again.com/ everybody be sure to change your settings in about:config to disable that Anonym bullshit. No, we’re not the ‘product’ we’re human beings.
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If firefox becomes worse or starts lagging behind more, I’ll stop using it. It doesn’t seem all that useful to attempt to predict 5 years into the future Firefox’s state and therefore decide to switch away now.
The only thing I don’t like about Firefox (other than no PWA capability) is the ‘dark pattern’ of how when the home page loads, the first three of the six items shifts to the right after the page has started loading, and are replaced with sponsored links. So, if I go to click on YouTube when I launch Firefox, there’s a fair chance that by the time I get to click there it’ll suddenly jump over to the right and I’ll end up clicking some other link.
To me, that’s sketchy behaviour.
You can disable those ads though…
I don’t mind the ads. I just don’t like the ‘trickery’ of them shifting the existing shortcuts after the page has already loaded.
The only good ad is a dead ad
No PWA capability?
At least on mobile, I have multiple PWAs installed via Firefox.
Not on desktop though.
Check this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/ It doesn’t have super advanced capabilities of PWAs however the “pwa creators” already assume one is using Chrome etc.
Yes I’m using that. It’s fine if you only have one pc, but a pain having to set it up every time you set up another Linux install etc.
Why doesn’t Mozilla move to a Wikipedia model and ask for donations? I would certainly rather donate than be served ads by Firefox.
Because the CEO of Wikipedia doesn’t get paid $2.5 million a year. She only makes $450k.
I’m OOTL, the CEO of Mozilla makes $2.5 million a year? Or am I misunderstanding it?
hahaha, “only”
Real loser, amirite? Barely makes more than a Supreme Court Justice.
in the nonprofit world, that’s damn good for what wikipedia does
Clown graphics reminds me of the alt-right trolls who hate Mozilla for their stance on diversity and freedom. They are even late to the AI party, there isn’t a single “free as in freedom” AI around, are you aware of it?
God damn it I just switched from chrome to fire fox 😮💨
I’d argue that’s probably still for the best. Unless there’s a usable third party I’m unaware of, it’s all just Chrome/Chromium and Firefox, both of which are leaning hard into AI and ads.
At least Firefox doesn’t have a huge monopoly like Chrome, so I’ll be supporting the smaller guy in the meantime.
Ice weasal
Feels like most things are lately
You were supposed to be the CHOSEN ONE