Mozilla leadership
(in ref to https://mozilla.social/@mozilla/113153943609185249 )
@davidrevoy In the context of this: while many of the actions of @mozilla feel annoying (i.e. axing FirefoxOS just before it became widespread in South America) and while it doesn’t look like that if you plot a market share which includes the massively growing number of mobile devices with a bundled browser:
Firefox has been mostly keeping its users since 2017.
@lanodan That’s interesting — thank you! it looks like two different slopes: one mostly constant until 2022, and then something happened that made it worse.
It lost 5 Million users (when looking only at the maximum) per year from 2020 to 2022, and from 2022 to 2024 it lost 10 to 15 million users per year.
That’s a doubled or tripled loss rate that’s not yet in my graphs.
Do you remember what @mozilla did in 2022?
@lanodan @davidrevoy @mozilla @ArneBab It would be nice if telemetry could be done without a risk of linking to users, but I sincerely don't trust anyone to do this right except maybe duckduckgo and even then its with a small grain of salt.
To be honest, I remember hearing they do static ads.
If true, that's the only business model that works for ads that users don't get pissed off about 90% of the time.
@ArneBab sure. But that it the bare minimum. The numbers should be increasing, even a just a bit, or they should at least stick better with their principles.
@pbaesse for the numbers to increase, I see three things as necessary:
- antitrust regulation against bundling browsers on mobile
- having a serious offering on mobile
- supporting the existing users in spreading Firefox.
Reason: the number of desktop computers is decreasing.
Agreed. But that happen and other important decisions to happen they have to change their governance. The way it's today explains a lot of the bad choices.
@shauna and @ryanleesipes provided goods examples of governance. Look at the nice results of Thunderbird. Amazing.
https://social.coop/@shauna/113155700649119536
@pbaesse That sounds plausible.
Though I’m not happy with Thunderbird having broken Pretty Easy Privacy (pEp) just two months after that actually started to work for people who sent me messages.
(that may have been before their time)
@davidrevoy @mozilla @shauna @ryanleesipes
@ArneBab Sure, but that is normal. We will probably never agree with every decision, but we should with the most, or more importantly with the direction that the NGO or some foundation are heading to.
@davidrevoy For the time after 2021 Mozillas Statistics show something worrying again:
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
(as addition to the graph I plotted)
2017 and 2021 it stayed mostly stable at 190 million users
Interesting that they almost managed to stop the decline for a few years there. In 2024 after the recent string of nonsensical decisions it's down to 158 million.
@kbal yes.
While they were widely criticized during that time, 2017 to 2022 were actually pretty stable years. And that despite constant uncertainty about the future (“will Google continue to pay?”) and failures to get other revenue sources (AFAIK).
@davidrevoy @mozilla
@kbal I have the impression that CEO’s and equivalents often forget the importance of the existing userbase.
So instead of making the existing people happy and trying to reach others from that base, they shoot for the big crowd — but without having enough to stand on.
@davidrevoy @mozilla
Google should never have been created in the first place. Same with microsoft and all the other big name surveilance companies. meglomaniacs at best, at worst enablers of surveilance and maybe even planned fascism.
If a hitler came to power in the usa and got dictator powers, would you trust them with that info?
I would say NO.
The first part did happen actually, as long ago as 2016-2020. The part of him getting dictator powers thank God didn't happen.
It narrowly did because of the insurrection.
SMH SMH SMH.
That's all I can say to that.
@skedarwarrior Google’s service was actually really good.
The problem was and is that services are funded by ads instead of being paid by their users.
That gives the wrong incentive.
@ArneBab @davidrevoy @mozilla Well the moment tracking behind ads became the norm, people should have kicked them to the curb.
That is how malware got in alot back in the old days of web 2.0 especially. Besides, it enables fascism having all those trackers out there on the web.
Corporations should never control the web. That should be up to the average public. And then voting should be done via a community of average people who know how stuff about tech. (Not counting corporate interests!)