cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/33165280
I got a copy of the text from the email, and added it below, with personal information and link trackers removed.
Hello [receiver’s name],
I’ve long dreamed about working for Mozilla. I learned how to send encrypted e-mail using Mozilla Thunderbird, and I’ve been a Firefox user since almost as long as I can remember. In more recent years, I’ve been an avid follower of Mozilla’s advocacy work, and was lucky enough to partner with Mozilla on investigative journalism in my last job.
In many ways, Mozilla was the dream – and now, as the leader of the Foundation, my job is to make my dreams for Mozilla come true. What that means, though, is making your dreams come true – for a trustworthy and open future of technology; for tech that is a tool for liberation, not limitation; and for tech that values people over profit.
So I’m reaching out to technologists, activists, researchers, engineers, policy experts, and, most importantly, to you – the people who make up the Mozilla community – to ask a simple question.
[receiver’s name]. What is your dream for Mozilla? I invite you to take a moment to share your thoughts by completing this brief survey.
Let’s start with this question:
Question 1: What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?
- Protecting my privacy online
- Avoiding scams
- Choosing products, apps, technology, and services that I can trust
- Keeping children safe online
- Responsible use of AI
- Keeping the internet is open and free
- Knowing how to spot misinformation
- Other (please specify)
With your help, together we can imagine and create the Internet we want. Thank you for being a part of this.
Always yours,
Nabiha Syed Executive Director Mozilla Foundation
Regarding AI, there are only options on what would be great with AI. There simply is no option “No, I don’t f-ing want AI” in a Mozilla product.
I want a Browser and an EMail program. Not something that tries to do thinking for me.
Amen. Basically this survey reads to me as “we decided to focus on AI and we need some pretty graphs to show it’s an awesome idea - please tell us why you think AI is the best thing ever!”
That’s exactly what I took from it as well. It’s a survey designed to get the answers they want, not the actual feedback they’re pretending to ask for.
I really like their local translation models. Simply saying “no AI!” feels very luddite to me for such a broad category.
I have no problem with things like Mozilla Common Voice. I have a big problem with integrating machine-learning stuff into Firefox by default.
I remember back when Phoenix Firebird Firefox first came out, the whole fucking point of it was to be a fast, bare-bones browser, and that people could pick and choose what extra features they wanted by installing extensions. IMO that’s the way it still ought to be.
Regarding AI, I filled it in as following:
- What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?
- Other (please specify): Fuck AI
- In your opinion, what is the most important work for Mozilla to do right now?
- Other (please specify): Do not implement AI
- What is most important to you in AI?
- Select nothing
Dude thats not realistic at all. The industry is moving that way and all companies have to follow , if companies dont do they will eventually die , just look at Yahoo , AOL , Phillips , etc barely surviving and nothing what they used to be. Why? Mostly because they were complacent and stay conservative not innovating fast enough.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. What I do think is true is that there’s a chance some AI thing will be a trillion dollar investment, and the most motivating thing for VCs is fear of missing out on a giant score.
A nonprofit open source profit ought to have different motivations though.
just concentrate on making firefox better and fuck all the way off with that ai bullshit.
Stop paying the CEO so much!
Firefox could by now have:
- Much better anti-fingerprinting for a generalized threat model (RFP is too specialized for anonymity)
- Fission (per-site process isolation) for Android, among other things.
- Integrated content blocking (based on uBlock but with the development power of Mozilla)
- Tab groups ffs
- Native force dark mode for web pages
- Sandboxing support using zypak fork server for Flatpak (currently Flatpak weakens Firefox isolation substantially)
- UI/UX update (hire the talent at Zen browser)
Bring back your Advocacy division. Lower the pay for your CEO. Secure funding from other entities so that you are no longer dependent on Google. Focus more on implementing better security measures on Linux and Android, specifically within the domain of sandboxing your open processes. Keep about:config and manifest v2 options available.
Which of the following best describes your race or ethnic background?
Seriously, WTF? Why the hell is this relevant? Is this some American thing?
My fav categories are when they ask your race typically: white, black, Asian, Hispanic etc. Lumping insanely large groups together.
Or the one that asks: Hispanic or non-Hispanic.
Typically both are asked. What the hell does the Hispanic specific question answer that the first didn’t
One is asking about skin color, the other is asking about cultural heritage. For example, a person from South America with only European ancestry would be [white, Hispanic], and a Japanese-Brazilian would be [Asian, Hispanic].
The real issue is that they’re irrelevant questions that survey-givers have no legitimate reason to want to know.
