Right - I think either way there’s a snowballing effect. Astroturfing, at least as far as I can tell, can be notable for at least trying to make coherent arguments. Echo chambers I would say are characterized by fuzzy thinking, and I’ve seen more of the latter here (especially in this thread).

That said, sometimes the goal of astroturfing isn’t to make a point but to degrade conversations with noise and nonsense, extrapolations and digressions. In light of that, I suppose that too could explain some of what we’re seeing.

I just have to stop and note something here. This is an incredibly disorganized way to carry on a conversation. I feel like you didn’t pick up most of what I put down, and instead, you’ve opened two new pandoras boxes, stacking a mess on top of another mess.

So just to recap:

• You posted an opinion article criticizing Mozilla from a place called FOSSpost
• I noted that it was a bizarre article because it was about something not directly tied to Mozilla, and the logic trying to tie Mozilla to it was questionable
• I noted even if you entertain this bizarre logic (which you shouldn’t!) Mozilla has criticized V3 in the past
• I noted that given that they have criticized it in the past, the only way this already bizarre logic would make sense was if remaining issue is the timing, but even so that’s entertaining the bizarre assumptions of the article

Phew. So now you’re talking about timing.

I wanted to do my best to take the feeling of disorientation at the strangeness of your comment and turn it into words, so here goes: (1) I feel like the essence of the point isn’t about the timeline of Mozilla acquisitons (not mentioned by your first article) but about the article’s questionable logic of interpreting silences to mean something, which hinges on all kinds of subjective choices about how you interpret context (2) the point you seem to be making now, is about a shift in Mozilla’s motivations and identity, which is a very nebulous and subjective thing, and hardly even the kind of thing you can establish with an article or two (3) you don’t seem to be up to the task of attempting a nuanced reconciliation between the table you posted and the other privacy policy info on the same page that the other user brought up (4) the article you posted together with the table doesn’t contain the table or anything affirming your description (I found the table via google but it’s a disorienting way to organize the information) (5) even if your interpretation was reliable it wouldn’t mean silence during a particular news cycle was proof of anything (6) none of these things establish a motivation for sympathetic behaviors toward Google (in fact it would seem to be the opposite) (7) there’s not any reason to think these are the best pieces of context to be brought to bear on this question, (what about, for instance, the fact that Mozilla has their own modded version of V3 that restores add blocking? That seems at least as relevant to gauging their true intentions as anything you have posted, given that the first article was about V3).

Even if you were 100% right, there has to be a way to make this argument that doesn’t require everyone reading it to reach for the dramamine. It’s a disorganized mess.

I’ve noticed the same thing you have, but I suspect it has a different explanation. I think it’s more an echo chamber thing. People have said variations of this for a while now in HN comment threads, on reddit and here. And there’s a snowball effect from more people saying it.

But there’s been a throughline of bizarrely apathetic and insubstantial low effort comments. That’s the one thing that has tied them together, which is why I think they are echo-chambery. Just for one example: one guy just never read a 990 before (a standard nonprofit form), and read Mozilla’s and thought it was a conspiracy, and wrote an anti-Mozilla blog post. And then someone linked to that on Lemmy and said it was shady finances. Tons of upvotes.

But I’m convinced that no one reads through these links, including the people posting them. Because it takes two seconds to realize they are nonsense. But it doesn’t stop them from getting upvoted.

So my theory is echo chamber.

I think because, in this context, it’s because there was an extensive explanation of the problems with Mozilla’s decision on this page.

As the other commenter noted, this is kind of a nonsensical article. I am not by any means a fan of Mozilla’s decision on Ublock, it seems egregious and indefensible. But the convoluted logic of making Manifest V3 about Mozilla is completely emptyhanded, and there’s no rhyme, reason, logic, or precedent suggesting we should make anything of their absence of a statement.

Also, this is especially nuts because Mozilla HAS in fact criticized Manifest V3! They just happened not to have done so within a particular randomly selected window of time.

Being open minded in response to new information is an automatic upvote from me

I had an alienware Steam Machine and it was perfectly fine.

I think the criticisms of the Steam Machine suffered from what I would call the Verge Syndrome, which is only being able to comprehend things in a binary of instant success or failure, with no in between and no comprehension of other definitions of success.

Steam Machines were a low risk initiative that were fine for what the were. They did not have a ring of death, they didn’t have a blue screen, the OS itself was not glitchy, they didn’t lose money, and they didn’t fail any stated goals. They got the Proton ecosystem up and running, and got the ball rolling on hardware partnerships, which led to the smash success of the Steam Deck which would not have been otherwise possible.

I mean there’s just no way around it. And I’m the most unapologetic Mozilla fanboy you will meet. What was the point of making a server if it was going to just die a few months later.

You need to be in control of your projects and your vision at least enough to know if you can make a credible commitment to the thing you launch. And, like others here, I’m honestly kind of surprised that this, of all things, was too much for Mozilla to handle.

I see this as revisionist history. Mozilla has long been beloved for a whole host of FOSS reasons, that align with the same reasons FOSS enthusiasts like anything FOSS. I do think there are fanbases for things who think their object of adoration can do no wrong (e.g. Sneako fans probably). They are out there, but I don’t see that as being true of Mozilla.

I’ve seen supporters of Mozilla make nuanced points about it being an imperfect but important diversification of options that prevents Google from dominating the browser space, often in thoughtful interactions with fans of (say) the Brave browser or Opera browser over the fact that they rely on Chromium which is sustained by Google.

Those convos have more going on than uncritical adoration, and imo it’s important to let those nuances breath so that they, rather the oversimplifications, can be our primary takeaways.

Interestingly, while talking in mournful past tense about Firefox’s having lost their way, in this same thread there are people a few comments above denying that criticism of Mozilla is prevalent here. You guys should scroll up (or down) and say hello to each other.

Here’s one example of a mega-upvoted post that is critical of Mozilla:

https://lemmy.ml/post/13081759/9195853

I think it’s indicative not only of the prevalence of the view but also the quality (or lack thereof) of the arguments backing the view.

So I’m not a fan of guns but, “marketing guns” is not per se illegal nor unique to video games. Yet the lawsuit separates out video games specifically. So I am not sure I agree that it’s less crazy at the end of the day.

So I did read the article, and… I’m not understanding a word you are saying. The families are suing a video game company for a gun in their video game. Also the article is not at all making the emphasis that you are making between marketing a specific game and video games writ large (the article kind of speaks to both of those at the same time and isn’t making any such distinction), so I don’t know what you are talking about. As far as the article is concerned this has everything to do with the fact that the gun was in a video game, and even Activisions statement in response was to defend themselves from the idea that their video game is a thing that pushing people to violence. So even Activision understands the lawsuit as tying their video game to violence.

I’m not saying I agree with the logic of the suit, but I literally have no idea what you think in the article separates out video games from the particular model of gun because that is just not a thing the article does at all.

I agree that the steam machine was too early.

I don’t know how it could ever start from zero without having to go through a growing stage. I think it was just necessary to have modest expectations, and so far as I can tell, valve partnered with third party vendors and didn’t lose $$$ on it.

Moreover, the downstream effect has been to set the foundation for the Steam Deck, which has been a smashing success. It just takes time to build up a mature ecosystem.

I was never, at any point, as much of a child as I was told I was.

This is not from Google. This is Extinction Rebellion registering a domain to prank Google, by speaking in their voice and resolving to stop funding climate deniers. It’s both a cheeky prank and a way to put pressure on Google to take accountability.

Sorry, I was super unclear there. This was not Google.

However, Google also sometimes has done their own April Fools bits, and historically Google has been big part of April Fools hijinks. So I did mention them as a company that does these, and I did post this which is impersonating Google as an april fools prank, but yeah, this particular one was not at all carried out by Google.

I almost forgot today was April Fools day. I feel like since Covid, the national mood ™ was such that Google and co stopped doing April Fools pranks, and/or if they did them, they were so safe they were groan inducing.

Looking around at the roundup links for 2024, there aren’t many that happened this year, from the looks of it. So I wanted to post this one, because it’s the rarest of rare - one that I thought was really incredibly well done.

That’s where the not that weird idea comes into play. It’s not that weird to not want to be misrepresented - that’s an entirely different thing from trolling, or strawmanning, or seeking out inflammatory topics on purpose. It’s a natural and understandable reaction, and we shouldn’t respond to it by deciding it’s ok to retaliate with increasingly less fair characterizations of their statements.

And again, that’s not even within an country mile of being a good faith attempt at charitable interpretation, for several reasons.

You’re twisting their words into some sort seemingly overnight goodbye to all software relying on third party libs. A more normal way of taking that is envisioning a more gradual progression to some future state of affairs, where to the greatest extent possible we’ve worked to create an ecosystem that meets our needs. An ecosystem that’s build on a secure foundation of known and overseen libraries that conform to the greatest extent possible to the FOSS vision. Ideally you don’t just say goodbye, you work to create ersatz replacements, which there’s a rich tradition of in the FOSS world.

Your other point was even worse:

important software shouldn’t reuse code already made, they should reinvent the wheel and in the process introduce unique vulnerabilities

Somehow, you decided that putting words in their mouth about going out of their way to solve the problem only with worst-case-scenario bad software development practices (e.g. lets go ahead and create unique vulnerabilities and never re-use code) is a reasonable way of reading them, which is completely nuts. FOSS can and does re-use code, and should continue to do so to the extent possible. And like all other software, strive to avoid vulnerabilities with their usual procedures. That’s not really an argument against anything specific to their suggestion so much as its an argument against developing any kind of software at any point in time - new games, new operating systems, re-implementations seeking efficiency and security, etc. These all face the same tradeoffs with efficient code usage and security. Nothing more or less than that is being talked about here.

we shouldn’t rely on free software made by free labor, and we need to say goodbye to some 60-70% or more of the software we use

Again I’m just reading along, and as a person who cares about, you know, the principle of charity, I don’t see how you can possibly think that’s the most charitable interpretation of what they said. I took them to mean we should do what we can to ensure these projects have financial resources to continue, not that we should “say goodbye” to them.

And here’s the crazy thing: I’m not even saying I agree. I just think it’s possible to address a face value version of what they’re talking about without taking unnecessary cheap shots.