[BitwiseFool]

Is it too much to ask for a tech company to just focus on their product and not delve into social advocacy?

Edit: The Unfck the Internet project proclaims to be all about user privacy, but it promotes an extension to report political ads and an extension to report recommended YouTube videos (with the goal of not exposing people certain content). That is why I see this as social advocacy because it's clearly got political motives.

[IainIreland]

The Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization with the mission of making the internet a better place. Here's the manifesto: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

[x3ro]

I don't understand this stance to be honest. Do you also think that Apple's focus on privacy is wrong? Why would a company building a web browser not be concerned about the state of the web, the privacy of it's users, etc? These things seem to be directly related to their product.

[branon]

Apple is only focused on privacy in the barest sense. They'll refuse to unlock physical devices while happily answering thousands of requests from the US and other govermnents for users' iCloud data[0]. They also don't allow users to encrypt data stored in iCloud, expressly so they can continue to do this[1].

Apple's front as a privacy company is little more than PR. I understand this isn't really the point of your comment, but I think the privacy policies of Apple and Mozilla make for a misleading comparison.

Mozilla cannot have anything other than a huge positional advantage over Apple where privacy is concerned, mainly because the amount and type of personal data the two companies ingest are so vastly different. Were Mozilla to adopt Apple's stance on privacy, results would be disastrous.

[0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

[coldpie]

> They'll refuse to unlock physical devices while happily answering thousands of requests from the US and other govermnents for users' iCloud data[0].

They are required by law to do the latter. They are not required to to do the former (or at least are willing to go to court to defend that belief).

> They also don't allow users to encrypt data stored in iCloud

The article you linked does not back up this assertion. It says they chose not to automatically encrypt user backups to the cloud, at the FBI's request. I'm sure if you encrypt data and upload it to iCloud, they will not delete your encrypted data.

[branon]

I don't fully agree with your second point. The way iCloud on an iPhone works, users have no chance to encrypt data before uploading it. Most people are only tangentially aware of what data is siphoned automatically by the service.

It would be the responsibility of the iCloud service to encrypt data (if Apple had chosen to do so, and a user opts in). Simply choosing not to delete encrypted blobs is not the same thing. The salient point is that Apple was _going_ to offer encryption as a part of the iCloud service, but dropped the feature at the FBI's request.

[coldpie]

Apple altering their pro-privacy plans after strong pressure from a federal agency tells a very different story than the one you presented with your initial statement.

[brokenc0de]

Because Mozilla doesn't care about the privacy of their users. If they did, Pocket would be easily disabled, and they would have zero telemetry (like Ungoogled Chromium).

[x3ro]

I don't think the things you cite necessarily mean "Mozilla doesn't care about the privacy of it's users". There's always room for improvement, but "they're not perfect" != "they don't care".

Tangentially related: ungoogled Chromium has some impact on Google's monetisation, but zero impact on their browser monopoly, because in the end you're still using their browser engine. So if you're talking about counteracting browser monopoly, ungoogled Chromium is not a good choice.

[brokenc0de]

I will name drop Librewolf as the "Ungoogled Chromium" of Firefox-based browsers. However, the web itself is tightly controlled by Google, and for me using UG Chromium is the best bet. I've stopped caring about the browser monopoly and instead looked for ways to minimize my usage of browsers and the web in general.

[BitwiseFool]

No, I don't think Apple's focus on privacy is wrong. Adding features which enhance user privacy doesn't seem like social advocacy because it's on an individual-level.

Here's why I consider this Unfck the Internet project to be social advocacy - the extension to track political ads via a public database. The extension to report problematic YouTube recommendations also serves the same purpose.

[matthewmacleod]

Yes. The things that companies and other organisations do have large impacts on society and individuals. This is particularly the case for organisation like Mozilla which are explicitly about promoting these concepts through technology.

[cnorthwood]

Yes, unless the technology has no societal implications.

[commandlinefan]

It really doesn't, though - any more than the printing press itself did or the television did. What was produced by them may have had societal implications, but the manufacturers of printing presses and televisions just went about their business of producing high quality printing presses and televisions as best they could.