[robswc]

I just don't like Mozilla, as a company, for many reasons.

The main ones being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary...

The pay wouldn't be so egregious if it wasn't a constant pattern of pay raises, despite by their own stats, losing MAU and revenue. They also laid off 250 people (which is much more than $5MM, any way you cut it) but it seems in bad taste to give the CEO a raise in the same year.

And:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/

The fact that they're leaning so much into political activism.

On their homepage they're promoting a journalist involved in some misinformation controversy:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220928230910/https://www.washi...

The journalist has blamed all this on "editors" -- so we'll never know _who_ exactly did the stealth edits and lied about contacting for comment. In any case, it is pretty ironic, given the CEO of Mozilla seems to think we need more than de-platforming to combat "misinformation":

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

Not a fan of statements that creep into invasions of privacy from a supposedly privacy focused browser.

So, to sum it up;

Wild executive pay for poor performance and too much political activism (that I tend to not agree with) for a web browser.

[kbenson]

Those are all valid reasons for not liking Mozilla. What do you use instead then?

[robswc]

Safari and Brave

[kbenson]

Fairly good choices from what I understand (although I'm not sure I would consider Safari is a good alternative for someone with complaints about corporate pay and structure, even if that was a concern of yours I suspect you don't have much of a choice on the device you're using it on).

For me, one of the most important reasons to use Firefox is to support one of the few remaining alternate browser implementations. Sure, Chrome and Safari and Edge have all likely diverged to a degree since their shared ancestry (which really wasn't that long ago), but I suspect they're far more similar underneath than different. I would prefer they not be political (but I can see how they get mixed up, as leaning in heavy on privacy is necessarily political in some ways, such as when it involves opinions of nations that disagree, and then there are probably some at he org that want to push in what they see as a similar direction on other topics), but I don't really care about the pay of the CEO in comparison to the vital importance I think heterogeneity in the actual engines browsers use is for many reasons.

[robswc]

I totally agree its important, so I hope it doesn't go the way of Netscape. If they focused only on privacy, that would be fine (since its advertised as such). It really wasn't one issue or another that caused me to abandon it, rather just reading post after post from the org about how they're tackling issue X, Y or Z.

I also don't care about the CEO's comp either _unless_ the business is just... sucking... for lack of a better word. When they let go of 250 people and then bump the CEO's salary by nearly 50%, it just looks a little self-serving.

If Brave or Safari end up sucking enough I look into trying another browser again, I'll give FF a shot. I used it from about 2008 to 2020.

[amatecha]

Brave? So the cryptocurrency-laced browser made by the guy who donated $1000 to a Republican candidate who the year before said "our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide" and "homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution"? [0] Huh. Really not seeing how that's somehow preferable over the company that.. checks notes.. demands transparency in funding for advertising, and calls for research into how centralized social platforms and their algorithms work and are affecting people -- none of which have anything to do with invading anyone's privacy.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controver...

[robswc]

It has built-in ad-block, reading lists and vertical tabs. That's about all I need from a browser.

As for the CEO's donations, I couldn't care less. I don't care who the CEO of Mozilla donates to. I used Firefox for years, even when they (individuals at Mozilla) donated exclusively to democrats: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mozilla-foundation/recipien...

Mozilla (as an organization) has chosen to participate in political activism and pay their executives ridiculous wages. I don't agree with a lot of the decisions they've made, so I don't use their browser. Simple as that.

Perhaps if the browser was just so good, it was impossible to live without, their MAU wouldn't be dropping... but that's not the case.

[wkat4242]

> none of which have anything to do with invading anyone's privacy.

Nor their bedrooms. The gall of people to judge others by their consensual love is something I'll never understand.

[amatecha]

Right? I find that ppl who are so afraid of this kind of stuff generally have a view like "I'm worried non-straight ppl will force their views unto me, sorta like I force my views onto them", one of those "seeing in others what is in yourself" kinda thing. Thus their constant fear and outrage about anything different. But seriously, don't worry guys, people just want to live their lives. You know, "live and let live"? What someone wears or who someone "gets it on" with is not an existential threat to your astronomically-inflexible views or values. (Though if your views/values are "LGBTQ ppl have less rights than others", yeah those are definitely going to be deeply and directly challenged, moreso every day, and I'm here to do my part in that, cheers)