Firefox
 Firefox(Web browser)   | |
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Mozilla Firefox is an open source web browser produced by Mozilla.
In 2019, Mozilla announced that they were planning a premium version of Firefox, bundled with services such as a VPN.[1]
Contents
83% financed by Google
As of 2023, Mozilla had more than 1 billion in cash reserves. The primary source of this capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments, which started in 2005, have been increased 50% over the past decade, to more than $450 million, even as the total number of Firefox users has plummeted. In 2021 these payments accounted for 83% of Mozilla's revenue.[2]
Censorship
Mozilla has signed the European Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation and is "investing in tools to fight this problem".[3]
Katharina Borchert, Chief Innovation Officer, mused on how to implement this:
If you can attach flags to articles or to searches, or if you can attach fact-checking to certain articles, how do you present that in a way that people don’t feel like somebody is preaching at them, or wagging a finger saying, hey, your perception of reality is wrong here?[4]
Mozilla has been partners from the very beginning in the CUNY News Integrity Initiative alongside the Knight Foundation and Google and Facebook.[5] Mozilla is a sponsor of Misinfocon, a "global movement focused on building solutions to online trust, verification, and fact checking[6].
Data collection
With the Firefox version 128, released on July 9, 2024, Mozilla has installed a new technology for supposedly "privacy-friendly digital advertising" in the browser, without asking the user.[7] The technology is called Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) from the company "Anonymously". Mozilla bought this company in June, it was built by former Meta (Facebook)-managers.[8] Users who you don't want this, have to remove the function from the browser themselves by means of an opt-out. Mozilla justified the unsolicited activation of the software by saying that the technology is too complex for Firefox users to perform an informed consent via opt-in.[9][10]
Employee on Wikispooks
| Employee | Job | Appointed | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katharina Borchert | Chief Innovation Officer | 2016 | Worked to strengthen its position in "the fight against fake news" |
References
- ↑ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reportedly-launch-a-paid-version-of-firefox-this-fall/
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
- ↑ https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/vaccination/docs/ev_20190912_mi_en.pdf
- ↑ https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/08/mozilla-fights-misinformation-with-a-new-program-and-some-help-from-firefox-users/
- ↑ https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/08/mozilla-fights-misinformation-with-a-new-program-and-some-help-from-firefox-users/
- ↑ https://misinfocon.com/
- ↑ https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment
- ↑ https://blog.zgp.org/pet-projects-or-privacy/
- ↑ https://mastodon.social/@Schouten_B/112784608473016028
- ↑ https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/
