That post by Executive Chairwoman and CEO Mitchell Baker, We need more than deplatforming slipped under my radar somehow. Not very happy to see mozilla strongly opine on this type of matter any more than I would be to see Apache or GIMP weigh in. I’ll leave any further comment for another sub.
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2021
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I hadn’t heard of this, but wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’ve never had a problem with Firefox. It’s a good browser and much better than using something from Google or Microsoft.
From what I've heard, they are just practicing good enterprise, which is a term used in the free market, or so I've heard.
As far as I can tell, people took offense of this sentence:
By all means the question of when to deplatform a head of state is a critical one
Because they think the "when" should be an "if" at most, or better even, let's just let the Nazis run this place.
Trump was inciting violence on his way out. He was the pivot of racists, extremists and other bigots. And yet they still think that taking someone's megaphone away is worse than people dying.
It's this absolutist free speech position where any encroachment on free speech is deemed worse than anything in the world.
Hell, the rest of that article even says that we should not deplatform people, we should not limit free speech. It should be the last reserve and we should take other measures in advance instead.
Mozilla is on the side of free speech here. But they get portrayed as the enemy, because they don't go along with absolutist free speech which tolerates hate speech.
Many people I know, liked and/or needed some features abandoned by Mozilla Firefox.
First, NPAPI support leaving it unsupported by a lot of websites here (government and education) which needed Java web plugin.
Second, full integrations with WebExtensions, with the abandonement for the old definitions using XUL framework (even JetPack which had a good level of security).
Third, how it runs on old platforms for which Electrolysis only add more resources usage to get better performance.
Last, some other good features as RSS and the possibility to add PWA from websites. The first in extensions is shit in Firefox but the available for Chromium are better.
Other cases, some people see and think that following Goolag way to implement and support standards not yet existing as a result of being part and participate in the creation of WHATWG.
As far as they see the news about Mozilla, they lose trust in Mozilla Firefox.
Basically Mozilla said that deplatforming alone isn't enough and that it can be a little scary since the decision making there is taken by the heads of the companies which can be used to block good people too. So I imagine a lot of rightist (which encompasses a lot of privacy users) and stupid centrist people who believe shit like "we should not censor neither the right nor the left!!!!11" got angry and stop using FF.
The article wasn't as ambiguous as some folks on the right like to read into it. Basically Mozilla said that de-platforming was done too late in Trump's case (which is right) and that measures should be taken in advance so that you don't get to the point of de-platforming. You may take this as controlling speech or how ever you want, but at the end of the day these are private companies. If they ban or silence you for what ever reason, they have the right to do it.
At the end of the day, federated social media platforms are in everyone's interest - right, center, left. These should be popularized so that people start using them more and more, to avoid this kind of situations.
I'm not taking that as controlling speech, but I don't really care if they are private companies and have the right to do it, they only banned Trump because it was good for them in terms of PR, not because they care about shit. One day may come, and there will be an important person on the left, and they are going to ban them too if they want to, that's why I think it's not only that deplatforming is not worth it but there are other measures (like not leaving all the decision making to Zuckerberg) or I don't know, actively avoiding the growth of fascism in the first place?
People on the left are constantly deplatformed every day - along with being surveilled, policed, imprisoned, gaslit, threatened, and murdered.
If you try to actually fight for worker’s rights, the environment, or against the greed of the rich, that quickly brings you into conflict with every force that’s designed to protect capital and the profits of the ruling class.
Environmental activists are murdered all the time. Striking workers are gunned down by police. Black and socialist organisers are taken to secret prisons, or killed while they sleep.
The right / liberals don’t face this threat as they are not a threat to profits, but are instead enforcers of capitalism.
Yet it’s the right wing / conservative / liberal voices who the capitalist media will devote all their resources to if a leftist dares to deplatform a literal Nazi.
In the case of Trump, that wasn’t any sort of leftist deplatforming. That was liberals who no longer saw him as profitable after they had profited from platforming him for years and moved onto the next grift. He was done. And just for good measure in an effort to appease the “other side” social media companies have been banning posts and shutting down accounts of anarchists and other actual leftists since then.
That's exactly my point.
Hope I didn’t come off as disagreeing with you.
Not at all!