So how does not running a virtual soapbox that is niche and most do not care about affect the public's ability to participate in the internet from where they are?
I'm not sure if you didn't understand the point or are cherry picking words to satiate your feelings?
They do not propose them for the internet, simply opting out of hosting Mastodon. A glorified look at me RSS feed with built in validation (likes). They're not even suggesting they'll move away from posting on it. You probably guessed I never really liked xitter so the alternative is quite meaningless to me. I just want a browser not run by Google.
I do not believe in GenAI and do believe it'll fail. I do not believe I'm guaranteed to be right. Folk seem to like confidently incorrect answers and are hooked on them. Mozilla need to diversify their revenue streams and maybe they get it right. If users expect that integration, and rivals do it, then they will perceive it as rubbish and not use it or move to it, which could be a failure.
I do not know this Steve chap, but I do know devs are asked to work on stuff and if they refuse, they're not doing their job. In that case, you do it, or leave. He got fired and ultimately if he wasn't running it, they even find someone else (was there anyone willing?) or can it. It got canned. No dev really chooses their workload, just how they go about it.
It's less suspicious than you want it to be.