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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:27:25 JST Aral Balkan

   If you want to continue doing Horrible Thing X, you must ensure you invest not only in Horrible Thing X but in the most visible opposition to Horrible Thing X. Ideally, that opposition should owe its continued existence to you and to Horrible Thing X.

   So, for example, if you’re a surveillance capitalist like Google, you should ensure that Mozilla owes its existence to you and to surveillance capitalism by funding them with roughly half a billion dollars every year. Which, thankfully, Google being the smart and cunning people they are, they are already doing.

   #mozilla #google #surveillanceCapitalism #BigTech #honeypot #PR #lobbying

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:35:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @aral See also: US capitalist class and political parties.

   • Embed this notice
     Kees de Kooter 🍉 (kdekooter@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:37:27 JST Kees de Kooter 🍉

     in reply to

     @aral which in turn enables Mozilla to burn a lot of money on outrageous salaries and pointless investments.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:37:27 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kees de Kooter 🍉

     @kdekooter @aral Mozilla annual budget should be somewhere around $200k × N where N<15 is the number of engineers needed to maintain Firefox. No more. Everything else harms the mission.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:38:54 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     (This has so many advantages; it really is money well spent. For one, you can use it argue that you’re not a monopoly – though, as recent rulings have shown, within limits. Then you can have that champion of Definitely The Opposite Of Horrible Thing X advocate for self-regulation tactics like Do Not Track that stave off regulation for years, perhaps even a decade if you’re lucky. But that’s not all. You also have a voice that can lobby softly for lack of regulation at institutions like the EU when your direct lobbying might be more suspect. Not to mention a honeypot that can attract people who actually care about the issues and keep them busy on projects you know won’t make a real difference. But, whatever you do, do train your future heads of public policy better so they don’t beg their friends at conferences they’re both speaking at to “go easier on us”, proclaiming “I don’t know why you’re holding to us such a higher standard, we’re just another Silicon Valley tech company.” Because those quiet parts should never be spoken out loud. Tsk, tsk.)

     #mozilla #BigTech #SiliconValley #corporateCapture #honeypot #regulation #lobbying #institutionalCorruption

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:39:57 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker
     • Kees de Kooter 🍉

     @dalias @kdekooter The mission is a lie.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:40:52 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kees de Kooter 🍉

     @aral @kdekooter It's a lie from the perspective of management. It's truth from the perspective of people who believe in it, both employees/ex-employees and public/users. Fuck the management. It doesn't belong to them.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 19:50:08 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker
     • Kees de Kooter 🍉

     @dalias @kdekooter Makes it no less a lie. In fact, it’s what makes it a honeypot.

     If I say I do X (while I exist due to X’) and I attract (and have money to pay) people who also care about X, I am effectively taking those people out of the equation. I can ensure they cannot actually harm X’.

     Moreover, I can suck all the oxygen out of the room for people actually working on X. And can even make them unwelcome on platforms that I sponsor with money from X’.

     PS. None of this is theoretical. It’s lived experience.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 29-Dec-2024 01:47:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Soldier of FORTRAN :ReBoot:​
     • ᒍᗪᙎ 🇨🇦

     @jdw @mainframed767 Google is a trillion-dollar surveillance capitalist. They can afford to employ professional bootlickers; you shouldn’t have to do it for free.

   • Embed this notice
     ᒍᗪᙎ 🇨🇦 (jdw@the.mayhem.academy)'s status on Sunday, 29-Dec-2024 01:47:05 JST ᒍᗪᙎ 🇨🇦

     in reply to

     • Soldier of FORTRAN :ReBoot:​

     @aral @mainframed767 How incredibly disingenuous. The real headline: Mozilla sells its morals to the highest bidder.

     Mozilla happily takes that money, so let’s not play the whole “Google is bad” on this one. Ok?