Episode: 3273
Title: HPR3273: Embrace Firefox
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3273/hpr3273.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 20:00:14

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3273 for Wednesday 17th on February 2021, today's show is entitled Embrace Firefox.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet and is about 14 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is at Soudrowner.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello ladies and gentlemen. My name is Darwin. I am some guy on the internet.
Welcome back to Hacker News. Hacker, excuse me, Hacker Public Radio. My apologies.
Today's episode we're going to talk about Mozilla Firefox. Now not too long ago Mozilla,
they made a decision to speak out about de-platforming and for those of you who are wondering I'm not
going to get political at all. I like to skirt politics from time to time to make things
interesting but I do not go into it. I draw a very thick margin and I don't go into the politics.
It's just a very very difficult topic. Not everybody's adult enough to handle it and when you do
talk about politics you really need to be with it like a select few. It certainly shouldn't be
discussed on the internet. So Mozilla got out there, made a statement saying that they believe that
de-platforming is not enough. Something to that effect. I don't want to put words in their mouth
but I'm summarizing that they believe that de-platforming just wasn't enough for certain people
apparently and for those of us who are freedom loving it was kind of concerning to hear that coming
from a free and open source project. You know you get kind of nervous thinking like okay you know
what's going on over here and especially from me personally. Now if you want to subscribe to
the start go right ahead but from me personally it's like you know the browser isn't exactly doing
as hot. I mean when you look over to the left there you can see chrome just running wild and Firefox
just isn't seeming to be making the same kind of progress. So you know I would hope that we would
get some you know news on how much more progress we're going to be seeing with the Mozilla Firefox
and don't get me wrong. I'm not planning on switching away from Mozilla Firefox like some other
content creators have been talking about. I think that is the wrong approach here. Mozilla Firefox
or Mozilla however you want to pronounce it that's that's excuse me I had to clear my thought there
that's our browser you understand we we as an open source community need to embrace our browser
all right this is a difficult time where they've had to make a lot of internal decisions cutting
people I'm guessing there's going to be some sort of restructure because right now basically Google
is bankrolling Mozilla so you know they're going to have to really make some decisions internally
to get this thing back on track because it's not looking good and then on top of that
these unnecessary statements. I'm gonna try not to say that it was bad because I don't think they
actually attacked anyone specifically so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go to the route of saying that
it was a bad thing to do however in your current situation I felt like that energy could have
been used in another way we could have heard about a new feature coming along or some work being
done some bugs being fixed or anything other than that especially when there's already this heat
surrounding the de-platform situation and the reason why it is already a little bit of heat on
that topic is because we understand okay if a if a human being is on the internet and they're
talking about something that you know law enforcement would probably try to pursue you and arrest you
then put you in prison for 20 plus years those type of activities if you're online talking about
that then obviously we're we're all reasonable understanding human beings we believe that yes
there should be a limit to some of that stuff simply because we don't we don't want our platforms
to be seen as the place where the showmots hang out or you you get what I'm saying right you just
don't want it to be that kind of a place so you do want to put some limits on it and the problem
here is everyone talks very reasonably when it when it's about the limits however when the limits
are being placed you know when the de-platforming is happening when the shadow bands are happening
somehow every single thing you can possibly disagree with is a reason to have you de-platformed
you know you know it's it's not just the guy who's talking about the thing that law enforcement
would be you know interested in locking them up for now it's just the guy who just voiced his
opinion and his opinion was different from the original poster you know the guy who originally
posted the thread or whatever the case is somebody comment and it was just a simple disagreement
they they just had two different perspectives on a simple topic and that topic is fairly
political and guess what now is and one guy's a racist or something right like you got to make
him into a bad guy because he disagreed and then your de-platform him you know you shadow
you do something to him and that's what we've been seeing and there's no way to correct this
these platforms there they're pretty much closed source there they're proprietary you go there
you hang out there you communicate there you're the user they're making money off of you
they're letting advertisers know that there are ton of eyeballs here on this platform and they're
always looking at stuff there I was clicking on stuff you know this is a great place to make money
they they hover up all the things your interests the all the stuff that you're interested in all
stuff you share all the stuff you comment on all of that's dated that's packaged and sold
and yet people still go they're knowing that at any moment you could possibly disagree with the
wrong person and get banned I would personally not use certain social media environments just because
of that even though I rarely comment on anything on social media I rarely even go on social media
to be honest with you I don't find it that interesting I love Reddit though I don't consider Reddit
social media even though it is I get a lot of news on there you know I hang out on all the Linux forms
so I don't I don't even know if Reddit allows you to have friends if it does I never even use the
feature like it's not even relevant for me for me it's about news I want to know about the latest
news coming out in open source and Linux on a certain projects that I follow I even support
projects on there so when I go on like say the LibreOffice from the open document foundation when
I go on LibreOffice form on it on their sub and somebody's in their bashing it talking mad crab
I'm gonna go ahead and donate five ten bucks whatever it is and I'm gonna post that net thread
and tell you how wonderful LibreOffice is and how I love it and can't live without it and I want
I want that post to train all right everybody can go out and say something negative and not
contribute to a project but what about the guy who like me who can't code mainly because I don't
have the time usually I mean when I try to learn I have a tons of books that I bought from humble
bundle but when I try to learn I normally have somebody coming up you know I'm a husband and a
father so somebody's coming up needing a solution and I'm the guy for the job so I'm not gonna
complain about it but I got to do my job so yeah I think that I'm I'm kind of going off
I'm going I'm in the weeds here bed I'm gonna try to steer us back on the road so let's go back
toward that Firefox a little bit there yeah hear them talk about more de-platforming and how it's
not enough knowing that the de-platforming that we currently have is being abused on these on these
closed source platforms and then you know one of the things that bother me not only is the browser
not getting the attention it needs they had to dump Thunderbird and I love Thunderbird I recently
donated 20 bucks to Thunderbird and I posted it into the Reddit forums Thunderbird is wonderful
and they're standing on their own they're a great project they still carry the Mozilla name
and they should because Mozilla originally created and I love Thunderbird however you know
when I see Firefox do stuff like create a VPN package you know that the browser isn't getting
the love it needs you had to dump Thunderbird I mean Russ started to suffer a little bit and
you create a VPN using you know the the open source browser company guys created a VPN
using open source technology you know wire guard and somehow open source was an actor thought when
they did it you know windows got it first and then Linux was like you know six months to a year later
Linux is like okay yeah now you open source guys and get a hand on this and I can see if it was
like free where people didn't have to pay for anything free as in free beer not free as in freedom
if it was at no cost to the user some sort of trial method where they just needed high volume
just to test the servers or whatever for a while or they were given like a trial you know first first
two or three months you didn't have to pay for it just so you can get a feel for it that kind of
thing I could see if you know something like that they were basically testing the load
then I could understand you know that first six months or whatever windows users had it
and then it was going to open up to everybody after they got a good idea but even still I think
that Linux would have been a yeah I mean you know I'm very frustrated I'm sorry for the
the little starting thing there but I'm trying not to swear as well it gets a little tough
so you just you just go Mozilla could you please just stay away from the unnecessary let me
clean my throat really quickly all right there we go excuse me so it's like Mozilla could you
stay away from the politics from all the unnecessary conversations that are being had out there
and can we get somebody new in the company that understands that you have a vibrant base
that will celebrate you to no end last thing you want to do is start letting these angry people
who do have a voice in the community they have a loud voice I'm not going to use any name
but some of them have YouTube channels and and podcasts and other things
they have a very loud voice and they can be heard by lots of people last thing you want is for
that voice to be turned against you you know I'm not slamming any contact readers here I'm just
saying that I personally were I in a position to have a voice that loud where I could speak to
that many people I would be urging you to take some time contact Mozilla and have them understand
that not only do you support the browser you support with the browser stands for open source
liberty and you know freely as in freedom freedom of the web but you you really want them to
reign and some of that unnecessary interaction you know that and and do a donation do a donation
10 bucks 10 bucks really I wouldn't do anything under 10 bucks though just because especially
with like PayPal on them I mean you just under 10 bucks is just not really going on you know but 10
bucks just give a little something a little something all right so with all that said I think I
covered just about everything I'm gonna try to do more and more these episodes you know hacker
needs some shows and I feel like I'm not I'm not a sis admin or anything like that I'm I'm
basically a guy on the internet and I can talk to you I can talk to you for just a few minutes
and if you're out there working you need a little content to get you through your work hey I'll talk
to you I'll have something to say you know I read a bunch of small interesting things that I think
might be interesting to hackers maybe not I don't know but it's something to listen to you know
it's content I bought a new laptop recently I want to package up an episode for that not too long
from now but I'm gonna run through a few more things actually not today not today not today we're
gonna go ahead and call this one good right now though so thank you awful listening if you
have any interesting feedback on Missoula their decision and what they've mentioned about deep
platforming even some of the different social media outlets out there that are also deep platforming
and shadow banning um you know live comment let me know something and yes I am aware of master
dawn and somebody other uh what do you call it uh uh the decentralized like uh was it the
fedaverse or something like that uh I can't remember what the actual term was used but they basically
like mastered on and peer tube and no you know decentralized it's I think the buzz word for that
but uh yeah I know about those and I am on master dawn but again I don't use social media I have
a master on account but it I mean rarely do I actually post something I'll check it out from time
the time you know it might miss something from somebody but most of the people aren't following
on there I already have their podcasts in my feed so I get a podcast and I'm good
but all right thank you guys for listening I catch up to you another time take care
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