It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes, it’s exactly what you have to do in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, and surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy. You see, it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected groups and organisations in the world.

“Mozilla is now trying to diversify its revenue stream and, in some markets, has different default search engines. For example, it partners with privacy-championing Chinese search engine Baidu”

  • Ephera
    7•1 year ago

    I’m on board with the message, and to reach a wider audience I can definitely humor it being delivered with some snark. But this is mostly just snark without a solution in sight.

    No, it’s absolutely not great that GNOME, Mozilla et al have ties in that way. But, while they might have some leeway to do things better, ultimately they need a big chunk of money to fill the role that they have.

    Not taking the money and not filling that role isn’t particularly useful. Everyone could be using Xfce right now. And everyone could be using Dillo or hell, a fork of Google’s browser, right now.

    Even the author himself is using GNOME over Xfce, which I don’t care to attack, but chances are that the GNOME Foundation is doing something with that Google money to make it preferable to him.