Mozilla Slopaganda 관련

CSS > Article(s)

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Article(s)

• Stakes
• Manifesto
• Tools
• Ledger
• Roadmap

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Mozilla Slopaganda

The one where I question reality

Mozilla published a new State of Mozilla. It’s absolute slopaganda. A mess of trippy visuals and corpo-speak that’s been through the slop wringer too many times.

I read it so you don’t have to.

Warning

the State of Mozilla website has flashing graphics and janky animations.

The website opens with a faux terminal console that logs some nonsense that’s too fast to read. It includes a weird line about “synth-mushroom pop”.

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This is not the only bizarre reference to magic mushrooms as we’ll see later. What other connection am I missing here? If you’re lucky, next you’ll be treated to a fake CAPTCHA including words “HU MAN”, “INT ERNET”, and “FU TUR E”.

a fake CAPTCHA asking to type 'HU MAN'

The leading headline is:

Doing for AI what we did for the web

Which I take to mean, lighting a fire under Microsoft and then fading into obscurity. They directly call out Microsoft later. Back then Mozilla had a competitive web product: Firefox. Mozilla has no AI product today to do anthing.

Mozilla’s opening sales pitch — which is certified slop — includes this bullet point:

We Choose a Different Economic Model: A ‘double bottom line’ — advancing our mission and shaping markets — continues to guide everything we do.

If I may direct you to Mozilla’s financial report PDF:

pg 19, '2024 Audited Financial Statement' (stateof.mozilla.org)

Approximately 86% and 85% of Mozilla’s revenues from customers with contracts were derived from one customer for the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively.

That one customer is of course: Google. I wonder why Mozilla are painting Microsoft as the enemy? Mozilla’s idea of a double bottom line is explained further on the “LEDGER” page^[1]. Although extracting meaning from the words is beyond me.

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Stakes

The stakes section is wild. We’re asked to choose one of two futures. Future A is choosing Microsoft. This is represented by hot people making out and a creepy robot driver.

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Twenty five years ago, when Microsoft controlled 95% of browsers, they defined how people accessed information, who could build what, and on what terms.

Mozilla did topple Microsoft’s Internet Explorer reign. Then both lost the browser war to Google’s Chrome. But no mention of Google; can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Future B is choosing Mozilla. And more shrooms, apparently.

Alt

Imagine it’s 2030. You wake up and your digital world feels different — familiar, but freer.

This future is AI fan fiction because Mozilla doesn’t actually have any AI products. So which future do you choose, dogging — don’t google it, or shrooms? Seriously, what is with the mushroom references? Is this part of the edgy “fellow kids” rebranding?

I slowed this down 50% for the sake of your eyes.

The page is also adorned with a marquee repeating: “DO NOT ACCEPT DEFAULT SETTINGS”. This must be a subtle reference to Firefox’s on-by-default telemetry, “privacy-preserving” tracking, Google search, and new AI integration?

Manifesto

This section is slop.

Tools

If the future of AI and the web are still up for grabs, the tools we build - our products, programs and investments - are our most powerful levers in shaping how things work out.

So surely Mozilla has an AI product to showcase now, right?

Wrong. They have Firefox and Thunderbird. It’s nice they remembered about Thunderbird though that wasn’t a given. The rest of the page is vague vacuous promises about AI investment. Who is this written for, the ever expanding board and c-suite?

Ledger

Mozilla was born to challenge a tech monopoly […]

— just not papa Google’s —

[…] and we succeeded not by becoming a significant player in the browser market […]

— again leaning on history. Firefox has not been “significant” in years. Mozilla leadership has watched Firefox market share plummet and been helpless. Even if I was an AI lover, Mozilla has nothing to compete in the AI space. They just say things. With mushrooms.

We’re focusing our ~$1.4B in reserves

Mozilla claim $1.4 billion in reserves (and no debt). They’re funded by over half a billy anually from Google.

👏 Stop 👏 donating 👏 to 👏 Mozilla 👏

Mozilla is the same Big Tech they pretend to rebel against. Donate your money to a worthy open source independent project before it’s drowned by slop.

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Roadmap

State of Mozilla ends by covering the same empty AI-infused promises. Mozilla talk about the past because that’s all they have. Mozilla fantasise about the future because they have nothing in the present.

My favourite part:

Also, launch “AI controls” into Firefox, giving people a clear way to turn AI off entirely - current and future AI features.

One of the few clear deliverable goals is an AI “kill switch”. Mozilla aren’t exactly sure what their AI future will be but at least you can say no. That’s something!

As fun as it is to rib on Mozilla, the web needs Firefox. I feel for the Firefox developers who actually care. State of Mozilla will inspire no one. The sloppy prose are borderline unreadable. The presentation is designed to stop you reading.

THE FUTURE IS EXPERIMENTAL SYNTH-MUSHROOM POP

• Mozilla

The future is Microsoft.

Mozilla Slopaganda

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The one where I question reality

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1. I can’t link to anything because of the stupid splash screen and CAPTCHAs. ↩︎