Firefox was always one of my favourite browsers, ever since I installed in back in 2004 to replace the ageing Internet Explorer 6. Immediately i picked on its fast rendering time, features such as tabbed browsing, built-in pop-up blocker and extensions and most importantly its improved security. Whilst there have been many bumps along the way, I have always stuck with it and its email client counterpart, Thunderbird.

Mozilla have always stood for a free and open web, that meant that the web should be accessible to all users, regardless of their political positions, heck its even on their Twitter profile;

Until this was posted on their blog:

So why all of sudden there this sudden interest of de-platforming? let’s break down the suggestions;

Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.

This I agree with, since the ad ecosystem should be transparent, who is running the political campaigns that truly influence people?

Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.

This is incredibly important and applies to any social media platform that servers content in an recommendation system. Social media pushes fear and anger inducing content for the sake of generating engagement, they mix it with advertisement content and slowly change their user habits. These algorithms need to be stopped. If you ever see a content recommendation by a black box system, do not follow it unless you want to be eternally an ideology slave. Seek your own answers.

Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.

And who gets to decide that exactly? Do they have everyone best interest at heart?

Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

Yet La Le Lu Le Lo have removed all external research into their platforms, specifically around the negative side effect such as addictions and election influencing. What else are they hiding?

The article does raise some concise valid points, but these need to be implemented for all, and not just a certain set of users who’s political options sway in a certain direction. Somehow they were fine with the Minnesota riots and the riots ‘peaceful’ protests that happened in 2020, where there were multiple calls to violence on both sides being spread, right on the exact same social media platforms.

However, the nerve they have to point blame and act like what happened in the Capitol was the worse thing ever, The amount of horror, destruction, defeat, and death inflicted upon innocent Americans for weeks and even months in some places was incomparable to what happened in DC. Peoples entire livelihoods burned to the ground. Entire city blocks reduced to rubble. And these people are literally pretending none of that ever happened. They even encouraged it and promoted it. They actively promoted it, defended it, and encouraged it daily. And I’m not even talking about the absolutely debilitating lock-downs that have shut down hundreds of thousands of small businesses and put people out of work?

Finding a new browser

Waterfox – A fork of Firefox that is compatible with all Firefox extensions and plugins,and has a very similar user interface

Brave – uses blink/chrome engine, has a built in tracker blocker

Vivaldi – uses blink/chrome engine, a nice browser that has a lot of useful features, designed to replicate Opera 12, supports tab stacks

All browsers listed above have Windows, Mac and Linux versions, and (except for Waterfox) have Android and iOS versions that can sync between desktop and mobile

De-Platforming

Whilst La Le Lu Le Lo are busy removing and banning people from a certain political background from their platforms, a common retort is for these users to start or use platforms that tolerate this type of free speech. This has resulted in sites like Parler, Gab and Mastodon… except La Le Lu Le Lo have now started removing Parler from their respective App stores, meaning unless you use the web app, you will no longer have access to Parler. For android users this is not a big issue and simply requires installing an .apk file onto your smartphone and enabled unknown sources in it’s settings menu, for iPhones unless you jailbreak it you are stuck with the version that was installed via the Appstore, with no ability to update or transfer it to another iPhone.

Speaking of the web app, AWS (Amazon) have since decided to terminate Parler’s web service also, meaning you will no longer be able to access the Parler website until they find a new host. The reasoning for this was due to Parler’s moderation methods, which was cited as being insufficient in regard to violent content on platform. Now whilst Parler does have a few problematic users on it’s platform, that’s nothing compared to what Twitter host;