As I'm sure many here have noticed, at some point over the last decade, Firefox has become what anons used to mock when they referred to Internet Explorer. How did this happen? I suppose it's like the cliche about how one becomes bankrupt… very slowly, then all at once. Rather then continue the circle jerk about whether Firefox is the patrician's choice or just a pleb tier meme, let's just accept that for the sake of argument that it is a useful piece of software and that, as a product of the Mozilla foundation, it's configuration is perhaps more susceptible to public outcry then an explicitly for profit Microsoft or Google (INB4 Chrome flame wars) product. So, how could public outcry be leveraged against some of the more "problematic" features of Firefox? I'm not completely sure and would like to see if any anons would like to brainstorm regarding this ITT.
I'll start. One of the more annoying features of Firefox, out of the box, is that there is an ever changing array of about:config settings that a user, who doesn't want to be a slave to a botnet, might want to adjust. There is the telemetry problem and also the fact that it's security features rely on a seemingly ever expanding array of phone homes to various servers that the end user does not, out of the box, have the ability to authorize. The same goes for security features. I have noticed that, if one opens and closes Firefox regularly, nearly 1/4 MB can be used re-opening the browser, as it phones home to Mozilla and Google, etc. Now, in current year, one might say that, though there might be an argument to made over what degree of control an end user should have out of the box, 1/4 MB is an inconsequential amount of data to worry about in regards to an "unlimited" data plan and shouldn't be at issue. But, consider the following. If a poor person, living in the third world, had to put up with just a few MB a day, over the course of a year that could lead to many an overage charge on both shit hole country tier landline and mobile data plans. So, would it be worth it to try and start a public outcry regarding this implementation of botnet by using this as an angle of attack? Hashtag, "Mozilla hates poor people" for instance? Street shitters rise up? Try and get a Greta Thunberg to demand a consistent dark mode because of electric use and muh climate change? Explain how only paying lip service to things like canvasing and fingerprinting put both the endangered tranny species and BLM activists alike at risk when using web forums? Maybe we should try to re-frame the debate away from the traditional autistic demands of free software on principle that have been falling on deaf ears for so long? Weaponize current year COC, so to speak. If an astroturfed campaign fomented by anons could guilt Mozilla into handing user control over what servers it uses to implement it's security features and where and when those features might need or not need to be updated (like uBlocks filter lists), then might that be something worth getting behind? Something worth putting our collective hive mind behind?
How else could this asymmetric angle of attack be used against botnets, such as Mozilla is embracing, so that anons could more easily get what they want from their software?
TLDR: Could anons try and guilt the Mozilla foundation into giving us back the browser that we want?