Mozilla's failures and a path to profitability

Written by Andrew Gioia on August 14, 2020  ·  23 minute read

I love Mozilla, I love its mission, and I love its core product, Firefox. It absolutely sucks as a business though.

I suspected this for many years, re-realizing it every time Hacker News or some other story reminded me of its umbilica cord to Google. Relying on one contract to provide over 80% of its revenue¹ every year is bad enough. Forcing itself onto a tightrope walk—privacy as a business model on one side, reliance on your chief competitor (an ad company no less!) to make payroll on the other—is critically negligent.

Boycott Facebook, but not because it supports free speech

Written by Andrew Gioia on July 14, 2020  ·  15 minute read

Of all the very rational reasons to boycott Facebook or any commercial social media platform, that “its support of free speech” has taken hold is alarming. “Private companies can do whatever they want” is problematic for many reasons, and here it’s being used unfairly as a sword to compel Facebook to govern certain types of speech on its platform. This is a huge mistake with irrevocable damage, and if free speech as a moral guideline doesn’t persuade you then the realities of voluntarily privatizing “truth arbitration” absolutely should.