Citation for "ads in your browser injected by the browser developer"? I work at Brave and don't think this is something the browser does.

Pay to Surf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#History

"ads injected" is false, we don't do anything without user and (if involved; our main opt-in model is user-private ads not in publisher slots) publisher consent.

Mozilla itself says, and I say, that "half the board" did not resign over me. See https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat..., and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651 for a detailed breakdown from me based on what I can say that others involved also said. Mozilla (same FAQ link) testifies that I was not "ejected" and was welcome to stay at an unspecified C-level executive position. If you don't believe them, I can't help you.

On "divisive", beware false division and fake cover stories or excuses. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429898

Are you holding that against Mozilla too?

In my experience it is best to avoid following one's filter bubble on "how someone is viewed", especially in today's tribal regressive-left world. But YMMV!

Nope, just like how I don't hold what Jake Appelbaum may or may have not done against the Tor Project. I know we (the general public) will likely never have a good grasp of what happened inside Mozilla or the Tor Project when either of these events occurred.

Nice pot shot with the tribal regressive-left bit btw. Sadly inaccurate though.

The truly cheap shot here is lumping me in with the utterly unrelated case of Jake Appelbaum, who has had many accusations against him, while I have had zero. False equivalence piled on false claims looks like malice, so no point in arguing.

Not saying you have accusations of sexual misconduct against you, but you definitely angered the 3 board members that quit over your appointment as CEO, and upset many Mozilla employees.

Some discussions happened internally, we don't have the full story, and I won't be using your products due to the murky situation at Mozilla & your past support of certain political causes.

For onlookers and ftr:

Mozilla FAQ includes answer on whether board quit because they were "angered" and says nope: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat....

For more back-story, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429898.

Brave is a little better than Firefox in terms of trustworthiness: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/browsers.html

Neither is great though.

This is clearly an opinion piece, not really an attempt at an objective evaluation of the browser's "trustworthiness" using objective metrics:

>There is probably no corporation that has fooled its userbase more and for longer than Mozilla. Pretending to be your friend, it has for years ruined the customizability, privacy, and usability of its browser. The marketing team was, and still is, in full swing trying to spin every one of its shitty decisions positively. [...] The amount of spyware in both these browsers is massive - FF has the most, but it can all be disabled through an user.js script

There's no denying that there have been some fuck ups in Mozilla in the past but it seems to me like the author has an axe to grind here. If they don't then they should at least reference their claims.

I mean they call IE, Chrome and Opera "Botnet web browsers". I suppose they're referencing the 4chan meme and not actually saying that these browsers contain botnet code but I'm not sure if that makes it better.

It's not just an opinion that Firefox regularly phones home. It also uses privacy-hostile services such as Google Search by default. It has an economic incentive to do that since Google, etc. are the ones who fund them.

As the website says your best options are GNU IceCat or Ungoogled Chromium with uMatrix and HTTPS Everywhere.

I have my problems with some of Mozilla's marketing and technical decisions but saying that the browser contains a "massive" amount of spyware is ludicrous and doesn't exactly inform the reader.

If the author listed more precisely their problems (like you just did for instance) then the reader could make an informed choice. Saying "Chrome is a botnet and Firefox is filled with spyware" is hogwash and disqualifies this page completely IMO.

It is not an evil thing to have "google search by default" and fund this browser with the money from google. Because people don't want to pay for it. Firefox doesn't stop you from changing the default search engine easily.

Lets be realistic here. Mozilla is doing very good things for privacy and free software and it has arguably much bigger impact than GNU. The problem with real world is that change is gradular and things are about compromises.

People will not start suddenly compile their own browser or dig github for browser they never heard of.

They use Google and Gmail. Firefox surely knows that 70% of people will be pissed right there if google is not default browser so they atleast get money from google for it. It's compromise.

They need money to compete with mainstream browsers and they have to make smart decisions about which compromise to make.

Signal is getting similar shit for using google services for messaging. But it makes e2e encryption mainstream.