Even as someone who is still a Firefox user - the browser now has about half the browser market share as Edge... Absolutely nobody needs to be paid to write these kind of comments!
Honestly the last 5-10 years has been a disaster for Firefox...
The vast majority of these people complaining are using something like Brave or just plain Chrome.
They aren't expressing genuine criticisms for the most part.
Tons of them literally work at google.
Like, there's a poster a couple threads over insisting "Brave is great, you just have to ignore the crypto shit and change a bunch of settings" and like, somehow brave doesn't get regular 600 post long threads about how it's "Dead" and "It's the end" and "I have never used Firefox in my life but I certainly wont now!"
It's absurd.
"Mozilla's CEO makes $6 million" says people who get very angry if you suggest we should pay the managerial class less of the worlds money and also never seem to complain about any other CEO making that money and don't say anything about how much the CEO of Brave makes or how much money Google as a whole sucks out of reality to do whatever they want with, including subsidizing a browser to kill any competition.
Firefox got big because every young tech nerd installed it on everyone's machine and then a few years later, google literally paid tons of installers to also bundle and install Chrome and make it the default browser and everyone here always insists that people who did not choose to use firefox and did not even notice they now use chrome are somehow going to pay real money for firefox?
Meanwhile Opera is showing how nobody gives a shit about any of this "Privacy" nonsense in the market, and the important features are things like "you can install a theme your favorite youtuber made for shits and giggles" and "Advertising to children"
You want browser engine diversity? Guess what, that's Firefox right now. There is nothing else. That's why I use Firefox. There's nowhere else to go.
Perhaps not paid, but. I think even if it's natural (I myself have been known to make a disparaging remark in their direction), I still suspect some level of manipulation (why was I saying these things? Out of frustration or because I'd heard something worrying and negative news sticks better than positive?).
Sure, firefox has had some issues, and nobody is denying the market share is an issue but:
1) It has worked reliably for the past 10 years 2) Mozilla and firefox have not disappeared, in fact it has created a number of useful services worth paying for.
Meanwhile, I keep hearing these negative "the world is ending" comments regarding what amounts to a "force for good" in this world, and I have to wonder.
How many of these people making these comments recently switched to chrome, and are saying this as an excuse?