The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money.

No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.

Yeah, the article's quoting didn't help its case. It doesn't seem fair to quote someone saying [I don't think X is a good idea] as evidence they are about to do X.

That being said, in the original context [0] it does sound a lot more like an option on the table. That original article presents it as the weakest of a list of things they're about to explore - but who knows, maybe the journalist has butchered what was said. It is an ambiguous idea without more context about how close it is to Mozilla trying to make life hard for ad-blockers.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz...

"feels off mission" exposes how little conviction there is behind this position.

That is a flimsy tissue paper statement about a concept that should be a bedrock principle.

It's irrationally charitable to give it any credit at all. Especially in context where anyone who's awake should understand they need to be delivering an unquestionably clear message about unquestionably clear goals and core values, because this ain't that.

Or rather, it is a clear message, just a different message to a different audience.

I'm not sure it's that uncharitable...

The original quote was apparently said without an understanding of the customer base as if ad blockers were not a core piece of their value proposition.

This person doesn't understand their customer if they think it's going to bring in more money to cut ad blockers... It would bring in far less money because they would lose most of their customer base. It's not off mission: it's off Target.

You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.

“I wouldn’t sell sexual services. I’ve spent an evening checking the going market rate for someone my age in my area and it’s 2k! Can you believe that? That’s a ton of money! Totally not going to do it though”.

It’s an eyebrow raising comment at the very least.

> It feels off-mission.

That's supposedly The Verge paraphrasing the CEO (Unfortunately I can't verify because the full article requires subscription.) I would like to know what the CEO actually said because "it feels off-mission" is a strange thing for the leader of the mission to say. I would hope that they know the mission inside out. No need to go by feels.

I'm concerned about the original quote which has a very weak sentiment. "it feels off-mission". Not something strong like "I'm completely against it" or "we'll never do that".

Even better would be similar to the article sentiment: "we could get 150 million now but degrade one of our few features that distinguishes us from other browsers + break a lot user trust, which would bring greater losses in the long term".

> a pretty uncharitable interpretation

like hoping for the best, but planning for the worst, you must interpret people's intentions using the same methodology. By quoting that axing adblock could be bringing $150mil, but also saying that he doesn't want to do it, it's advertising that a higher price would work - it's a way to deniably solicit an offer.

"Uncharitable interpretation" is putting it mildly. I don't know the context for the quote but imagine being the CEO. You might give one hour interview outlining the tradeoffs you need to do to keep things running, and a random blogger takes a 5 second clip, makes an absurd interpretation and ends up on hackernews.

Do you really harbor so much charity towards tech CEOs that you can't see its other meaning as at least equally as likely?

It costs Mozilla literally nothing to reassure its privacy and user-controlled principles. Instead we got a jk...unless... type of response. This is cowardice and like another commenter has said, a negotiation offer disguised as a mission statement.

It isn't even true that it would bring $150M. This is a calculation accounting on users staying on Firefox.

If they do that, most of the remaining users would flee and goodbye to your millions if you don't have any userbase anymore to justify asking money to anyone.

"It feels off-mission" is incredibly weak opposition to something that would go against core values. It just means this guy's price is higher than 150 million dollars.

Everybody has their price. I'm ideologically opposed to advertising but if someone put 150 million dollars on my table and told me to stop making an issue out of it I think I'd take the money. Being set for life trumps being called a hypocrite.

That's peanuts. Google would pay them a lot more to disable adblocking for good. And it sounds like this guy would do it for the right amount. That said, it is kind of a lackluster article.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once boasted that the company hadn’t "put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet." Two months later, they did[0].

Interpreting the Mozilla CEO the same way may not be charitable, but it is certainly familiar.

[0]: https://futurism.com/future-society/sam-altman-adult-ai-reve...

Ah, instead of AGILE, it's MAFIA nowadays

The issue isn't the explicit "we won't do it," it's that it was framed as a concrete, priced option at all

How would it bring in $150m? Is that some tranche of funding Google is witholding from them until they disable extensions?

Can someone explain how banning ad blockers from Firefox would bring in money for Mozilla? I can see how it would bring in money for other actors such as news outlets, YouTube, etc., but Mozilla doesn't have a big website where they are showing ads.

I only use Firefox over Chrome because it has adblock. So where does the $150 million comes from if people won't use it without adblock? Seems comrade didn't think this through...

CEOs are well known for turning down money, and always resisting the urge to squeeze every last drop of good will from an acquired property, right?

I think it's an apt warning, I'd have to read the literal interview transcripts to really draw a conclusion one way or the other. But the simple fact that this is on his mind, and felt like mentioning killing ad block was something Mozilla could do, and is considering doing, was a safe thing to say to a journalist... There's not a chance in hell I'd say anything remotely like that to a journalist.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

It costs the CEO of Mozilla nothing to make hard, convicted statements that all their users agree with. If it was me, the quote would be something like "but then they'd need to find a new CEO, because I'd be in prison for what I'd do to anyone who even suggested it".

Literally the only people who talk about Mozilla, or read things about what Mozilla is up to, are unusually motivated power users who really, really care about ad blocking and privacy. They may still have other users, but those people are coasting on momentum from when their grandkid installed Firefox on their computer years ago. They're not reading interviews with the new CEO. Yet Mozilla seems to consistently fail utterly at messaging to their only engaged users.

It's not even that they're doing evil shit, they're just absolutely terrible at proclaiming that they are committed to not doing evil shit.

I have seen these discussions in companies where privacy is the selling point.

These kind of questions usually come from non-engineers, people in product or sales who see privacy as a feature or marketing point, and if the ROI is higher they don't give a fuck and would pitch anything that would make a buck

It wouldn't bring in their estimate, it'd kill the browser.

I mean, that's also exactly what you would say if you had a $150M offer on the table, had received a lot of push back and were now just checking the waters and waiting to consolidate your position.

It would bring users leaving.

I wish the CEO of Mozilla could have stated the commitment a little more strongly than “it feels off-mission”. Privacy, user control, and security of the web browsing experience are (or should be) the CORE of Mozilla's mission. This isn’t a decision to take lightly on vibes. Allowing ad-blockers (or any content manipulation plugins users want) should be a deep commitment.

"It feels off-mission" is very different from "It's absolutely off-mission and against everything we stand for".

Mentioning it is just the first of many softening phases. Its abuse 101. At some point we'll have "made him do it".

> It feels off-mission.

He didn't say it is off-mission. But just that it feels. My guess is that he is looking at a higher number.

I’d happily pay $100 a year for Firefox WITH an adblocker as long as part of the money is put towards ongoing internet freedom and preventing attestation

Imagine you are in a marriage and your spouse say: "I can sleep with other people, doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission".

I don't understand context, but my honest reaction will be: "WTF, you just said? What type of relationship you think we have if we discuss such things?"

I definitely understand why people worry. This is just crazy to weight trust in money. If this is on the table and discussed internally, then what we are talking about?

'T' in Mozilla Firefox means 'Trust'.

Oh no, we're not supposed to actually parse the words a CEO spew forth. Get out of here.

People are absolutely somersaulting through hoops to try to make "I don't want to do that" into "I'm going to do it" in the comments lol

[dead]

Standard Firefox users looking for anything to be mad about. Even when it makes zero sense.