I was really disappointed when I heard that Mozilla supports censorship. I was migrating to Firefox and it almost changed my mind. After reading the original post by Mozilla I decided that Mozilla is my first choice, partly because I don't know a better one.
I agree it’s bad that they basically showed approval on censorship but I think the most important part of their post was that we have to change, for the better. It was more about taking up responsibilities when you are in the position where you can make the change, censorship is not necessarily the means. Mozilla actually raised the question of when should platforms deplatform someone and if that decision-making power is theirs alone. The suggestions about ads are also very good. And I am guessing that it could be the reason why some media try to focus on just “we need more than deplatforming”.
They are actually addressing an important problem in our communities, the communities throughout the globe – people who are influent are not helping the communities. Even though people have much more than they would ever need, they still do not care about the communities where they get their money from. Well, making a donation or two, saying that “we condemn something that’s wrong” or “we support something that’s right” occasionally maybe, but we know most of those are just superficial if not outright hypocrisy. Oh wait, many of them won’t even condemn atrocities when it hurts their profits…
I am still kind of disappointed with the fact that Mozilla seemed to be fine with censorship when they consider the information harmful. It’s very tempting to remove something you believe you know it is false especially when it may cause harm. You would understand that impulse if you or someone or something you hold dear have been besieged by fake information. But it still should be up to the audience to decide what they want to believe. Otherwise we will be moving towards the kind of society where some people will decide that “the people are not smart enough” for having free access to information. I doubt if anyone in his or her right mind would like that. I hope that Mozilla will not move further away from us.
All in all, I think that the post has its merit. But don’t take my word for it, maybe I don’t understand it correctly, maybe I am from Mozilla, the post is still there, see it for yourselves.
Companies like google moved too far away for me to believe that they will be on our side when choice have to be made. I hope that Mozilla will remember what they mean to be.
