They would have had to build that infrastructure. I’m not saying fundraising is easy. But it’s possible as proven by wikipedia. They could have cut Google loose 10 years ago and said "we’re going to use our runway to try to put together a wikimedia foundation style fundraising operation. I don’t think they can do it now because the trust, goodwill and quite frankly, userbase is gone.

What on earth would that do? The poisonous leadership would not use it to improve the browser nor would they start working for donors instead of Google.

My point is that there is a funding model that they could have pursued when they still had goodwill and trust. And my hope is if the government finally puts the boot in with Google, then this current version of mozilla will collapse, the rats will leave the ship and hopefully a good browser will emerge the way firefox emerged from netscape.

It’s the board and the wider leadership who are controlled by Google and intent on destroying Firefox. The current CEO is pretty new, and replaced a heavily criticized CEO that spent years overseeing the decline of Firefox. The new CEO is a former McKinsey consultant.

Daily reminder that Mozilla’s new CEO is a former McKinsey consultant.

Mozilla could have focused on being user-supported through fundraising like Wikipedia. Instead they chose the comfortable path of being funded by their biggest competitor, who is an evil monopoly spyware ad business, which has been compelling Mozilla to kill Firefox and become the badies on the way down.

Gonna save this one for later.

Israel’s “achievement” is being even worse than that: a warmongering, genocidal apartheid state.

and also

a fascist theocracy

Those children weren’t civilians, they were potential combatants. Whose to say they wouldn’t have grown up to become militants?

Also observing that Israel murders children is anti-semitic. Haven’t you ever heard of the black legend?

I’ve been voting for a while and never have I seen a candidate on the ballot who was against capitalism.

via shadowy manipulation […] and it has the distinction of not being true

Yeah I agree with this part. Because the manipulation is obvious and in your face and absolutely not “shadowy”.

AIPAC has made it clear repeatedly that they will carpet bomb any candidate no matter how minor with money if they support BDS or are even BDS-adjacent. Nina Turner, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman have all had their political careers cut short for being even slightly critical of Israel.

If there was an organization like AIPAC for, say, Russia, an ARPAC, it would be illegal and its officers would be hauled off to prison because foreign influence in American elections is illegal. Yet even though it says right in the name that AIPAC is a foreign influence organization, they are allowed to not only operate but yield enormous power.

On the other side of the isle, Thomas Massie has said that every single member of the US congress has an “AIPAC Minder” who watches over them at all times and he’s even heard in meetings of Republican members statements like “I need to clear that with my AIPAC guy.”

It is illegal to boycott a foreign country in 37 US states. The state governments of a majority of American states actually passed a law saying “this foreign country in particular, if an American citizen boycotts or advocates for boycotting it, they can be prosecuted.” Can you guess which country that is? (hint: it’s not Canada)

As demonstrated by @theangryseal@lemmy.world the zionists in America are not all Jewish. In fact, there are likely many more evangelical zionists in the USA than Jewish zionists. Also, most of the jews I know (especially younger ones) are anti-zionist.

But cheers on the Israel=Judaism hasbara

Yeah. The silver lining is that, for specific issues, eventually the dam bursts and public opinion can overwhelm. But it can take a long time.

Ross Perot was the most successful third party candidate in American history since William Jennings Bryan. And yet, for nearly two decades both parties refused to adopt his policies on trade despite their overwhelming popularity and the obvious benefit electorally.

BTW The bigger issue with campaign finance is our radical right activist supreme court. We used to have a lot of laws limiting what money could do in politics but the court has dismantled most of them.

Support for Israel is “off the table” in American politics. It’s something that won’t even be offered to voters as a choice. I remember when globalization was like this. Between Ross Perot and Donald Trump you had zero candidates on either side who were anti-globalization.

That’s too 5-d chess for “the US” to pull off. I find it more plausible that the US supports Israel because Israel has a lot of powerful supporters in the US who manipulate public opinion and government policy.

Wow this is batshit.

Yep this. It’s a combination of becoming more financially well-off, combined with loss aversion, combined with a sense that the culture starts to alienate you. It’s like grandpa simpson said: “I used to be with it. But what was ‘it’ changed. And now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’, and what is ‘it’ is scary and strange.”

I’m normally pretty critical of China but this I can get behind.

Man, I’m so glad this shit is illegal on multiple levels in Europe.

In other news: https://midwest.social/post/17142014

They conquered the whole planet in search of someone they could beat at cricket.

During the 2022 election the French left was saying “A vote for Macron in 2022 is a vote for Le Pen in 2027”.

They appear to be right on schedule.