I am shocked. Shocked! /s
I am definitely starting to hate #Mozilla.
As a remark: I have always been fine with their deal with Pocket and having Google as their default search engine. In the end, there are bills to be paid.
Until I learned that e.g. Mozilla Corporation’s CEO is on a multi-million dollar salary, and they’re hiring ai and ad people.
Not OK for an entity where many highly skilled people code for free.
It’s not what users want the cash to be spent on.
Leaving the Fedi is the final drop
I was cool with them buying Pocket. But as a long time user of Pocket, I feel it has horribly stagnated. Far more features have been lost than have been gained.
And JFC the monthly subscription price for Pocket is steep for what it offers.
Yes, I’m grandfathered into the old cost, or I’d definitely pivot and move to Omnivore
You are the product. All they care about is getting companies paying
Stagnation is Mozilla’s MO. Fuck, go look at Thunderbird and be transported back to the 90’s.
Even Microsoft is updating outlook - fucking outlook is innovating, Outlook being the cancer on email that’s held it back for decades, is being updated.
Thunderbird is a perfect app, it does not need to change.
I think you might be overestimating how much code is contributed by unpaid volunteers…
@mina @dantheclamman if so many people code for free, couldn’t they have a simple Mastodon server run by a tech community? I think the actual leadership has no idea what Mozilla Foundation was.
Running a simple Mastodon server is not a big thing.
Setting up a resilient big instance, like Vivaldi does, requires commitment.
I mean vivaldi is 1/10th the size of mozilla and running a server 5x as large
Exactly! Mozilla wants people to know, they don’t give a shit.
A few years of party for executives are still possible, and just before Firefox and Thunderbird go into oblivion, quickly into a new management position at an ai company (or whatever may be the hype, then).
Mark my words!
It seems like the kind of thing the Foundation would run anyway (or sponsor as a separate project), rather than the Corporation being involved at all.
Why does it matter that they don’t run an instance? Most open source projects do not.
As long as they keep an account on an instance and keep it up to date, this is the main thing.
Hate is a strong emotional decision for a company making an internet browser…
Wasn’t by far my only point.
However: Making a commitment and then pulling back, is a statement.
No. It’s trying something. If company’s get punished for investing and trying something, others won’t even try in future. I respect they tried. If I was in charge, I wouldn’t have bothered.
I wonder, how increasing CEO pay year by year worked out for them.
Certainly, definitely not in growing the user base, but also not in revenue that would make up it.
Separate issue entirely. I’m talking specifically about Fediverse investment and why that was the final straw.
I thought the discussion was about that and not a “I hate Mozilla” greatest hits.
You can always throw in that Google fund them and a 10 year old bug that hasn’t been resolved if that was your purpose.
I guess ranting can help you feel better, so I hope it helped.
You did not read the entire post you first replied to, did you?
I read it, just had nothing to add.
For the record, I disagree with the AI funding, CEO pay and pocket stuff. It doesn’t make me hate them though. They build the biggest open source alternative to Google dictating standards for web. That’s massive. I strongly dislike google for a multitude of reasons and hating a company that challenges that is a strange position to take. If Firefox goes, we’re mega fucked.
Maybe place your anger with the actual bad actors in the browser space.
I am definitely starting to hate #Mozilla.
As a remark: I have always been fine with their deal with Pocket and having Google as their default search engine. In the end, there are bills to be paid.
Until I learned that e.g. Mozilla Corporation’s CEO is on a multi-million dollar salary, and they’re hiring ai and ad people.
Without having a say from him you are implying malicious intentions about the CEO. Which has given his actual, real Name to be in this position and so the anonym majority can provide their take. He put hisnentire career on it. Now wr could argue, that he still gets a decent job afterwards. But these are presumptions and not necessarly a representive Representation of his intentions at sign. I did non research if he has an history of climbing the latter by switching positions. Also job changes have to be interpreted to form an subjectivr opinion (We still wouldn’t have heard his side which would neex to be verified).
Not OK for an entity where many highly skilled people code for free.
I once read in their blogs that the contribution percentage is very low. Which take part in the decision of inventing Rust.
It’s not what users want the cash to be spent on.
Leaving the fediverse is saving money. Having such an input isn’t providing any benefit to them. This is why I raise my comment.
Leaving the Fedi is the final drop
I also did erase my lemmy account. I have two left. But discussions to my liking are more objective and explorative until you truely can pinpoint the intentions of the dialogue partner.
So fuck this headline, I agree with them and you are shortsighted and doing unnecessary negative advertisement for them No benefit of the doubt.
You are actually playing with the existence if the last good player with impact.
Mozilla 2012: We’re winning the browser war and saving the web. You’re welcome.
Mozilla 2017: Competing with Chrome is hard. What if we break all existing extensions and never let people replace them all?
Mozilla 2021: Through inclusiveness and the power of positive thinking we will facilitate leadership towards in-depth studies of what we can do to improve social media.
Mozilla 2024: Running a small mastodon instance is just too hard, we give up.
Just a little comment on 2021: It seems disingenuous, from their perspective. Steve Teixeira, In a lawsuit, is claiming that not only did Mozilla try to get him to fire employees who were disproportionately minorities, but they were within a group that was producing a profit for Mozilla.
In other words, Mozilla might have been preaching inclusivity publicly while practicing exclusivity privately.
Color me shocked
Corporate only pay lip services to the public? I’m so shock! Shock I tell you!
what is even happening right now
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Mozilla 2017: Competing with Chrome is hard. What if we break all existing extensions and never let people replace them all?
This is the one that broke my back. Understandable that XPCOM extensions had to go, but leaving nothing to replace them, and then going on to push their trash UI redesigns without giving us any recourse to change them back - that was just unforgivable.
Then again, that was still well before they started pushing spyware in their own browser, so in retrospect, those were very quaint times!
Just make a good browser… Thats all I care about from mozilla.
I understand that they need to diversify so that they’re not so dependent on Google’s default search engine money. I don’t know how they should do that.
But I’m not sure what they’ve been doing has been all that good of an idea.
make their browser engine useable for 3rd parties and sell support, make an electron-like product and add premium features… there are so many browser-based products that people sell, and owning 1 of the only viable browser engines should be huge… the fact that firefox is still only barely able to be embedded is a travesty
it’d be especially valuable if they made a premium electron product that provided security/privacy guarantees, performance benefits, etc - they should siphon some of the profit off the number of for-profit companies that build electron apps
I kinda like the idea but I also kinda hate it.
I really wish PWAs worked properly cross-platform instead. :(
SSB was killed after it sat behind an about:config flag, then their telemetry (that most power users disable) reported folks weren’t using. But what average users would be using a setting they would need to poke around to find. It’s a real shame too since I want to say it was PeppermintOS that was largely built around PWAs.
That sounds dumb. :(
Pretty standard for Mozilla logic if you have watched the features cut over the years.
totally agree, but also you can do more with an electron-like app - elevated privileges, less sandbox, etc because the user expects such things from an installed “native” app
well paying execs multimillion dollar salaries aint helping thats for sure!
Also. What’s the point of their mastodon server? It’s cool but so what
They’re 80% dependent on google there is no choice. Mozilla’s behaviour since they got the google deal was the begining of the end. I honestly believe that due to Mozilla’s current leadership it would be best for open source developers to all refocus on the ladybird project. I don’t have any affiliation to that project and I understand how huge of an undertaking it is to build a web engine from scratch but the gecko engine is polluted by the Mozilla’s execs and by extension Google.
To make it clear Google controls Firefox by, in practice, owning an 80% share of Mozilla.
with how many singular developers managed to do it based on Firefox when Mozilla couldn’t pull their shit together, idk why anyone would still be holding their breath. just switch to a competent fork.
most forks still use the firefox base
that’s what’s i said, but they’re all better functioning than firefox
But without the base they can’t operate
but there is a base, and it isn’t good. the forks are. you said you want a good browser. they’re not making it. the forks are good. idk what you’re arguing about.
Most forks take an ESR version and build on top of that. Who is gonna make that ESR base?
You’re saying the equivalent of ‘I don’t care about the Linux kernel cause Ubuntu is better and everyone should use that’ of arguments.
Not saying you are literally saying ^
have I said anywhere that Firefox should cease to exist or Mozilla shouldn’t do security patches or whatever because i thought we were talking about having a good browser experience.
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I’ve never understood the argument. It seems to have kind of been collectively hallucinated into existence by waves of internet comment sections over the years. But these aren’t mutually exclusive, and nobody has made a case that the resources for these other features are compromising the ability to deliver core browser functionality.
They also seem to assume that it’s development decisions, rather than Google leveraging its search dominance and financial muscle, that are tied to changes in market share. I actually think these value-adds can be good, can punch above their weight and can, if they are smart in picking their spots, do so without necessarily compromising their ability to advance the development of Firefox.
And nobody ever stops, breathes in and out, collects the evidence and makes the actual case. It’s just kind of assumed, asserted, repeated, assumed again, repeated again ad nauseum. Because enough people have seen other people say it, so they say it too knowing it leads to upvotes.
The ones closest to citing evidence, thankfully understanding at least how a real argument would actually work, are also the most unhinged, which probably isn’t a coincidence.
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Well …
How about some A.I. bullshit in your browser?
Will it run locally and use GPU offloading to summarize articles while citing them. Sure why not.
Same,i wish they can make their browser fast and actually private since gecko is slower then chromium (and maybe webkit?) its even worse on windows
Does it matter that they don’t run an instance?
As long as they have accounts and keep them up to date, that is the main thing.
How many open source projects actually run and moderate instances?
The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.
- Mozilla Manifesto, Principle 6, emphasis mine
So how does not running a virtual soapbox that is niche and most do not care about affect the public’s ability to participate in the internet from where they are?
I’m not sure if you didn’t understand the point or are cherry picking words to satiate your feelings?
Because if Mozilla can’t practice what it preaches, while it spews $65 million of venture capital at AI companies, something is wrong.
And I’m not cherry picking words, I’m responding to your question with their answer: centralization and non-interoperability are problems, and decentralization with interoperable protocols is the answer they propose.
Btw, I scanned through some of your posts and noticed you aren’t a fan of AI either. While running this little social network and GenAI do not have to be mutually exclusive, Steve Teixeira was fired because he refused to “innovate” in GenAI and, if I recall correctly, Mozilla.social was one of his projects.
You might not care about the lives of birds, but if a canary in the coal mine dies…
Something is wrong.
They do not propose them for the internet, simply opting out of hosting Mastodon. A glorified look at me RSS feed with built in validation (likes). They’re not even suggesting they’ll move away from posting on it. You probably guessed I never really liked xitter so the alternative is quite meaningless to me. I just want a browser not run by Google.
I do not believe in GenAI and do believe it’ll fail. I do not believe I’m guaranteed to be right. Folk seem to like confidently incorrect answers and are hooked on them. Mozilla need to diversify their revenue streams and maybe they get it right. If users expect that integration, and rivals do it, then they will perceive it as rubbish and not use it or move to it, which could be a failure.
I do not know this Steve chap, but I do know devs are asked to work on stuff and if they refuse, they’re not doing their job. In that case, you do it, or leave. He got fired and ultimately if he wasn’t running it, they even find someone else (was there anyone willing?) or can it. It got canned. No dev really chooses their workload, just how they go about it.
It’s less suspicious than you want it to be.
It’s wild to see a Mozilla defender throw away their own beliefs and principles in order to defend a corporation wasting $65 million.
I do not buy “Mozilla must diversify” which slips in the assumption that they are diversifying into the right thing, the “right thing” in this case being AI and other random crap, including a direct competitor to their own Relay service. If you believe this, you need to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from this, and explain the basis for why you believe in them while simultaneously believing in the opposite of them.
And if you don’t know about the Steve Teixeira lawsuit, and you are still being authentic, you’ll have an even harder time reckoning with that. I don’t know how you drilled this deep into a conversation without stumbling across it, but my hope in your honesty springs eternal.
You must be one of the few that do not believe they should diversify. Most Mozilla haters criticise the fact they are dependent on Google money and therefore not independent. I did not say it was the right thing. I said I do not believe it is, but iI could be wrong. Not sure if you aware about humility.
It is not cognitive dissidence to believe positive and negative things about a company or thing. It’s call a balanced decision. It requires nuance, a key component in adult decision making. Usually children struggle with that as something is all great or all bad. Black and white thinking isn’t really fit for the adult world.
You are surprised that you are supposed to back up your opinions and bring references to a discussion. This is the first time I have heard of this Steve guy. If you think it’s common knowledge, you’ve probably been stuck too deep in the Mozilla haters echo chamber.
You must be one of the few that do not believe they should diversify
This is an incorrect read of what I said. I said I don’t buy the assumption that Mozilla is diversifying into anything good:
If you believe this, you need to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from this, and explain the basis for why you believe in them while simultaneously believing in the opposite of them.
Unlike you, I provided explicit examples of bad diversification, where are your examples of the good?
You are surprised that you are supposed to back up your opinions and bring references to a discussion.
This sucks (Was it really costing much money to run?) but as long as Firefox continues to work with full-flavor ublock I’m happy.
Weird that they called it a “Beta”, like running a chat server you didn’t code is somehow an experiment. Just say you couldn’t be arsed running it anymore.
I guess hating Mozilla is very much in fashion. The tech chatterati have made it so.
They’ll move on, as they always do. I just hope Firefox is still here.
Critiquing Mozilla when they make mistakes is not the same as hating them. It is healthy to keep these organizations accountable
The issue is all signs point to them pivoting to AI and ad driven nonsense - they’ll move on, but if the product goes to shit so will I. The rest is noise.
Unfortunate, but not unexpected.
GoogleMozilla shutting down yet another project:did an AI become their CEO by now? dumb moz foundation.
I don’t get why, I can’t see this be difficult or costly to run, but then again I have no clue, never ran a Mastodon instance.
I would assume that it’s not worth the small reach compared to running X / Bluesky / Threads accounts but then again, like I said, the cost must be super small. 🤷
If Mozilla doesn’t discontinue a Mastodon server with under 300 people, how will it continue funding the $65 million AI and venture capital investments they’ve been making?! 😬
I’m not sure why they created one to begin with
Running the server probably costs about $100 per year, plus one person’s $180,000 salary
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I adore Firefox. Just tired of Mozilla trying features (FF Panorama) and hobbies (Notes) and then abandoning them
Like all products, Firefox still maintains a small core of uncritical, devoted fans. To them, Mozilla can do no wrong.
The problem is, up until a few months ago, Mozilla advocated for privacy and other public facing values that lined up with their manifesto. Now, they are breaking away from that, and the true believers are shifting too: becoming hostile to privacy.
The people who liked Firefox because of its privacy stance, or because they were looking for an alternative to Big Tech, on the other hand, aren’t 100% likely to become a true believer, and those people are the critics. Often, those critics have been around for years going on decades.
I see this as revisionist history. Mozilla has long been beloved for a whole host of FOSS reasons, that align with the same reasons FOSS enthusiasts like anything FOSS. I do think there are fanbases for things who think their object of adoration can do no wrong (e.g. Sneako fans probably). They are out there, but I don’t see that as being true of Mozilla.
I’ve seen supporters of Mozilla make nuanced points about it being an imperfect but important diversification of options that prevents Google from dominating the browser space, often in thoughtful interactions with fans of (say) the Brave browser or Opera browser over the fact that they rely on Chromium which is sustained by Google.
Those convos have more going on than uncritical adoration, and imo it’s important to let those nuances breath so that they, rather the oversimplifications, can be our primary takeaways.
Interestingly, while talking in mournful past tense about Firefox’s having lost their way, in this same thread there are people a few comments above denying that criticism of Mozilla is prevalent here. You guys should scroll up (or down) and say hello to each other.
The only thing you need to know about how Lemmings think about politics is that they bash Mozilla more than Google.
What are you talking about? This is the Firefox community, not many people are going to stop mid-post to say “BTW I hate Google more”
… BTW, I hate Google more.
And you’re incorrect: the community for leaving Google is more than four times the size of the community about Google.
BTW I hate Google more
One can and should critique a company when they make mistakes.
Lemmings are bashing Mozilla because they are expecting better from them, while I don’t even expect Google to not be evil
That’s precisely my point. Tell Lemmy you’re a leftist but not vegan? They’ll call you a murderer. Tell them you’re a leftist but not an anarcho-communist? Yeah I’ll bet you love capitalism and the human suffering it causes, you Chauvinist pig! Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator! (All things I have actually heard Lemmings say.) But tell them you’re a conservative and they leave you alone.
No matter what I do, I will never be leftist enough for people to be satisfied. The further left I let myself get pushed, the more vitriol I get for not being even lefter. Apparently suggesting people vote for Kamala Harris to prevent a Trump victory makes me a genocide enabler. On top of that, if I make even one step backward, much like Mozilla deciding they don’t have the resources to moderate an entire Mastodon instance on top of everything else they do, I might as well have joined the enemy. But if I stop agreeing with them at all, suddenly I’m not worth harassing. It’s enough to push a boy right, it really is.
I want to be a good person. I do. But if my choices are don’t do that or be seen in public agreeing with leftists, especially if leftists are in earshot… it’s a tougher call than I’d hoped.
You know what, no, I will anyway.
The more I advocate for unions, the more I volunteer at food banks, the more I encourage people to look into things like alternative voting systems that could break us out of the two-party system, the more I look like a juicy recruit to radical leftists, and the more criticism I get for not destroying everything in my path in pursuit of an anarcho-communist utopia in which personal belongings are a distant memory and vigilante justice reigns supreme. I still hold left-leaning values, but that “utopia” is something I will fight tooth and nail against. Leftists as an organization (a leaderless organization, but an organization all the same) have made it clear that if I’m not 110% for them, I’m against them, and that the way to not be harassed is to not act like I’m for them but partway.
I’m still going to volunteer at homeless shelters and pick up trash on the side of the road and secretly try to start a union at any store I work at, I’m still going to look for the most progressive candidate I can in every local and general election. I’m gay myself and apart from the annual potluck, I’ve never stepped foot in a church in the last five years, but if a leftist asks, I’m a devout Catholic, I think being gay is sinful, and I voted for Trump. Maybe then they’ll stop calling me a Nazi.
anarcho-communist utopia in which personal belongings are a distant memory and vigilante justice reigns supreme
Literally nobody, not even anarchocommunists, like me, want personal belongings to not be a thing. Marxism 101 includes a section on personal vs private property, the notion of wanting to abolish private property is not with the modern understanding of private property, marx made the clear distinction between private and personal property, and it’s quite simple, personal property is stuff that you own, private property is stuff that generates capital.
I don’t get why people keep thinking anyone would believe something this stupid, like do you actually think we’re going to take your toothbrushes?
but that “utopia” is something I will fight tooth and nail against
You clearly don’t even know what you’re fighting against. That’s probably why you get made fun of in socialist circles. Read theory, all you have is a clear strawman and whining that people make fun of you.
I’m a devout Catholic, I think being gay is sinful, and I voted for Trump. Maybe then they’ll stop calling me a Nazi.
This is you proving the point made by the comic.
Do you actually think we’re going to take your toothbrushes?
Not in the sense that they’ll all be confiscated, but in the sense that multiple anarcho-communists have told me that under their utopia, theft will not be a crime. Obviously, if someone stole something, they must have needed it more than you. They’ve also told me that under anarcho-communism, there will be no state, thus no laws, thus no justice system. If you are wronged, your only recourse is vigilantism – a point I can’t help but notice you quoted but conveniently glossed over. Almost like you’re trying to make a strawman or something. But I digress. Vigilantism doesn’t work (I’d be happy to explain why if you have trouble with that as well) and I’m still waiting to hear a single anarcho-communist propose an alternative.
This is you proving the point made in the comic.
That is you proving you did not read any part of my comment except the last two sentences. Does leftism only count if I do it in public? Does saying I voted for Trump to get people whose definition of conservative is “anyone right of Ursula K. LeGuin” to stop treating me like a soul who needs saving make me a bigot despite my actions to the contrary?
Not in the sense that they’ll all be confiscated, but in the sense that multiple anarcho-communists have told me that under their utopia, theft will not be a crime.
source: dude just trust me
They were probably saying there will be no reason to steal because resources will be plentiful, not that you can just take other peoples stuff and it’s fine.
They’ve also told me that under anarcho-communism, there will be no state, thus no laws, thus no justice system.
no they didn’t, a state is just a monopoly on violence in a given region, there will still be law and order through democracy and consensus, it’ll just be horizontally handled by the community.
If you are wronged, your only recourse is vigilantism – a point I can’t help but notice you quoted but conveniently glossed over
this is just nonsense, we just believe these things would be handled communally, not by authority, but by democracy. it got glossed over because it’s just as much nonsense as the toothbrush thing.
But I digress. Vigilantism doesn’t work (I’d be happy to explain why if you have trouble with that as well) and I’m still waiting to hear a single anarcho-communist propose an alternative.
democratically run courts with rotations, honestly there are hundreds of ideas, google it. Nobodies idea is what you’re saying, it’s just a strawman.
Does leftism only count if I do it in public?
No but it means if you do it wrong you’ll get made fun of. You’ve clearly never even read a single book on anarchism and have strong opinions about it.
If your opinions are based on complete nonsense strawmen, that explains why you keep getting made fun of.
The point of the comic is that absolute buffoons say they’re getting bullied and that’s the reason they’re getting pushed right, like you. It has no basis in reality, people are just criticizing things they should criticize, and since you don’t bother to do the necessary reading to understand why people are criticizing you, you just go “the left is mean wahhh”
The fact that your arguments are covered in socialism101 courses shows that you’ve never even bothered to make an attempt. Do you actually think socialists are so dumb that they never thought of these arguments? Do you actually think marx or kropotkin never came up with “but what if someone murders someone” on their own? They wrote all these books and they get dunked on by a guy who says “well what if someone takes my stuff?” in your imaginary world.
Thank you for misinterpreting my post and calling me a racist, @Communist. Unfortunately I don’t feel obligated to explain myself to you.
I did not call you racist.
But you’re using the same argument they’re using. I don’t see what I misinterpreted here, it’s literally identical to the comic.
Can you point me to an example of that happening here?
Perhaps I should rephrase. They attack Mozilla (and users of Firefox) infinitely more than Google (and users of various Google products). I heard it said after Mozilla introduced their opt-out privacy-respecting ad tracking that users should “move to a more privacy-friendly browser like Google Chrome”.
This is true of Lemmy’s political stance in general. Tell them you’re a leftist but not vegan? They’ll call you a murderer. Tell them you’re a leftist but not an anarcho-communist? Yeah I’ll bet you love capitalism and the human suffering it causes, you Chauvinist pig! Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator! (All things I have actually heard Lemmings say.) But tell them you’re a conservative and they leave you alone.
I’ve never seen self-proclaimed leftists hurl more vitriol than when an openly-socialist labor organizer in my union said they were for freedom of speech (for humans) and generally supportive of firearm ownership. Absolutely wild reaction.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
- Karl Marx
But don’t you understand? Any language or policy the right adopts, we must abandon, even if, on its face (if not in the right wing implementation of it), it’s something we agree with. Otherwise how will we identify and shun right wingers? They could be hiding anywhere, you know.
It’s like when Bush Jr. pushed for the adoption of reading programs across America that focused on phonics, so people took a rebellious stance and taught kids “balanced reading” which taught kids to memorize words rather than the sounds that make up words.
The result: an epidemic of illiteracy to own the Republicans. Bush was/is a warmongering piece of shit but he was right about phonics being the correct way to learn reading.
Here’s one example of a mega-upvoted post that is critical of Mozilla:
https://lemmy.ml/post/13081759/9195853
I think it’s indicative not only of the prevalence of the view but also the quality (or lack thereof) of the arguments backing the view.
…he literally said firefox was better than most in the post? I don’t understand why you believe mozilla to be above criticism just because they’re better than google
and why bother criticizing a company so laughably awful as google, try saying you use chrome on a post, everyone will recommend you switch.
Where did that post indicate that Google was better?
People aren’t required to abruptly stop talking about the subject of their posts to also remind people that other companies are shit also. That’s absurd.
This must be the tech version of having to type up a 10,000 word essay on how Republicans are worse then democrats before you can type a single word of criticism against the Democratic party.
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“Features”
This is too much information being processed at a time to me! 😵💫
