I got a copy of the text from the email, and added it below, with personal information and link trackers removed.

Hello [receiver’s name],

I’ve long dreamed about working for Mozilla. I learned how to send encrypted e-mail using Mozilla Thunderbird, and I’ve been a Firefox user since almost as long as I can remember. In more recent years, I’ve been an avid follower of Mozilla’s advocacy work, and was lucky enough to partner with Mozilla on investigative journalism in my last job.

In many ways, Mozilla was the dream – and now, as the leader of the Foundation, my job is to make my dreams for Mozilla come true. What that means, though, is making your dreams come true – for a trustworthy and open future of technology; for tech that is a tool for liberation, not limitation; and for tech that values people over profit.

So I’m reaching out to technologists, activists, researchers, engineers, policy experts, and, most importantly, to you – the people who make up the Mozilla community – to ask a simple question.

[receiver’s name]. What is your dream for Mozilla? I invite you to take a moment to share your thoughts by completing this brief survey.

Let’s start with this question:

Question 1: What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?

  • Protecting my privacy online
  • Avoiding scams
  • Choosing products, apps, technology, and services that I can trust
  • Keeping children safe online
  • Responsible use of AI
  • Keeping the internet is open and free
  • Knowing how to spot misinformation
  • Other (please specify)

Take the survey now →

With your help, together we can imagine and create the Internet we want. Thank you for being a part of this.

Always yours,

Nabiha Syed Executive Director Mozilla Foundation

  • rtxn@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “We’ve decided to focus our efforts on AI and advertising. Please tell us why you think that’s a good idea!”

  • Dotcom@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Shame their AI question didn’t have a “my biggest concerns is companies chasing the AI buzzword with no tangible benefit”

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      right? mozilla, you gotta focus on making a good web browser right now. not a more gimmicky web browser

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I agree that’s basically what I out in the text box underneath the AI multi-select options. “We don’t want yet another annoying AI search feature or chatbot! We want a focus on useable features and security!”

    • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      I’m not anti-ai, but all signs point to the who thing stagnating, I don’t see what mozilla could contribute in the current climate.

      • Thinker@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Thankfully, development of Servo has been revived, and it’s now fully independent of Mozilla. I believe it’s now being stewarded by the Linux Foundation of Europe, with a lot of contributions from Igalia.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        The result of the whole thing was project quantum. Firefox includes lots of Rust code. Servo was never intended to be a product, it always was a research platform.

  • Thinker@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The fact that there’s no option to express my anger over the environmental cost of AI is infuriating. There is no responsible or positive use of AI when it’s accelerating the destruction of our climate.

    • Otter@lemmy.caOP
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      1 month ago

      I see a textbox saying “What do you want to see from Mozilla in the future?” You could add it there, as justification for why you want them to focus less on it

      There is a text box part way through, I included my more general thoughts there

      (my comment was getting rambly)

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      There’s lot of reasons to hate AI. Spreading misinformation about renewable energy isn’t one of them

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        What?

        He is saying that AI uses countries worth of energy by itself. Even a normal search query using AI uses orders of magnitude more energy than a traditional search query.

        Literally tech companies have been buying or reserving entire power plants exclusively for training AI datasets. At least Microsoft reactivated an old nuclear plant instead of buying out coal plant energy shares.

        And 90% of uses for AI are absolute dogshit corporate fluff or a shiny activity for 10 year olds to play with for 30 minutes.

        There are legitimate uses like auto note taking, voice assistants, etc… But it is destroying the environment because corporations are shoving it into every possible thing they can, quadrupling the energy growth rate and straining our electrical grids and burning tons and tons more coal to do it.

  • Retiring@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    The audacity to direct you to a donations page after you fill out their survey 😂

  • solrize@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Embrace RFC 8890 (“The Internet is for End Users”) as a guiding principle for all Mozilla client app design and for the organization as a whole:

    https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html

    Specifically, delete item 9 from the Mozilla manifesto and replace it with “follow RFC 8890”. That’s not supposed to be an anti-business stance, but rather, a recognition that the commercial side of the internet has the resources to look after its own interests, and Mozilla should be on the user side, rather than trying to straddle both sides.

    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    30 days ago

    My dream for Mozilla is that it does not descend into a capitalist marionette full of silent information gathering and black-box AI widgets. If you’re going to do AI, I want it open, like training data open. Whitepaper open. I want to be able to trust the company and it’s projects and especially it’s browser.

  • tabular@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Prolong your browser for as long as necessary and explore the possibility of using the internet without any web browsers. Firefox is a last stand of competition, and without choice there might as well not be browsers at all.

    Is it wise to have such a complex everything-app with no end in sight? (more like, no end in site)

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    good set of questions while trying to be non biased on certain topics.

    for me, topics about privacy and misinformation matter more than ai. i would like them to lean more on helping me identify ai generated text and deepfakes as far as ai is concerned.

    i also liked that mozilla study about smart cars so more of that is nice.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    So you got this survey in an email. Was the link intended to be shared like this? Can I find the survey link somewhere on Mozilla’s own websites?

    I guess I’m not totally convinced that this is an official Mozilla survey, or even if it is - I’m not sure who their target survey audience is.

    • Otter@lemmy.caOP
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      30 days ago

      So you got this survey in an email. Was the link intended to be shared like this? Can I find the survey link somewhere on Mozilla’s own websites?

      The email was through their newsletter and I would have offered to forward it, if it didn’t have personal information in it. Maybe someone else who is subscribed to the newsletter can back up the claim instead?

      I actually searched for the website link to put in the post body before sharing, and went through a similar thought process as yours when I didn’t find it. My reasons for sharing it anyway were:

      • Sometimes these emails say to not share it further, but this one didn’t
      • I see it shared already in a few places unofficially (Mastodon, Reddit, Twitter)
      • It mentioned ‘Mozilla Community’ and not a more specific group, so this audience seemed appropriate
      • People here might have better feedback than I could write up, so it should be a net positive for Mozilla

      It would be nice if they did post about it on an official account to resolve any concerns. If it helps, it looks like “mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net” has been used for other surveys in the past and so you might find a link to that domain from an official source


      edit:

      their website has links to that domain based on a search of the GitHub repo

      For example, the ‘Submit a product here’ link on this page: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/

      It’s also possible to submit without filling in the demographic questions if people are concerned but still want to submit

      • Otter@lemmy.caOP
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        30 days ago

        As an unrelated point, when I searched again just now, most of the entries in the search engine were from Lemmy/Mbin, followed by Mastodon. Mostly this post and others like it

  • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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    “To disappear”

    EDIT: I don’t care if you don’t agree and I’m not going to reply further. If you still did not came to the conclusion that Mozilla became just a cash grab machine by yourself, then you’re hopeless.

    • DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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      What’s the alternative, an even bigger cash grab machine like Google’s chromium?

        • exu@feditown.com
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          1 month ago

          Google controls Chromium same as it controls Android. The product direction and included features are set by the team at Google.

    • TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Take a minute to learn the difference between mozilla.org and mozilla.com. They are very much separate, and the .com has never pretended to not be there for the money. It’s explicitly why it exists, so that the org can keep doing its thing.