And the browser experience is getting worse too. So, I’m not sure what our options are for the future. I tolerate the many issues large sites have displaying in Firefox because Firefox is the last holdout against all of this egregious tracking everywhere. But if they’re going to block uBlock, collect a bunch of data by default, and make websites look worse, why am I using it?

That explanation does seem plausible, but Mozilla's emails say the review was performed manually. Either way, the result wasn't great.

Tired of this AI bullshit creeping into and ruining everything. Unfortunately this is probably just the beginning.

Where, Chome land?

I use to follow a subreddit called /r/degoogle, which was nominally for conversation about how to remove and avoid using google products. ... But I ended up leaving because in pretty much every thread there was a whole lot of posts shitting on any and every suggested alternative, mostly for not being hardcore enough. It was as if the only acceptable approach was to never use any electronic device ever again. Firefox of course was constantly under fire for taking money from Google; which apparently made them worse than Google themselves. ... Anyway, I strongly suspected that people were deliberately trying to destabilize the group so that it couldn't grow or become functional. I had no other explanation for how counter-productive the bulk of the conversations were, and it would certainly be an easy and potentially useful group for pro-google people to target.

I'm less convinced that it is happening here though, but I'm certainly more suspicious of it after that experience with /r/degoogle. I reckon probably why we see a lot of any Mozilla stuff here is just that the audience on Lemmy is very interested in what Mozilla is doing - and negative news always gets more traction than positive news.

1. who would astro turf on Lemmy?
2. Google needs Mozilla like Microsoft needed Apple in the 90s

as a non google astro turfing shill (you'll have to take my word on this one lmao.)

I kinda get it, 80% of mozillas revenue comes from google? If that monopoly case doesn't kill mozilla, this might.

I could see google trying to pull some shit like this.

I've noticed the same thing you have, but I suspect it has a different explanation. I think it's more an echo chamber thing. People have said variations of this for a while now in HN comment threads, on reddit and here. And there's a snowball effect from more people saying it.

But there's been a throughline of bizarrely apathetic and insubstantial low effort comments. That's the one thing that has tied them together, which is why I think they are echo-chambery. Just for one example: one guy just never read a 990 before (a standard nonprofit form), and read Mozilla's and thought it was a conspiracy, and wrote an anti-Mozilla blog post. And then someone linked to that on Lemmy and said it was shady finances. Tons of upvotes.

But I'm convinced that no one reads through these links, including the people posting them. Because it takes two seconds to realize they are nonsense. But it doesn't stop them from getting upvoted.

So my theory is echo chamber.

Google's vassal company

I think this is what's happening.

If Google loses appeals, Mozilla (and many other browsers that rely heavily on getting their revenue from Google), will have to find new ways to generate revenue. Unfortunately, they seem to be looking for the easiest way out, and that's selling out their users.

Except, you know, the reasons stated above. He didn't just make a lite version for no reason

TBH, we'd probably all do well to use the internet a little less