I don’t think it’s the right approach at all. Mozilla has been taking some incredibly dubious steps these past few years, when we need them to be the bastion of the free and open internet. They shouldn’t be refocusing on a bullshit technology they don’t have the resources to keep up with.

The goal of the big AI companies isn’t to provide a good and helpful product. They’re jamming it in every nook and cranny hoping they’ll find a niche where users get hooked on it. Then once they’ve become essential, and they control it, they can do whatever they wish.

My biggest worry here is not OpenAI. It’s Google, with Meta a close second. Google holds a significant stake in so many markets. They control one of the most used operating systems on the market. They control one of the biggest email services. They control the most used search engine. They control the browser with the highest market-share.

They effectively have the ability to fully control information.

Firefox isn’t entirely under Google’s control. If Google decides to do something shitty with Chromium, like oh I don’t know, phasing out Manifest V2, Mozilla and Firefox isn’t beholden to follow suit. Unlike every other Chromium based browser. Now, that’s just one example of things they could do, but they could do literally anything to the web-standard, and if they’re the only player on the market, the open web is fucked.

Without the web, what do we do? The web connects billions in ways both meaningful, and not. It democratises information. Wikipedia for example would be entirely impossible without the web. This platform we’re on right now wouldn’t exist without a free and open web.

That’s what Mozilla should be working to protect.