I hope she's great, but I can't imagine you'll find more dedicated or more aligned to the cause people than those that have spent a lifetime working to build everything that is Mozilla.
I can't imagine they can't find good people from within - why do you need to inject people from outside right at the top of the foundation?
Executive Dir for an org that size is not an easy position to fill. Not that there isn’t a qualified JD within the org, but it also take personality and passion.
I’m going to err on the side of presuming there was an internal search, for now. If I’m later proven wrong, so be it.
My immediate interpretation was "...did she get involved in some copyright lawsuits against pirates?". The answer is inconclusive because I couldn't find any search results that had her name plastered or referenced in any copyright/pirate cases.
However I did discover that she's the CEO of another company called the Markup, which basically is just a nonprofit newsroom that fact-checks some reports. So I suppose she's just someone who studies law on media to get a better understanding if I'm reading into that, but it's such a vague term to use if you're not like a practicing lawyer that specializes in media like copyright. I don't know, she failed to post any credentials other than declaring a position.
Tbf if you actually look into Mozilla's "AI" plans, it's for stuff like better offline translation, better screen reader and image description functionality for disabled users, finding alternate sources for articles, and so on.
It all runs locally, is trained on open source models with ethically sourced training data, and doesn't send your personal information to Mozilla.
I don't think it should be treated in the same way as Google or Microsoft's AI implementations. People should actually look into things before they assume they know everything.
Yeah but they also use the word 'commercialize' which could very well mean that they're looking to get something out from this. How much and who's profiting is what we don't know yet but it is a concern.
There’s an important corollary to all this. I (and we at Mozilla) don’t have all the good ideas. We never will. So, consider my inbox to be yours. Got an idea? Let’s talk: hi-nabiha@mozillafoundation.org
I mean, what are you really asking? For her to do something? It's an announcement posting for a new position she has started, setting out who she is for people. So negative.
It seems like messaging services are particularly prone the misinformation campaigns, since it is much more difficult to audit what is happening on the platform. How is a service like messenger or WhatsApp (both meta)going to monitor the content of messeges in a way that is safe to users? How would researchers identity and track information?
I know that the most outlandish content I see as a highly connected individual tends to come from these platforms. I do my best to educate when I see it, but I doubt it has much of a lasting impact.
It's depressing and a little frightening to know how easily and cheaply our electorate is manipulated, and to see it happening in real time.
I thought Mozilla was a FOSS organization whose goal it was to defend an open Internet with free communication?
Here they are putting out a blog post that says "WhatsApp should use the power it has over its users to implement antifeatures that their users might not want and could remove if it were FOSS".
What the hell kind of world are we living in again?
Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.
I would say that is a better mission than just promoting "free communication". There's more nuance to this situation than that
I suspect that I am; I am not omnipresent and not aware of everything happening everywhere.
Am I right that the logic is approximately like this: FOSS is a left-wing anti-business cause, misinformation tends to help right-wing parties win elections, therefore it is compatible with FOSS values and principles to want to use the power that proprietary software developers have in order to censor ("stop the spread of") misinformation?
"Please verify" is not enough of a red flag to overcome confirmation bias. People have to be reminded to seek disconfirming evidence. "Highly forwarded link is likely propaganda, consider the writers motivations and other views on the subject."
A downside to a statement like this would be the 'crying wolf' effect. If that message pops up on information they know to be true, where it's being shared because it is important or relevant, then people are less likely to care.
The fact that we're having to ask Meta nicely to not screw up our elections after everything they've done is pretty dire straits. It's a nice gesture from Mozilla, anyway.
WhatsApp is a huge vector for misinformation across the world. This is exactly the kind of specific demand people should be making of them to force some level of responsible behaviour
In general, I don't like rules about who's allowed to talk about elections, because they can just as easily be turned against the people, but these seem fairly balanced. They're not controlling the content of the messages.
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