The Mozilla I want focus on people and not AI

I used to be a quite active Mozilla volunteer. I'd been part of Mozilla Reps, Mozilla TechSpeakers, and even contracted with the Foundation for a bit. It was a huge part of my life and identity of a while and if that is a healthy thing or not is up for debate, but it was true. What made me devote so much time and effort to Mozilla was a set of common values and practices that aligned with what I want for the Web.

Basically, I saw in Mozilla a community of like-minded individuals who would foster a people-centric Web. In a world of gigantic tech conglomerates like Meta and Google, Mozilla was a breath of fresh air.

I am fully aware that as I write these words, many people will be furiously typing their own Mozilla criticisms. I do not share their vitriol. Let's get some stuff out of the way:

• Mozilla does with very little budget what other companies do with much larger sums.
• CEOs for large foundations always get paid in the millions, if you don't pay competitive salaries, you don't get someone with that kind of experience and contacts.
• Many people don't realise the challenges of fundraising, grantwriting, and keeping a foundation afloat.
• Mozilla didn't turned evil; Google doesn't sent secret letters telling Mozilla what to do.

Now that we got the usual FUD out of the way, let me resume my blog post. Mozilla used to have a vibrant contributor community, you'd have an event anywhere and there would be Mozilla supporters and volunteers there. It was quite fond of grassroot efforts and it put people first.

Mozilla Foundation initiatives such as Teach The Web, Mozilla Corporation events such as App Days, they were all focused on human connections, people over profit, and fostering a web ecosystem where everyone had a voice and everyone could participate (for not absolute quantities of everyone cause the world is not perfect).

Moving on to the current hellscape of 2025. I barelly see any movement in terms of volunteers in events or community management. Whatever is happening now it is but a shadow of old Mozilla Reps days of yore. Without a community, you don't have word of mouth and will lose goodwill over time as you distance yourself from your userbase. Mozilla used to be a lot closer to its userbase than it is today.

We sometimes forget that for all practical effects Mozilla is inserted in the same tech bro ecosystem as all the other large Sillicon Valey companies. It is affected by the same stupid trends. FAANG is a shoal that pursues trends together. If Meta, Google, and others start moving in a direction, the rest of the shoal moves too. Mozilla is in the shoal not because it is there as an entity but because many of the decision makers are part of that shoal and they drag Mozilla with it.

Volunteers used to wear shirts and cute wrist bracelets saying "Internet by the people for the people". It used to be for the people. It doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

The enshitification of the Internet is real. Those massive companies are trying to extract every single iota of profit from its users through whatever predatory means they can. From the massive book theft of Meta to all those LLM generative AI companies stealing all their artistic data from creatives portfolios without any regard for the desires of said creatives.

It seems like every company under the sun is trying to push generative AI and LLM agents and other bullshit. Heck some horrible web SaaS that I need to use for work got three AI features on the main interface and no way to disable them.

Gen AI and AI agents are eating the web and software world regardless if you want it. Recently, I lost hours doing coursework online just to realise later that the whole course was an AI halucination and that the features I was trying to learn were never real and were never a part of the software I was using. Someone just published a full course online with source code examples for a plugin architecture that doesn't actually exists. That is how bad shit is.

Back to Mozilla, I think Mozilla dropped the ball. It was in a unique position to take a stand against this AI centric Web and go back to putting humans front and centre of the internet. It could take a stand against generative AI. It could have taken a stand against halucinating agentic interfaces. It could have done all simply by promoting and pushing features that reward a web made by humans.

It could go back to foster user groups and human connections between volunteers, drawing itself closer to its userbase again.

It could bring back RSS, feed reading, and try to promote ways in Firefox to subscribe and keep track of humans you like thus pushing against algorithmic timelines.

It could actually make a choice and promote decentralised platforms and integrate decentralisation properly in the browser, like we dreamed ten years ago.

Mozilla should be pushing towards blogging, making it simpler for people to put their dreams, voice, wants, and stories online. It should be making tools that make it easier to host and discover web pages. Not by using AI to figure shit out, but by making sure that it is easy to find your friends, to find your people, and to share with them.

I want a Mozilla that champions the small web. That pushes for decentralisation and takes a stand against massive algorithmic-led social networks. A Firefox that understands and helps me side-step the enshitification of the Web. A browser that is a user agent and not a browser that is silicon valey serf that sometimes behaves like a brat.

I don't want Mozilla AI, let another foundation take care of that. I want a Mozilla Labs pushing the boundaries of the IndieWeb and one that I can trust not to be part of that cursed shoal.