"Doomsdrzej" wrote
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https://www.therebel.media/mozilla_exec_eliminate_meritocracy_because_it_s_pr oblematic
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| They will now be fighting the evil of meritocracy.

Interesting stuff. I wasn't aware of this "meritocracy"
buzzword. It's unfortunate that the writer you linked
couldn't make his case better. His piece is nasty and
adolescent, even attacking people based on their names.

Diversity, MeToo, etc have become so extremist. Yet
there are so few *reasonable* voices questioning them.
There was Matt Damon, asking for some perspective.
And then a number of powerful, extremist women with
media access said he should just shut up because as
a man he has no perspective on gender/power issues.
(Hey... sometimes sexism has to be used to destroy
sexism.

I can only think of one evenhanded, thoughtful piece
on MeToo:

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/03/...per-network-2/

What I'm saying is that it doesn't help your case to
reference nasty, poorly thought out pieces by writers
who want to lob grenades when all they need to do in
order to be helpfully insightful is to hit the side of a barn
with some kind of reasonably coherent criticism.

The anti-meritocracy bunch seem, at best, jargon-
hypnotized high school kids:

https://postmeritocracy.org/

Their "manifesto" (which I found linked in the Mozilla
newsgroup discussion about this) is incoherent and
displays an inability to think analytically at all. (I've
noticed the idea of "toxic people" comes up a lot with
these fanatics. They're rabidly fighting for inclusion
and kindness, but only toward those who share the
same mindset. Everyone else... anyone who questions
their dogma... is "toxic". Not just wrong or different
but actually poisonous and harmful. *Those people
must be excluded!*

They do seem to mean well. Like many young college
students, they're at a stage of pre-adulthood, and very
earnest about wanting to develop into decent, empathetic
people.
Almost inevitably, their first steps are dogma and a kind
of liberal fascism; trying to be good by rejecting what
they think of as bad.

But it gets very awkward for the PC types. They leave
themselves no place to stand. Non-PC types are the new
blacks for them. That is, if everyone is equal in all ways
and we're not even allowed to be aware of gender or race,
then the only candidate for bad guy is people who persist
in discerning such things.... And people who are doggedly
devoted to being good guys *must* have bad guys as
reference point. Otherwise there's no way to confirm
their accomplishment.
But if we don't discern gender and race then how can
we give extra points to women and minorities? Goodness,
it's confusing.

On Scandinavian PC (attacked at your link):
After several years of seeing
claustrophobically PC movies from places like Denmark
about such topics as the evil of male aggression, I saw
an amazing movie awhile back called The Square. It made
me think that maybe Scandinavian culture has gone through
PC and is emerging out the other side, more sophisticated
for having gone through that reactiveness.

But as it applies to browsers..... It gets pretty sticky
if the things you buy and use have to be provided by
people you admire. Bill Gates is trying to take over
American education, but I'm not going to throw out
my computers.

The diced, canned tomatoes I buy at Whole Foods
are from Muir Glen, but that's a pseudonym of 365,
which is the WF house brand, which is now owned
by Amazon. It's not easy to even figure out these things.
I don't want to support Amazon. But what's my
choice, since WF decimated the small natural foods
stores? The American retail economy is designed to
thwart accountability. (And don't get me started on
Trader Joes.)

To my mind, for all its faults,
Mozilla browsers are *by far* the closest thing to
a clean, honest and functional browser that one can get.
Mostly because there's a lot of info about how to make it
that way. (For the average person who knows nothing
of extensions and about:config it is going downhill fast,
though.)

Chrome is spyware. Microsoft browsers have become
limited niche products of no consequence. Ditto for Safari.
What does that leave? Mozilla. Maybe Iron. Not much
else.

Vivaldi may not be as much spyware as Chrome,
but neither does it act honorably:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/01/30/vi...owser-privacy/

They claim to only be collecting personal info in order
to help them make a better browser. But it's not optional.
The very idea that they have a right to clandestinely
collect data on people who use their product is
unredeemably dishonest.
And their extensions are Chrome extensions. Can
they be trusted? I'm certainly not going to the Google
Store.

So if you think Vivaldi is better
then I can understand your choice. But if you're trying
to find the most morally produced browser I think you're
skating on thin ice. One advantage of the anti-meritocracy
crowd is that they at least *want* to be good people.
They might have to kill you to save your soul, but at
least they mean well. That should help, at least a little,
to keep the Mozilla product honest.