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posted by martyb on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-if-there-were-addons... dept.

Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox web browser and other open source projects, has announced its Mozilla Information Trust Initiative. This initiative involves Mozilla "developing products, research, and communities to battle information pollution and so-called 'fake news' online."

Although the announcement from Mozilla claims that the "spread of misinformation violates nearly every tenet of the Mozilla Manifesto", this initiative does raise some concerning questions. Should a web browser vendor be actively patrolling content on the web? Is such patrolling of content harmful to a truly open web? Is this merely the first step toward web browsers censoring or controlling the dissemination of information available on the web? Would the resources expended on this initiative be better spent improving the performance and efficiency of Firefox?


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  • (Score: 2) by chromas on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:39AM

    by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:39AM (#553051) Journal

    Sure, well there's no law saying the script language has to be javascript—in fact, there's a parameter just for specifying the type—it's just that most browsers only support js. You don't even need to have the server return html.

    Imagine clicking a gmail shortcut and getting a qml file that represents a Qt application which appears on the desktop like any other program (but you can see the source because it's not compiled). Then it could use javscript or python or whatever to handle events and stuff. Or even a compiled language if you want something good. No reason it couldn't be done, other than using a web browser as an SDK is cool while using an SDK as an SDK is lame and oldschool and $other_buzzword.

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