Reimagine Open: Building a Healthier Internet

Does the “openness” that made the internet so successful also inevitably lead to harms online? Is an open internet inherently a haven for illegal speech, for eroding privacy and security, or for inequitable access? Is “open” still a useful concept as we chart a future path for the internet? A new paper from Mozilla seeks to answer these questions....

6d

Why getting voting right is hard, Part IV: Absentee Voting and Vote By Mail

This is the fourth post in my series on voting systems. Part I covered requirements and then Part II and Part III covered in-person voting using paper ballots. However, paper ballots don’t need to be voted in person; it’s also possible to have people mail in their ballots, in which case they can be counted the same way as if they had been voted in person....

1w

We need more than deplatforming

There is no question that social media played a role in the siege and take-over of the US Capitol on January 6. Since then there has been significant focus on the deplatforming of President Donald Trump. By all means the question of when to deplatform a head of state is a critical one, among many that must be addressed. When should platforms make...

2w

Why getting voting right is hard, Part III: Optical Scan

This is the third post in my series on voting systems. For background see part I. As described in part II, hand-counted paper ballots have a number of attractive security and privacy properties but scale badly to large elections. Fortunately, we can count paper ballots efficiently using optical scanners (opscan). This will be familiar to anyone who...

3w

Our Year in Review: How we’ve kept Firefox working for you in 2020

This year began like any other year, with our best intentions and resolutions to carry out. Then by March, the world changed and everyone’s lives — personally and professionally — turned upside down. Despite that, we kept to our schedule to release a new Firefox every month and we were determined to keep Firefox working for you during challenging times....

Dec 2020

Mozilla’s Vision for Trustworthy AI

Mozilla is publishing its white paper, “Creating Trustworthy AI.” A little over two years ago, Mozilla started an ambitious project: deciding where we should focus our efforts to grow the movement of people committed to building a healthier digital world. We landed on the idea of trustworthy AI. When Mozilla started in 1998, the growth of the...

Dec 2020

Why getting voting right is hard, Part II: Hand-Counted Paper Ballots

In Part I we looked at desirable properties for voting system. In this post, I want to look at the details of a specific system: hand-counted paper ballots. Hand-counted paper ballots are probably the simplest voting system in common use (though mostly outside the US). In practice, the process usually looks something like the following: Election...

Dec 2020

Why getting voting right is hard, Part I: Introduction and Requirements

Every two years around this time, the US has an election and the rest of the world marvels and asks itself one question: What the heck is going on with US elections? I’m not talking about US politics here but about the voting systems (machines, paper, etc.) that people use to vote, which are bafflingly complex. While it’s true that American voting is...

Dec 2020

State of Mozilla 2019-2020: Annual Impact Report

2020 has been a year like few others with the internet’s value and necessity front and center. The State of Mozilla for 2019-2020 makes clear that Mozilla’s mission and role in the world is more important than ever. Dive into the full report by clicking on the image below. About the State of Mozilla Mozilla releases the State of Mozilla annually....

Dec 2020

Release: Mozilla’s Greenhouse Gas emissions baseline

When we launched our Environmental Sustainability Programme in March 2020, we identified three strategic goals: Reduce and mitigate Mozilla’s organisational impact; Train and develop Mozilla staff to build with sustainability in mind; Raise awareness for sustainability, internally and externally. Today, we are releasing our baseline Greenhouse...

Nov 2020