The linked article is the intro message from her. I copied a part of it here:
Why I’m Joining Mozilla as Executive Director
Delight – absolute delight – is what I felt when my parents brought home a Compaq Deskpro 386 for us to play with. It was love at first sight, thanks to games like Reader Rabbit, but I fell especially hard once we had a machine connected to the Internet. The unparalleled joy that comes from making things with and for other people was intoxicating. I can’t tell you how many hours were spent building Geocities websites for friends, poring over message boards, writing X-Files fan fiction, exchanging inside jokes and song lyrics on AIM and ICQ chats with friends and far-flung cousins across the world.
Actually, I could tell you. In detail. But it would be embarrassing.
Years later I would learn that the ability to share, connect, and create is rooted in how the Internet works differently than the media preceding it. The Internet speaks standards and protocols. It links instead of copying. Its nature is open. You don’t need permission to make something on the Internet. That freedom holds enormous potential: At its best, it helps us explore history we didn’t know, build movements to better the future, or make a meme to brighten someone’s day. At its best, the Internet lets us see each other.
That magic – this power – is revolutionary. Protecting it, celebrating it, and expanding it is why I’m so excited to join the Mozilla Foundation as its executive director.
I started my career as a media lawyer to protect those who made things that helped us see one another, and the truth about our shared world. Almost fifteen years ago, I co-founded and built a media law clinic to train others to do the same. After a stint at a law firm, I joined BuzzFeed as its first newsroom lawyer, which felt sort of like being a lawyer for the silliest and most serious parts of the internet all at the same time. In other words, I was a lawyer for the Internet at its best.
I am not naive about the Internet at its worst. From the Edward Snowden disclosures to a quick trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, much of my career has confronted issues of surveillance – including of my own religious community. I watched as consumers became more concerned about surveillance and other harms online, and so we built an accountability journalism outlet, The Markup, to serve those needs. The Markup’s mission is to help people challenge technology to serve the public good, which intentionally centers human agency. So we didn’t just write articles: Our team imagined and made things people used to make informed choices. Blacklight, for example, empowers people to use the Web how they want, by helping them see the otherwise invisible set of tracking tools, watching them as they browse.
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.
Maybe this is all PR-curated, maybe she wrote it all, idk. But she certainly knows her audience lol
Here’s to a great future with Mozilla!
I don’t care whether or not she connects with an audience. You can communicate with the audience all you want.
What matters is whether or not she’s actually going to mean anything, instead of playing cute for people.
And you invest in Firefox instead of wasting money on flavor of the month hypes
Mozilla is a nonprofit.
I mean, you could email her and voice your concerns. Her email is right at the bottom.
Nice
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
Actions are louder than words.
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.
I’m not reading all that. I just need one answer from any suit at Mozilla: are you going to sell us out or not.
“Are you going to stop the"so called AI” bullshit?" more like
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.
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.
Mozilla the company is the thing you need to pay attention to
I started my career as a media lawyer to protect those who made things that helped us see one another, and the truth about our shared world.
This … can be interpreted in a few ways, some suicidal for one’s reputation.
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.
Yes, meant copyright
For me, she is starting from these pieces of information … she’s a Yale law school alumni. Do with that what you will.
That tells me literally nothing.
