 Hey folks, I think we're gonna get started My adapter somehow My adapter somehow didn't make it with me and so I I have an older machine So I'm gonna start without slides and if we can the magic volunteers can figure out the Right cable in the right place, then we'll switch to slides So I'm here obviously to talk about floss the future and the internet so a good place to start is where we are today and Floss is everywhere today, and and that's a real success Which is worth celebrating doesn't really matter where you look you find free software at the heart of the internet at the heart of the big services that we use and in all the projects various applications so Seems kind of obvious today, and now free software and open-source software are just a kind of part of mainstream development but you know that's really a surprising thing and When I sort of started in this field You know that wasn't the case at all and there was a real disbelief in free software and open-source software as Be incredible in any serious sense I think there's some learnings from that that will be useful in the current state and so I'm thinking back to just around the turn of the Millennium So 1999 2000 when Mozilla was newish about a year old and and I spent a lot of time Explaining really basic questions like what is free software? Why would anyone participate in free software? Why would anyone do anything where they didn't get paid? I mean these always seem to me really silly questions given how much time people spend doing things they love People would also ask Well, how can you do anything without employees and titles? You know how how could it possibly work? Why would people collaborate? How could you share something and why would we ever trust it and? and When you take all of those together, you know, it's clear that that people who hadn't been involved in Floss and in that era, you know, they couldn't imagine it They were living in a different world and they couldn't conceive of something different And the world they were living in is actually not so dissimilar from the one of today it was pre-internet of course, but if if you think today of Facebook and Google and The AWS side of Amazon and you roll all that up into one company That was the world we lived in in 2000. You know that company was Microsoft and it was deeply deeply hated but it was the way things worked and so the Even you call them the tech nerati or the press or the thought leaders or most software developers Really had trouble imagining how the world could be different And then the free software and open-source movement began to grow and to begin to move Up the stack of developer tools into an operating system Into more complicated parts of the stack and eventually even up to the consumer product level Now that was a surprise, you know all the time we were developing Browsers we were told open-source and free software could never be good enough for consumers That I was always too rough around the edges And it was really only for people who were going to spend their life using that but but in fact the free software movement reached a new level and Open-source and free software started to become mainstream and Then then the conversations I had changed and a whole new set of conversations appeared And they were questions about taking the ideas of floss and applying them to different parts of life And so there would be questions about I want to do open data or open science or I'm an open architecture project trying to crowdsource designs of habitable homes that you know almost no cost for people who are homeless or You know open medical records or open health care, you know you name it the the wave of fields that suddenly realized shared development Collaboration not owning things making knowledge available became immense and Also the idea of collaboration or sharing or shared value began to become mainstream You know in that era the idea of sharing cars whether its Owners sharing their cars through uber or zip cars or shared cars was simply unimaginable The idea that you would have a bicycle in a city that a city would own a bike and allow its citizens to use it crazy I mean didn't didn't exist. There was zero of it in the in that era and so open and free Software began to influence whole ranges of fields And so those fields aren't you know software per se and don't have exactly the same criteria But the effect of a small set of technologists thinking differently and acting differently and building something different became profound but at the same time something else was happening and And That is free software and open-source software were at the center of Internet products But increasingly other aspects were being added Around them and originally it was other software All you know according to license so not not unexpected But but because the software is not distributed we have free software and then where there's a fair amount of modifications made to those which are not returned to the commons and then layers of Algorithms or or activities which are not captured or included in in floss software So there's a whole layer of algorithmic Thinking behind that and then of course mass amounts of data that don't live in a floss like system and So when we look at the internet today, you can see that there's floss at the center and Many more layers of closed or proprietary Unknowable activity surrounding that and so although floss has been wildly successful at being at the center of things We live in a state where sort of closed and proprietary systems prevail And at the same time the human experience has been changing, you know in the early days Everything is very positive and optimistic and we thought of the web as we called it then as being You know the enabler of collaboration and empowerment and freedom and knowledge sharing and all knowledge for everyone in the world And a range of very positive things Which is part of it? But increasingly, you know, we see other activities and the human experience is Sometimes positive and sometimes increasingly negative and Today, you know one question. I'm asked really frequently as well. The the internet is broken, you know, what what can we do? And that's a complicated and tough problem that has you know software elements and data It has probably some regulation in it. It needs a lot of innovation. There's a whole set of systematic changes to Build a system that's as powerful as it is and also healthy but there's one element to Making better life online that I think rarely gets attention and that I hope We can make clear and more obvious and more active and that is floss communities and floss software because The set of what I think of as floss DNA It is a powerful tool for building solutions to the problems we have today And when I say floss DNA, I mean Three or four things one. I mean free as in freedom Which obviously is a you know comes out of the problem of the English language that that we don't have the word libre And so we need to distinguish free as in freedom, you know from free of charge and that is You know if floss software is free as in freedom the internet today is free as in free of charge and the idea of What the freedom to actually empower yourself and act looks like is not in the dialogue today And so the four freedoms of free software may not apply directly to how does an individual live But the concept that you can get engaged That you can participate that you can see what's happening that the rules that apply to me apply to you Those core things that drive the freedom of free software are not part of the internet experience And many people can't imagine what that would look like and and when you talk about Individuals may be being able to participate or see their data or use their data the responses often Oh my gosh, that's so hard. That couldn't happen. What would look look like nobody would care Nobody would do it. Who would bother? How would you design a system and those sounds sort of daunting? but in fact, it's very very similar to the kinds of questions people used to ask about free software and so this question of How do we make the idea of participation and the ability to act? Right, so with software consuming it's not enough How can I how can I actually touch it and change it and act is a core? Question we face at a broader scale both at a product development and development level online and for You know the consumer and citizen as well So that's that's one area of floss where the background and experience in living Could be effective in helping solve today's problems And also I would say open as an open source not open as it has come to mean today Which is the powerful can grab whatever they want and do whatever they want with it That seems to be what I hear open what People think it means but open source, you know, I mean lives by the same licenses and definitions and and lives with a Set of equality and ability to participate The second area You know free software creates shared value That's partly why we create it is because it's valuable and it's valuable for for people of Different viewpoints and perspectives and goals. It's not single centralized This is good for me and everyone else lives in this system and today like the idea of shared value or interoperability or Competition or real sort of link ability back and forth or if people being able to take parts of a project and use it Is not part of online life We were back into a closed system and so once again, you know The idea that of having lived these things and and built the kinds of software that the floss movement has built is a Powerful tool in solving these things you know floss communities also have a value of collaboration rather than the command and control of You know one organization owning and deciding everything so another clearly needed value and The last one I would say is earning leadership Which is closely related to integrity and trust, you know in a very different model from being an employee, you know and being told what to do and the floss world has a Just such a broad range of how to earn leadership and what it means and how you keep leadership And how you inspire people and how you make something effective and so You know it is pretty broad range so for example at Mozilla, we do not have you know leaders for life some projects do you know as a as a Mark of the founders and respect and so on So we have a broad diversity. We don't at Mozilla. I feel like My job as a leader is to continue to earn that leadership and at some point if I'm not Doing the best job or I don't have anything unique to offer then it's time for me to move on And and if I don't do that voluntarily then you know, I think the project should have the right to Make it clear to me that some you know someone else would be doing a better job I mean, I'm not looking forward to that but but I think that those sorts of practices and policies are not common in current society and that the experiences that we as a broad Community bring have immense value And so where would we aim those things? Well one key problem today, you know is online you are the product and so There's a current understanding that you need immense profiles to deliver ads and That the conventional wisdom is oh well. We couldn't I mean ads run the system and you have to have these vast amounts of data in order to sell ads and I'm really Interested in exploring exactly what information you need for what purposes so for example We are running and you know, we have a product at Mozilla. It's called pocket And and we're experimenting so I want to start. I'll say it many times. We have no profiles No profiles no profiles no profiles pocket is about Identifying reading that you want to take some time to read like what's content that's worth attention and reflection and so It's a simple tool, you know, you save something to read it for later turns out like that doesn't happen that often online a lot of times people see a headline and and and Share it but but actually aren't our reading material and so what we're doing with pocket Is to use those signals? Oh Yeah, oh That's okay That's okay, I can do it. I'm just wondering Probably shouldn't go backward, huh? This is it so on the pocket Left and right There we go. Okay, so you're going to see some of the older slides, right? This is the set of questions This is the open floss at the center You know the layers that I spoke about being added around it I'm just trying to get to the next set of slides. These are the This is a little slow here closed systems Experience on the internet used to be all sunny now. It's you know, we have these very dark Concerned like what's actually happening? What do we do? Want to answer Like this is something we are not in the discussion at all Like who are the sets of people and who has ideas and lived and built something different than the conventional software before Floss values free is in freedom. This is the You know a single entity ringing every last dollar out of the system no matter what the cost system we're living in today with the Sort of alternative that the floss system lives with which is shared value for many the collaboration piece I talked about earning leadership and Okay, so clearly there's a set of key problems on life. What might we be able to address? So item one, you know, you are the product And so this is the the combination of ads Which exists everywhere? So, you know both personally and a Mozilla. We are not anti ad I mean they're annoying and I certainly like life without them But most of radio and TV and magazines and newspapers, you know ads are everywhere and they support a ton of systems So we're not ready to say somehow magically. We're going to make something new that doesn't have ads I mean, I'd love it, but I don't I don't know what to offer But what we are adamantly opposed to is the current tracking system that goes with ads and this question of profiles So we have this experiment with pocket, which is can we deliver interesting long-form content to you Customized to you without profiles because the conventional wisdom is you need a profile for anything and the more data that you get anywhere The better it is and so far for long-form content at least we're finding that yes We can actually deliver Personalized content to you without a profile now we do that by having the logic on device And so information is delivered to your browser or your pocket wherever it is on your phone And and that that device obviously has a lot of information about you and it makes a selection But and you as a user can say oh, I don't ever want to see anything like that again Make it all go away or you can say oh, that's interesting I ignore it or you can you know choose to read it Or engage in some fashion and so what we're finding is that the information that's on your device Which we never see and don't collect Don't use to track you because we don't have it is Quite Acceptable for delivering content that you might enjoy so that's an interesting experiment We're not like that's not to say you can deliver ads. I don't know You know that's a different set of experiments That we would like to see lots of people being able to engage in and then there's a kind of profile Which is useful For encouraging people to do all sorts of things And and that's the kind of profile that sucks up all the data about you And uses every last thing, you know and uses that profile knows probably more about what motivates you Than you do so we've seen for example Use an example out of the United States probably Russian of Targeting very specific groups of people with the goal of getting you know X percentage of this group to come to a demonstration because they're outraged about acts and At the same time targeting another group of people to come to the same demonstration Because they're outraged about the opposite And so the actual creation through micro targeting based on profiles of a civil protest and So that's a special kind of profile, right? That's the and the conventional wisdom is that gathering everything up This is like what this happened on Facebook So just to say that like yes, you need all that information in order to be able to do socially useful things But we don't actually know that like is it socially useful to outrage groups of people? So they go out on the street and fight each other over something that isn't actually real Like probably not so I think it's a very interesting question of What do you actually need to run? I'll call it mainstream commerce You know whether it's content or even ads versus how much information is being collected about us now and used to manipulate behavior and I think if we could build more products that Tested more of these things it would tell us whether some form of information gathering is just socially terrible right and and that the business of targeting at a level of manipulation where you can intentionally create violent disturbances might be treated differently than a profile that was adequate for e-commerce and That requires a lot of testing right it requires research on an academic level and it also requires You know products that are on the like how much Information do I actually need to do something legitimate and so I mentioned product pocket because it's one Sometimes if I say that without an example people think oh you're kind of crazy or what would that mean? but but we have one in the market that's You know actually well received and so that I think is a power of law software Is to build and test those things and demonstrate that a different kind of product and experience is possible Originally these had transitions So that's why there's so many of these slides in here but a second problem is clearly content and misinformation and how do we even know what might be reliable or Whether it fits our criteria of trust or not And this is another area where experimentation in Software and products is important. So we have a little experiment here, too called the Facebook ad analyzer Which is currently forwarded by Facebook. So We'll see what happens, but but what this you know, there's Facebook has information about Here's an ad Here's the organization that's paying for the ad and here are the targeting criteria and so this is an election cycle in the EU and We thought it would be helpful when you're Seeing ads about EU candidates to be able to You know select an ad and say well a who's paying for it And why am I seeing it? Am I seeing it because I'm a woman in a certain age group living here or am I seeing it? Because I went to some particular site about immigration and got tagged as you know pro-immigration anti-immigration pro-ex so This is because that transparency of political ads in in the EU is highly regulated and is seen as an important piece We've been trying to bring some added transparency to the current election cycle But Facebook broke that in the last couple of days. And so this is clearly an area that that requires either the Big platforms to be interested in it or some kind of regulatory Engagement now fortunately the EU has been involved in this and there is a code of practice And we believe that Facebook actually agreed to make this information available And so we've asked the EU Commission to look into it and see if our understanding that this ad Information should be available for the for the political ads And so this is an area of product experimentation Which is harder to do unless you're involved in policy or unless there is some policy or practice in place But it's also an area where the EU is you know world leader And so we think that there's increasing possibility here And I know like in the early days of floss like for the first decade of Mozilla. I Did not want us engaging in things that required policy activities that because they're hard. It's a different skill set You know, but about a decade ago. I thought the time had changed So so Mozilla is active in policy and the good news is there are a lot of I would say internet activists who are real estate policy Driven so in these questions of well, I want to build software. You know, I don't want to deal with codes of practice or Regulators the good news is there are many people out there who do and what what they really need is connections to technologists and so The will and energy to do this is very high particularly in Europe and developing better connections between I would say not just technologists but the floss community in particular and these advocacy groups would help us a fair amount and The third big area Really to aim at I call the addiction economy Maybe I'll go back on that one Because not with the you know, the designers of internet experiences what they're aiming for is to make people happy Because when you're happy you stay on their site. You engage in their site. You do the things that generate revenue for them But it turns out I think research is showing that what really The like that fight-or-flight response the way you activate human beings quickest and fastest is with fear and outrage so even with the motivation of people being happy to stay on their site a Lot of the most effective ways of doing that are appealing to the I would say More difficult sides of human nature fear anger outrage violence. And so the addiction economy given human nature is Very closely tied into I lost a few of them But it's closely tied into these practices that we're seeing where the degree of Violence and anger and disruptive behavior online is is really quite high Okay, and so that that leads us to the question You know, we saw this a little bit in open source communities early on where when people came online You know, you sometimes you'd find really aggressive and nasty behavior and and women in Floss communities early on were targeted quite aggressively and the overall level of discourse was a little nasty At least for people who came into it, you know at Mozilla This was a constant problem as we were trying to introduce new people into The open-source world and they would be a wow, you know, what you're trying to do is so nice But the online discussion is so harsh Well, it turns out that has zero to do with free software or open-source communities That's for some reason what much of humanity does when we first encounter these tools Like the harshness comes out and so you see it and like how common death threats are online today You know, and I would bet real money that If and when we track down, you know these deaths and you know rape and torture threats Many people will be otherwise Upstanding citizens that somehow feel free online, you know to engage in this behavior so figuring out like what is it that encourages something better than that and How do we break this cycle and Here again, I think free software and open-source communities have a lot to offer because we've been dealing with it for a while and the quality of discourse in our communities has changed and the standards of behaviors have changed and community practice and Community etiquette and what is acceptable and how do you deal with the troll or a poisoned person? Like we have a set of experience in those things that is certainly Imperfect and we have far more to go But nevertheless, it's a stage ahead of where most people trying to deal with these kinds of questions are and so Just as we were early in the sharing and collaborative and freedom aspect the how do you make a community? What's healthy? How do you get to better behavior? We have some experience with it and I'll go back and say I'm Quite convinced that technologists have a huge role to play in how do we create Software and products and online experiences that are Encouraging better aspects of human nature Currently the economy is driving towards the addiction economy where you're the product and where we're gathering so much information that you're easy to manipulate and So I think Absolutely requires Technologists to be involved and to be committed to that and so in the last few years I personally and for Mozilla felt really compelled to make that commitment clear compelled because You know the open system Open Internet the World Wide Web You know the graphical layer which is open open source free software like these are so fundamental and so important and yet not enough They are not enough to create an online life. That is decent. They're not enough to stop trolls They're not enough on their own To be an alternative to systems that encourage sort of outrage and violence And so I felt quite compelled that that at least I and testing, you know Mozilla Felt equally committed to something different and so we've made some commitments, you know Mozilla is clearly it's an open-source project I think the speaker before noted were imperfect But Committed to open source We have a manifesto That talks about security and privacy and individual empowerment and just felt we needed something more And so we set out four additional things about the internet that are important to us, you know one that it's inclusive It's the wrong button here You know internet experiences software and products currently are Encourage outrage. What would it look like if we were actually trying to encourage civil discourse, you know and rationality and thoughtfulness? You might not maybe be the richest company on the face of the earth But that's not what really floss aims to be and then finally We are actually committed to trying to take that value of collaboration and shared good and trying to extend it Further from the floss software itself out into other areas And I was happy to find that you know, not just me personally, but that this sort of resonated within Mozilla So we've adopted it as part of our core sort of manifesto and how we think of of who we are And it may or may not be quite right for you Because floss is really varied and we have lots of diversity among us but I am hopeful that as a Community of communities this question of can we actually build a better online life Is is increasingly important and that we actually can represent ourselves well in the overall discussion Which is lacking in technologists When you at least in the in the worlds that I travel in or it is hard to find a large Loud technical voice other than the large platforms So Mozilla is very welcome when we show up and that's great And there's a lot of diversity and floss so it would be great to see others as well and then finally the last thing that Mozilla does that not all Floss projects do is really focus on the consumer Because you know, that's most of humanity and that's where there's a certain kind of impact Like that's a messy place to be as a floss project Because you have to take what you're trying to accomplish as floss and in our case with the manifesto And yet build a product, you know that consumers want Which is generally free of charge and convenient and fun and interesting so it's messy You know and and causes us to be you know imperfect in many ways But it is a piece of the puzzle that we try to bring to the overall sort of floss world And so to circle back to the core point That floss communities floss DNA and the floss principles Can be like a powerful force for improving the state of internet life And I hope you find that to be true and I certainly hope you find if you're interested ways to be effective at that And if you were trying to do such things, you know I certainly offer myself and Mozilla to try and pot provide whatever I don't know support or assistance or cheerleading or Anything else that we can do to help more people be successful. Thank you And I think they're not here, but I want to say a special thanks to the volunteers and crew here who made up for my lost adapter so Just a small announcement. There are still five minutes for questions. So if you have a question, please Let me know I will Give you the microphone for that and please if you are leaving be quiet Still the session is is not yet finished. I I have a question on okay On the on dominance practically you mentioned that Large corporations are dominating the internet. So on a technology side when you look at the browsers We now we see today that practically The domination is Chromium in Floss sense or Google Chrome and It's it's not Mozilla anymore. So So I'm and I'm guessing that most of the people here in this room also use Chrome And I'm a little worried about that. So what what do you think about this kind of domination on the desktop? I would say Yeah, so the question about the risk of domination in the browser space or the desktop Yeah, I think it's quite real I I do want to admit that there were some years there in which Chrome was a better browser. I Think that that time has passed and certainly technically You know, it's great to have the crown again And so it is a question of why use Chromium Or why use Chrome? You know, sometimes Google breaks things except for Chrome It's only a day or two and it's always some low-level product manager that just can't be controlled So maybe that's why but I actually am interested it'd be interesting, you know to know I think it's a real risk And I what I really think is a risk is what we call the web Like so, why do we care so much? Yeah, I love Firefox, right? But but really why do we care so much? We care because Right now Google is almost free to do whatever it wants and call it the web and it does Like it makes up API's sometimes. They're useful sometimes. They're really Google specific sometimes They have tons of problems. There isn't like there are standards bodies, but you know with its market share It doesn't really matter and so the reason that we care about Firefox Yes, there's a product piece and we love it But the core reason is the web and we are about to lose the web like inner operable Multivendor Platform, I mean we don't think of the web now But the technology that we call the internet the graphical layer all the stuff that you can see and that gets delivered through a browser Engine whatever app you're using soon. That is about to be Google Again, the only thing standing in its way right now is Firefox or gecko and it is not at all clear that we are gonna succeed I should be loud and clear about that the question of whether we have what we used to think of as the web is The question right now and we are investing a ton and it is so expensive because for some reason Google has Accelerated the number of people in development and stuff. They're adding in in a way. That's very hard to keep up with And and and I guess it's good for developers, but that question like the next year may tell that question Right and so we're still committed because you know, we love the web I mean, but but something that's interoperable like we're just on the edge So I don't anyway, I guess thank you for asking because I clearly care about it so a Couple of years ago at pos damn 2014 I believe I went to a great talk by a guy called pool Henning camp who gave a satirical talk about the state of online security He speculated that the influence of the NSA and gchq was deliberately weakening online security And in the face of such powerful influence against our sort of interests And the technical solutions were ineffective He concluded a talk by saying that this is a political problem. This is not a technical problem And I guess you could make a similar argument in the sense that such heavily heavy Influences Google and Facebook and kind of face those interference in elections You could say that well in the face of such heavily heavy influence boss technical solutions are ineffective, you know I'm sorry. I'm really having trouble hearing. Sorry What would you say to the the the proposal that in the face of such heavy influence by Facebook and Google against Sort of freedom and online privacy that technical solutions are ineffective that this is a political problem well Sort of monopolies are part political part technical problem for one Well, that's interesting is it a political or a technical problem I like well the the issue is it's actually both right now How do you regulate? Right and so that that is part of why I think that the Floss communities are important because you need experimentation to know how to regulate So for example, you know if the EU Commission appeared in front of us and said just tell us what to do like what's the answer Like you could you could say the basic ad model is unacceptable Right. What happens then? Right and let's let's say, you know, like do you want to not have Facebook? I don't know. So so so that question and Then the other political question is sometimes you can't innovate because the monopolies are so powerful I'll love that ad problem that we're having and then that's a political question But it needs the technical voice in there to explain it And thus my pitch for you know If you find the local internet advocates who are trying to advocate for privacy, but don't know anything about technology like You know, even if your inclination is to kind of like leave them, you know A little bit of help on technical chops will go a long way. So thank you Yeah, let's thank our speaker with some