Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. In this next installment, Ryan Butler, the Recording Academy’s Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion talks about his love of Janelle Monáe, how TikTok is influencing the music industry, and the importance of creating a safe space for underrepresented voices online through music.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

I love scrolling through the GRAMMYs TikTok (@GRAMMYs), because it has a ton of feel-good moments from our annual Awards shows. There’s nothing like watching the heartwarming reactions of first-time GRAMMY winners. I still get emotional every time I watch Doja Cat’s acceptance speech from this year’s telecast.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I’m interested in continuing to learn how TikTok is influencing the music industry and how it’s specifically affecting Black creators. New information surfaces every day about both the positive and negative impacts of the app on creators’ rights, streaming and popularity. 

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing?

I always regret closing my music tab. I love discovering new music and diverse artists through Apple Music. It’s vital to my role as Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to stay up to date on all things music.

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you?

Janelle Monáe. Whether it is through social media, music, movies and now publishing, Janelle has always been an advocate and an inspiring figure for both Black and LGBTQ+ communities. I can’t wait to read The Memory Librarian which will explore race and queerness in a dystopian world.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now? 

I cannot stop talking about the Recording Academy’s recent initiatives to diversify our membership and advocate for inclusivity in the music industry. Earlier this year, we announced our partnership with GLAAD to advance LGBTQ+ representation in music. In May, we kicked off our HBCU Love Tour at Howard University, which aims to empower future music industry professionals and bolster Black representation. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a former HBCU student and professor, I’m proud to be on the forefront of these initiatives.

What was the first online community you engaged with?

The music community. I enjoy seeing how artists’ fandoms bring people together from around the world.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?

I have a few Global Spin videos saved that I need to catch up on. Global Spin is a GRAMMY.com performance series that spotlights international artists in the Afrobeats, K-Pop and Latin genres. I love how this series focuses on musical cultures from around the world.

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like?

It is important that the music community is reflective of the diverse creators within it, so I’d love to create a corner of the internet that promotes intersectionality in music. Giving underrepresented voices a safe space to be heard is not only a personal mission but part of the Recording Academy’s mission as well.

Ryan Butler serves as Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for the Recording Academy® where he leads diversity, equity and inclusion internally and externally for the Recording Academy and its affiliates. He is responsible for enterprise-wide diversity and inclusion efforts and ensuring the Academy’s core value of diversity, equity and inclusion remains embedded throughout all aspects of the organization, including internal staff culture, Membership, Awards, Advocacy, and related programs. He also sets national and Chapter goals to accelerate outcomes for underrepresented communities and creators.

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The post Recording Academy’s VP of D.E.I. Ryan Butler Tells Us What Brings Him Joy Online appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. In this next installment, Joey Amato, publisher of Pride Journeys, shares his love of travel, Peloton and his nostalgia of MySpace.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

I enjoy reading Billboard.com to keep up with music industry news as well as CNBC.com for business and finance news. I’m a stock market junkie so I love reading about financial news, especially in today’s crazy market.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into? 

I like keeping up with music trends and reading up new artists and concert tours. I used to be in the music industry when I lived in New York and Nashville, so to stay connected, I check out Rolling Stone, Music Row and Pollstar almost on a daily basis.

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing? 

Amazon – I spend way too much money there! Say what you want about Amazon and Jeff Bezos, but he changed the world. Our lives are completely different because of this company and the convenience they provide.

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you? 

I really enjoy Matty Maggiacomo who is a trainer on Peloton. He’s easy on the eyes and also pushes me in every workout. I recently began subscribing to Peloton earlier this year. I don’t own a Peloton bike, but I love their other workouts.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

The new ABBA show in London. I can’t wait to attend in person. The reviews thus far have been quite incredible.

What was the first online community you engaged with?

Probably MySpace….yes, I’m old! It was the first time I began connecting with people who I haven’t seen in a while or had an interest in. I liked being able to customize my own space. 

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?

Since I have been traveling a lot recently, I am behind in my financial research and launching my new site for the LGBTQ community… details coming soon! I also need to catch up on my travel writing.

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like? 

It would definitely be an LGBTQ related corner. I have been in the space for most of my professional career, so I feel like this is an area I can really contribute to.

Joey Amato is the publisher of Pride Journeys, a website dedicated to LGBTQ travel. He also publishes an annual LGBTQ travel directory which features destinations from around the world looking to reach LGBTQ travelers. Most recently, Pride Journeys published the Ultimate Pride Guide, a calendar of pride festivals for those looking to travel with pride.

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The post Joey Amato, Publisher of Pride Journeys, Shares What Brings Him Joy Online appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Private advertising technology proposals could greatly improve privacy for web users. Web advertising has a reputation for poor privacy practices. Firefox, other browsers, and the web community are collaborating on finding ways to support advertising while maintaining strong, technical privacy protections for users.

This series of posts aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation regarding the future of advertising on the web by providing technical analyses on proposals that have been put forward by various players in the ecosystem to address the questions of what might replace third-party cookies. In this installment, we look at Apple’s Private Click Measurement (PCM).

PCM differs from the subject of our other analyses in that it is more than a mere proposal. PCM is available in Safari and iOS today.

The goal of PCM is to support conversion measurement through a new in-browser API. Conversion measurement aims to measure how effective advertising is by observing which advertisements lead to sales or other outcomes like page views and sign-ups. PCM measures the most direct kind of conversion, where a user clicks an ad on one site then later takes an action on the advertiser’s site, like buying a product.

The way that PCM works is that the browser records when clicks and conversions occur. When a click is followed by a conversion, the browser creates a report. PCM aims to safeguard privacy by strictly limiting the information that is included in the report and by submitting reports to the websites through an anonymization service after a delay.

Our analysis concludes that PCM is a poor trade-off between user privacy and advertising utility:

• Although PCM prevents sites from performing mass tracking, it still allows them to track a small number of users.
• The measurement capabilities PCM provides are limited relative to the practices that advertisers currently employ, with long delays and too few identifiers for campaigns being the most obvious of the shortcomings.

The poor utility of PCM offers sites no incentive to use it over tracking for browsers that continue to offer cross-site cookies, like Chrome. For browsers that limit the use of cookies — like Firefox or Safari, especially with stricter controls like Total Cookie Protection in Firefox — tracking is already difficult. If Firefox implemented PCM, it would enable a new way to perform cross-site tracking. While some sites might choose to use PCM as intended, nothing in the design of PCM prevents sites from using it for tracking.

Overall, the design choices in PCM that aim to safeguard privacy provide insufficient privacy protections, but they appear to make the API less useful for measurement.

The Private Advertising Technology Community Group (PATCG) in the W3C are currently discussing options for measurement in advertising.

For more on this:

Building a more privacy-preserving ads-based ecosystem

The future of ads and privacy

Privacy analysis of FLoC

Mozilla responds to the UK CMA consultation on Google’s commitments on the Chrome Privacy Sandbox

Privacy analysis of SWAN.community and Unified ID 2.0

Analysis of Google’s Privacy Budget proposal

Privacy Preserving Attribution for Advertising: our Interoperable Private Attribution proposal

The post Understanding Apple’s Private Click Measurement appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. In this next installment, queer music artist Criibaby shares her love of the intersection of music and tech, her process to creating music and how her art extends to shoe design.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

I have a special place in my heart for a website called soundtrap which is basically an online software that lets you record songs and collaborate with other artists from anywhere you can connect to the internet. Before I had access to a real recording studio and long before I ever released any music as Criibaby, I was writing demos at my kitchen table after work. It reminded me of when I was a kid when I would spend hours after school making mashups and recording songs on garageband. In my early twenties, I was going through a pretty hard time processing grief, and getting in touch with my inner child in that way felt, well, just right. I have tons of voice memos on my phone, probably into the three digits at this point, and soundtrap was one of the first places I could put them all together and get back into multi-track recording. Years ago, I sent a soundtrap demo I’d recorded on my phone to this guy called Pandaraps who was making really inspiring, introspective queer lofi hip hop. Thanks to that demo, I got an invitation to the studio he was recording at, and was introduced to my now-producer Surfer Dave. 

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I always try to tap into Kiefer and knxwledge’s twitch streams whenever a notification pops up that they’re live. Those are two producers that I really look up to, so it’s cool to go behind the scenes with them and learn about their creative process or hear what they’ve been working on lately. I’ve also been learning a bit about web3 stuff in discords like Mashibeats hosted by Marc De Clive Lowe, and StemsDAO which hosts a producer remix game that I’m hoping to submit to once I finish the LP I’m in the middle of writing. I’m super interested in the intersection of music and tech, so while I’m totally new to that scene, I’m curious to see where it goes.

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing?

Any Bill Wurtz video. Watching one always leads to watching 100, so it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. But with those catchy melodies and ridiculous graphics, how could you not get sucked in for like an hour at a time? Someone asked me if I consider myself a Bill Wurtz superfan and I’d say the answer is a resounding yes. A few years ago I recreated the Converse from the Bill Wurtz classic “Christmas isn’t real” and gave a pair to my partner as a birthday present. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of that. That’s peak gifting. 

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you?

Two words: Queer memes. Shout out to instagram meme dealers @hypedykes, @tofuminati, @themmememes and @bi_astrology — I’d call this niche “relatable queer chaos” and their memes are truly some of the best in the game. This breed of hyper-specific, exaggerated surrealist queer commentary that pulls no punches and hits the nail directly on the head brings me endless joy. It’s weirdly affirming to know my emotional rollercoaster of a life is right on track, according to these absurd lil windows into queer life circa 2022.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now? 

My new Criibaby EP “crii” came out on June 10 so I’m grateful for these songs to be out in the world! One thing that distinguishes me from other indie artists is that I write all my songs without any gender-specific lyrics. No binary pronouns, no heteronormativity, all written from an openly queer perspective as part of a conscious effort to create more inclusive music. That was the intent behind my debut popsoul EP love songs for everyone and I got some really sweet notes from fellow queer folks who said it really resonated with them and made them feel seen, so I’m excited to be releasing more gender-neutral music. (It also premiered in Billboard and played on BBC 6 Music, which was crazy validating! Turns out critics can be nice??) 

With love songs for everyone I wanted to send a message that no matter how you identify, this feel-good, empowering music is for you — and you are welcome here. Exist! Freely! My new EP is pretty different —- for starters it’s a lot more personal, and some of it comes from a bit of a darker place because that’s just honestly where I was at when I wrote these songs. And I didn’t want to hide from those emotions. I think as queer people, we feel all this pressure to put on a good face as a way to say, hey, I’m queer and I’m thriving! But sometimes you’re just not ok… and that’s ok. I guess that’s my main message with this EP: frankly, you don’t always have to have your sh*t together. Which is something I’m still trying to learn for myself. Sonically it’s inspired by a mix of neo soul, lofi, jazz, and alternative aesthetics, but I wouldn’t really define it as any of those. As someone who is often assumed to be straight based on how I appear and present, I want to show the world that queerness doesn’t have any one look, sound, or genre. They’re some of the best songs I’ve ever made and I’m really proud of them. I hope you check it out and let me know what you think!

What was the first online community you engaged with? 

Yikes, this is really embarrassing, but I think it would have been Yahoo Answers. If you don’t know what that is (good), it was basically like Reddit on training wheels, but … worse than whatever you’re imagining? I can’t remember everything I posted (thank god) but I almost certainly asked strangers on the internet if they thought I might be gay. Good times. 

I also got really into Daytrotter, a website for this studio in Illinois that hosted recording sessions with indie artists, kinda like NPR’s Tiny Desk, before that was a thing. I found a lot of new music from people I’d never heard of that way, and this was during my absolute raging hipster phase, so it fueled a ton of music discovery. In classic hipster fashion, I was really into listening to stuff my friends hadn’t heard of. That and Radiohead, tons of Radiohead. 

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?

Them released a new queer music monthly that I’m excited to read up on and listen through. I hope to be included in one of those someday — it would really mean a lot to me to be recognized by that magazine. 

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like?

I’m working on it! Right now I’m building up a Patreon-style group of VIP fans that get free merch, secret listening parties ahead of my release dates, and eventually backstage access to my live shows. DM me on instagram if you want to come along for the ride— it’s free, and shaping up to be a really sweet community!

Rising queer artist Criibaby invites listeners to look deeper within themselves with her genre-bending, intimate music. Using a unique songwriting method she describes as possessing “no names, no genders, only the feelings, only the bare truths,” Criibaby’s songs contain only lyrics without binary pronouns, written from an openly queer perspective in a conscious effort to create more inclusive music. Drawing upon neo soul, lofi, jazz, and alternative aesthetics to form something entirely her own, Criibaby’s intricate layers of delicate, emotional vocals and emotionally bare lyricism come together to form a new kind of introspective sonic escapism. You can find her on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and can listen to her new EP “crii” on all streaming platforms.  

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The post Queer Singer/Songwriter Criibaby Finds Pride and Joy at the Intersection of Tech and Music appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Every Monday and Thursday, queer comedy writer and actor Brandon Kyle Goodman asks their 176,000 Instagram followers to tell them something good or messy. 

People who tune into the Instagram Stories series, called “Messy Mondays” and “Thot Thursdays,” send in submissions that are indeed good, messy or both. Some share their kinks. Others inquire about specific techniques they want to try in bed. One asked for advice for people who struggle with getting in the mood. Another confessed to having slept with their therapist.

In turn, Brandon asks their own questions (“what’s your favorite phrase to tell someone you want them?”), shares musings (“I think ‘Babe’ was a gay movie. I think it was my gay awakening”), gives smart advice (“find a new therapist”) and does demonstrations. NSFW memes are deployed. 

One can’t help but laugh along with Brandon, who also writes for and voices the queer character Walter the Lovebug in the Netflix animated show “Big Mouth” and its spinoff, “Human Resources.” They’re also the author of “You Gotta Be You,” part memoir and part humorous self-help guide out this September, that Brandon hopes will help people like them — who’s nonbinary and Black — feel less alone. 

This intention is also what’s behind Brandon’s social media series, which, while irreverently funny, can also turn tender. 

Once, Brandon’s husband made an appearance and shared his new fondness for being kissed in his stomach, an area he used to be sensitive about. 

Sitting next to him, Brandon said “this is why I love talking about sex, because of the ability to reclaim your body and your sexuality.” 

Brandon makes periodic reminders that their account is a safe space, where people can be joyous about queer sex. 

Brandon first gained notice on social media during a particularly dark time in the world. In 2020, the comedy writer had virtually gone back to work after a lunch break, during which they watched the video of a white police officer kill George Floyd.

“I logged back onto my Zoom and sat there for the next three or four hours pitching jokes with my non-Black and white colleagues,” Brandon said. “No one had mentioned it. It had just happened, and so they might not have seen it. But it was wild to me that I was sitting there, not speaking about it and continuing my day as if I didn’t just watch this Black man get murdered for nothing.”

Afterwards, Brandon posted a 7-minute video on Instagram addressed to “my white friends.”

“These are my thoughts and I hope it will compel you and yours to be ACTIVE in the fight for our Black lives,” the caption says. 

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A post shared by Brandon Kyle Goodman (@brandonkylegoodman)

Brandon went to sleep after making the video. When they woke up, the clip had nearly a million views. Their followers had jumped to 30,000. 

“I remember being in my living room and feeling my grandmother, who was a minister, and feeling my ancestors, whose names I don’t know,” Brandon said. “It was a question of, you can completely ignore this and go about your business. Or, you can step into this. I heard very clearly, ‘Step in. You can do this.’”

At first, Brandon hesitated identifying as an activist, “not wanting to take away” from organizers who march and lead rallies on the streets. But they realized that activism has always been laced into their work. 

“Viola Davis said, ‘Me just showing up as a dark-skinned, Black woman on your camera is activism.’ I think that’s true, too,” Brandon said. 

They continued to make videos for social media and started “Messy Mondays” because they needed a break from the heaviness.

“When you think about sex education, it’s trash in our country,” Brandon said. “It doesn’t include queer people at all. Here was this chance to redefine that.”

They added that when it comes to sex, it’s about the whole person. 

“Your Blackness, your queerness, your womanhood, your nonbinaryhood, your manhood. It’s about you,” Brandon said. “This is part of my activism, my relationship to sex. And so for me to be a part of a collective of influencers and educators and activists and people who are boldly talking about it is so liberating. I wish that young Brandon had had that.”

Brandon was raised by their mother and grandmother in Queens, New York. They attended boarding school in Georgia and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a writing and acting career. They didn’t come out as gay until they were 21 years old. 

“Growing up Black, queer, nonbinary, there’s so much messaging that there’s something wrong with me,” Brandon said. “That’s in addition to the fact that when you turn on TV or read books in school, there’s just not a Black protagonist, let alone a Black queer protagonist. So it became really important to reclaim and refocus and reframe that to ‘I am enough. There’s nothing wrong with me. Even if the world is not ready to see me or hold me, I have to see and hold myself.’”

Brandon said their mother, who became deeply religious after their grandmother died, could not accept their queerness. The two haven’t spoken in 10 years.

Blood family may not always be capable of taking you through your human existence, Brandon said. But the 35-year-old found their own family and community, including online. 

The internet has its dark side, Brandon acknowledged, but it can also be a glorious place. Their advice: “Just remember that you are enough.”

Firefox is exploring all the ways the internet makes our planet an awesome place. Almost everything we do today ties back to the online world in some way — so, join us in highlighting the funny, weird, inspiring and courageous stories that remind us why we love the world wide web.

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The post Firefox Presents: Redefining love and identity, one viral video at a time appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Technology is easy to blame for the mental health crisis that kids are facing. But according to experts, it’s not that simple. 

A rare public advisory from the U.S. surgeon general in December 2021 warned that young people are facing unprecedented challenges that have had a “devastating” effect on their mental health. These difficulties were already widespread before the pandemic started in 2020 — with up to 1 in 5 people in the U.S. ages 3 to 17 having a reported mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral disorder. 

We often attribute the crisis to technology, particularly social media. After all, young people today are spending much of their time glued to screens like no generation before them. One study conducted in 2021 found that teens spent 7.7 hours per day in front of screens for activities unrelated to school. But there is not a definitive correlation between mental health and social media use.

Over 7 hours of screen time may sound excessive. But as more and more of life moves online for people of all ages, it is to be expected. Technology brings with it challenges and opportunities for today’s youngest generations. Even as its use rises and youth mental health declines, researchers haven’t found a clear link between social media and mental health but instead a lot of factors of modern life, including technology, that interconnect.

What researchers are learning about social media and kids’ mental health

There’s been a lot of research on the subject over the last decade, but we still haven’t learned anything conclusive.

Amanda Lenhart, a researcher who focuses on how technology affects families and children for the Data & Society Research Institute, said studies generally show a slight negative impact of social media on people’s well-being, or none at all.

“We have this narrative about it being a negative thing, but we’re not seeing it in the data,” Lenhart said.

In a project by the Universities of Amsterdam and Tilburg, researchers have been exploring the relationship between adolescents’ social media use and their well-being. Early data from that project, Lenhart said, suggests that about 70% don’t feel any different after using social media; 19% feel a lot better; and 10% feel worse.

“I think one big takeaway is that there’s a subgroup of people for whom using these platforms is not great,” Lenhart said. More research is now focusing on identifying this group and what their experience is like.

Lenhart said results are showing a model called differential susceptibility, meaning different people can have different responses to the same platform.

For example, a child of color may have a more negative experience on a social media platform than others because he or she faces harassment. A platform could also worsen feelings of depression for someone who’s already depressed.

“It’s not that a platform always makes people feel worse or better, but that it exacerbates their highs and exacerbates their lows,” Lenhart explained.

Experts are concerned that social media platforms are designed with adults as the user in mind, grabbing their attention and keeping them scrolling. Tech companies can do a lot better with content moderation and ensuring age-appropriate and health-promoting content, said Michael Robb, who for the last 15 years has been researching the effects of media and technology on children’s development. He’s ​​currently the senior director of research at Common Sense Media, a U.S. nonprofit that advocates for internet safety for families.

“Expecting that you could iterate and iterate when you’re dealing with a sensitive population without having given real care to what’s going on developmentally can be irresponsible,” Robb said, adding that the concept of “move fast and break things” in the tech space should not be applied to children. 

Lenhart expressed the same sentiment, pointing to Snapchat’s Snapstreaks feature, which encourages two people to send each other a photo or video snap everyday to keep up a streak. 

“I think when they were built, the idea was this was going to be a really fun thing that would be a chance for people to feel connected, get people coming back every day, “ Lenhart said. “But I think they failed to realize that in particular contexts, particularly among young people, peer relationships are very important and intense.”

In some instances, the feature resulted in unproductive behavior and an obsession with making sure to keep up the streaks. People would give other people their passwords before they couldn’t send snaps when they go places without reliable internet or when they were sick.

“It became a thing that was very agitating and disturbing for a subset of young people,” Lenhart said. 

How social media affects people’s well-being could also depend by age, according to a large study conducted in the U.K. from 2011 and 2018. It identified two periods when heavy social media use predicted a drop in “life satisfaction” ratings a year later: 14-15 and 19 years old for males, and 11-13 and 19 years old for females. The inverse was also true: Lower social media use in those periods predicted an increase in life satisfaction ratings. 

The study argues that by looking at the issue in a developmental lens, research could make “much needed progress in understanding how social media use affects well-being.”

A ‘lifeline’ for many young people

During the pandemic, social media has played an outsized role among young people seeking connection and help with their mental health. 

A study from Common Sense Media found that social media and other online tools concluded that they’ve “proven to be the lifeline that many young people needed to get through this last year.”

The study surveyed 14- to 22-year-olds across the U.S. from September to November 2020. More than 85% of them went online in search of health information, 69% used mobile apps related to health issues, 47% connected with a provider online and 40% sought people experiencing similar health concerns. 

From 2018 to 2020, more teens and young adults reported relying on social media platforms for support, community and self-expression, the study found.

Social media can pose real problems among young people, especially if they’re already vulnerable, like those experiencing depression or those who come from marginalized communities, said Robb, who co-authored the report. “But many kids are also using social media and the internet to look up things related to their mental health, or look for other people who may be experiencing similar things.”

He added, “If you’re a teen who’s experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety looking for others who have had similar experiences, being able to take solace in the fact that you’re not alone, or perhaps get tips or advice or other kinds of support from others who are in your community – I don’t want to undervalue social media in those respects, because that’s the other side of the coin that I think does not get talked about quite as often.”

Tips for families

Current research suggests that there’s no clear, direct line between internet use and screen time to mental health concerns with children. Like everything in life, context matters.

“We worry a lot about how much screen time every kid is having, and there are no conclusive studies saying how much screen time exactly is good or bad,” said Melanie Pinola, who spoke to various experts in writing a guide to how and when to limit kids’ tech use for The New York Times. She now covers tech and privacy at Consumer Reports.

She noted that even the American Association of Pediatrics has changed its recommendations on screen time a couple of times.

With a new generation of people who never lived in a world without the constant presence of technology, there’s still a lot of unknowns.

“We’re always learning and trying to adapt to what we know,” Pinola said. 

How to help kids have a better internet experience

While there’s no consensus as to how, exactly, children can be raised to have a good relationship with technology, here are what families can do:

1. Be open

Lenhart suggests parents learn about online platforms and use them with their children. “Have an attitude of openness about them, remembering that even as you limit your child’s use of these platforms, you’re also potentially limiting their access to social connection, learning and relationships, because that’s where a lot of these things happen,” Lenhart said. 

She acknowledged that there’s a lot of good reasons why some platforms shouldn’t be used by children as young as 12 or 13, but Lenhart said ideally, adults should figure it out with their kids. She suggested families ask themselves: Is the platform something that you can use together, or that children can use independently?

2. Find good content

Robb noted that there’s plenty of content online, from YouTube channels to video games, that are great for younger kids. 

Common Sense Media rates movies, TV shows, books, games and other media for age appropriateness and “learning potential.” 

“The PBS Kids apps are a lifesaver,” said Lucile Vareine, who works with Mozilla’s communications team and has two young kids. “We go to the public library to research about animals we just discovered on PBS Shows.”

The Mozilla Foundation also creates a guide that analyzes the online security of different products, from mental health apps to toys and games.

3. Think of your child’s well-being outside of technology

Instead of just dialing down on children’s screen time, Robb suggests focusing on things that are essential to children’s health development. Think about whether they’re getting quality sleep, enough socialization with friends, family time and good nutrition. 

“There are lots of things that are really important that are much better supported by data in terms of kids’ mental and physical health than just how many hours of screen use,” Robb said. “I wouldn’t worry so much, if it’s an hour or three hours. I’d look over the course of the week and see, ‘Is my kid doing the things that I hoped that they would be doing?’”

4. Set boundaries

Pinola said it helps, just like with other aspects of parenting, to set some boundaries. She suggests starting slowly, like having a “no tech dinner” rule.

“When I tried that with my [16-year-old] daughter, it worked,” Pinola said. “Now, we’re actually having conversations over dinner, which is what I was used to growing up. If you start small like that, you start to introduce the feeling for kids that they can be off their devices, and there might be a better experience for them.”

5. Use parental controls with your child’s consent, but give them room to grow

Whether it’s time limits or filters, there’s a lot of tools within platforms that can be used by parents who have younger children. Lenhart recommends using these tools with your child’s knowledge, making sure they understand why you’re using them and having a plan to ease oversight.

“We need to teach them slowly but surely how to manage themselves in these spaces,” Lenhart said. “Giving them opportunities to fail with you around to help pick them back up and talk about it with is good. There can be false starts. But it’s definitely something that we have to do.”

Adults shouldn’t be surprised if their kids can go around these tools.

“Young people are much more adaptive than we would think,” Pinola said.

“When we try to limit their tech use too restrictively or try to monitor them a lot, that can be counterproductive because they are so good at [technology], they’re going to find ways to bypass whatever barriers you put,” she said. “It’s just a matter of balance between you and your child.”

The internet is a great place for families. It gives us new opportunities to discover the world, connect with others and just generally make our lives easier and more colorful. But it also comes with new challenges and complications for parents raising the next generation. Mozilla wants to help parents make the best online decisions for their kids, whatever that looks like, in our latest series, Parental Control. 

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The post Kids are growing up in a very online world. What’s a concerned parent to do? appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

There’s never been a better time to switch from Chrome to Firefox, if we do say so ourselves. 

Some of the internet’s most popular ad blockers, such as uBlock Origin — tools that save our digital sanity from video ads that auto-play, banners that take up half the screen and pop-up windows with infuriatingly tiny “x” buttons — will become inoperable on Google’s web browser thanks to a set of changes in Chrome’s extensions platform. 

At Mozilla, we’re all about protecting your privacy and security – all while offering add-ons and features that enhance performance and functionality so you can experience the very best of the web. We know that content blockers are very important to Firefox users, so rest assured that despite changes to Chrome’s new extensions platform, we’ll continue to ensure access to the best privacy tools available – including content-blocking extensions that not only stop creepy ads from following you around the internet, but also allows for a faster and more seamless browsing experience. In addition, Firefox has recently enabled Total Cookie Protection as default for all users, making Firefox the most private and secure major browser available across Windows, Mac and Linux.  

Longtime Chrome user? We know change can be hard. But we’re here to help you make the move with any data you want to bring along, including your bookmarks, saved passwords and browsing history.  

Here’s how to easily switch from Chrome to Firefox as your desktop browser in five steps:

Step 1: Download and install Firefox from Mozilla’s download page. 

Step 2: If you have Chrome running, quit the app. But don’t delete it just yet.

Step 3: Open Firefox. The import tool should pop up. 

In case it doesn’t, click the menu button > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks > Import > Import Data from another Browser. 

Step 4: In the Import Settings and Data window, choose Chrome. Then in the next screen, select what you want to import:

• Cookies: Bits of data stored on your computer by some websites. They’re used to remember information like your log-in, language preference and even items you added in an online shopping cart. With Total Cookies Protection on by default on Firefox, cookies are confined to the site where they were created — preventing tracking companies from using your data.
• Browsing History: A list of web pages you’ve visited. If there’s an article you didn’t quite finish last week, bring over your browsing history so you can find it later. (Pro tip: Save it in your Pocket list next time!) 
• Saved Passwords: Usernames and passwords you saved in Chrome. Here’s why you can trust Firefox with your passwords.
• Bookmarks: Web pages that you bookmarked in Chrome. 

Step 5: Once you pick which data to bring to Firefox, click Continue > Done. 

If you imported your bookmarks, you’ll find them in a folder named “From Google Chrome” in the Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar. 

In case the toolbar is hidden, click the menu button > More Tools… > choose Customize Toolbar > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar > set to Always Show, Never Show or Only Show on New Tab > Done.

We may be a little biased, but we truly believe that Mozilla’s commitment to privacy helps make the internet better and safer for everyone. We wouldn’t be able to do it without the support of our community of Firefox users, so we’d love for you to join us.  

Related stories:

• 11 secret tips for Firefox that will make you an internet pro
• How to set Firefox as your default browser on Windows
• Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users worldwide

The post How to easily switch from Chrome to Firefox appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

During a software update, your settings can sometimes change or revert back to their original state. For example, if your computer has multiple browsers installed, you may end up with a different default browser than Firefox. That’s easy to fix so that Firefox is there for you when you expect it, like when you click on web links in email and other apps.

With Firefox set as your default Windows browser, you’ll be automatically guarded from invasive tracking methods like fingerprinting and cryptomining, thanks to Firefox’s technology that blocks more than 10,000,000,000 trackers every day including Total Cookie Protection. (See what Firefox has blocked for you.) Your bookmarks, history, open tabs, form information and passwords are accessible wherever you’re logged into Firefox, from your PC to your phone to your tablet.

If you’re using a PC — like an HP, Dell, Lenovo or Acer brand computer — that runs the Microsoft Windows operating system, here’s how to set Firefox as your default:

1. Click the menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Options.
2. In the General panel, click Make Default
3. The Windows Settings app will open with the Choose default apps screen.
4. Scroll down and click the entry under Web browser.
5. Click on Firefox in the dialog that opens with a list of available browsers.

Firefox is now listed as your default browser. Close the Settings window by clicking the X in the upper right to save your changes.

Another option is to go through the Windows 10 operating systems settings:

1. Go to the Windows Start menu and click the Settings icon.
2. Click Apps, then choose Default Apps on the left pane.
3. Scroll down and click the entry under Web browser.
   
4. Click on Firefox in the dialog that opens with a list of available browsers.
   
5. Firefox is now listed as your default browser. Close the Settings window to save your changes.

Originally published January 20, 2020.

See also:
Make Firefox as your default browser on Mac
Make Firefox the default browser on Android
Make Firefox the default browser for iOS

The post How to set Firefox as your default browser on Windows appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Take back your privacy

Starting today, Firefox is rolling out Total Cookie Protection by default to all Firefox users worldwide, making Firefox the most private and secure major browser available across Windows and Mac. Total Cookie Protection is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created, thus preventing tracking companies from using these cookies to track your browsing from site to site.

Whether it’s applying for a student loan, seeking treatment or advice through a health site, or browsing an online dating app, massive amounts of your personal information is online — and this data is leaking all over the web. The hyper-specific-to-you ads you so often see online are made possible by cookies that are used to track your behavior across sites and build an extremely sophisticated profile of who you are.

Recent stories (including an excellent Last Week Tonight episode) have shown how robust, yet under-the-radar, the data selling economy is and how easy it is for anyone to buy your data, combine it with more data about you and use it for a variety of purposes, even beyond advertising.

It’s an alarming reality — the possibility that your every move online is being watched, tracked and shared — and one that’s antithetical to the open web we at Mozilla have strived to build. That’s why we developed Total Cookie Protection to help keep you safe online.

What is Total Cookie Protection?

Total Cookie Protection offers strong protections against tracking without affecting your browsing experience.

Total Cookie Protection creates a separate cookie jar for each website you visit. (Illustration: Meghan Newell)

Total Cookie Protection works by creating a separate “cookie jar” for each website you visit. Instead of allowing trackers to link up your behavior on multiple sites, they just get to see behavior on individual sites. Any time a website, or third-party content embedded in a website, deposits a cookie in your browser, that cookie is confined to the cookie jar assigned to only that website. No other websites can reach into the cookie jars that don’t belong to them and find out what the other websites’ cookies know about you — giving you freedom from invasive ads and reducing the amount of information companies gather about you. 

This approach strikes the balance between eliminating the worst privacy properties of third-party cookies – in particular the ability to track you – and allowing those cookies to fulfill their less invasive use cases (e.g. to provide accurate analytics). With Total Cookie Protection in Firefox, people can enjoy better privacy and have the great browsing experience they’ve come to expect. 

Total Cookie Protection offers additional privacy protections beyond those provided by our existing anti-tracking features. Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP), which we launched in 2018, works by blocking trackers based on a maintained list. If a party is on that list, they lose the ability to use third-party cookies. ETP was a huge privacy win for Firefox users, but we’ve known this approach has some shortcomings. If a tracker for some reason isn’t on that list, they can still track users and violate their privacy. And if an attacker wants to thwart ETP, they can set up a new tracking domain that isn’t on the list. Total Cookie Protection avoids these problems by restricting the functionality for all cookies, not just for those on a defined list.  

A Culmination of Years of Anti-Tracking Work

Total Cookie Protection is the culmination of years of work to fight the privacy catastrophe that stems from online trackers. We first began to block tracking in 2015 with the release of Tracking Protection, a feature people could turn on by going into Private Browsing mode. We recognized at that time that browser makers couldn’t just sit back and let their users be abused. In 2018, we introduced Enhanced Tracking Protection and turned it on by default for all Firefox users in 2019, reflecting our commitment to actively protect our users rather than expect them to protect themselves. Since then, we have continued to make progress towards blocking trackers and ending cross-site tracking by introducing protections against fingerprinting and supercookies. 

Today’s release of Total Cookie Protection is the result of experimentation and feature testing, first in ETP Strict Mode and Private Browsing windows, then in Firefox Focus earlier this year. We’re now making it a default feature for all Firefox desktop users worldwide.

Our long history of fighting online tracking manifests itself in our advocacy to policy makers and other tech companies to reinforce their own privacy protections. We also push to make privacy an industry priority through our efforts in industry standards bodies when shaping the future of online advertising. Furthermore, we created the Privacy Not Included guide to simplify the very complicated privacy landscape and help consumers shop smarter and safer for products that connect to the internet.

Over more than a decade, Mozilla has proudly been leading the fight to build a more private internet. Bringing Total Cookie Protection to all Firefox users is our next step towards creating a better internet, one where your privacy is not optional.

Take back your privacy by downloading Firefox today.

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The post Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users worldwide appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Mozilla supports the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). The time for change is now.

It’s time for governments to address the reality that five tech companies—not everyday consumers—control our online experiences today. Updated competition laws are essential for the internet to be private, secure, interoperable, open, accessible, transparent, and a balance between commercial profit and public benefit. This is Mozilla’s vision for the internet. For a number of years, we have shared our views supporting government competition efforts globally to achieve it. 

One such proposal now under discussion in the US Congress is the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). This bill is an important step in correcting two decades of digital centralization by creating a level playing field for smaller, independent software companies to compete. We support this bipartisan effort led by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley and Representatives David Cicilline and Ken Buck. 

We believe that AICOA will facilitate innovation and consumer choice by ensuring that big tech companies cannot give preference to their own products and services over the rich diversity of competitive options offered by others. Mozilla—and many other independent companies—cannot effectively compete without this antitrust law. We are disadvantaged by the fact that current and future Firefox users, many of whom are privacy and security focused, cannot easily install and keep Firefox as their preferred browser because of confusing operating system messages and settings. We are further challenged by app store rules designed to keep out Gecko, our independent browser engine that powers Firefox, Tor and other browsers. We are stuck when big tech companies do not offer us and other developers open APIs and other functionality needed for true interoperability. 

A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to big tech and shape the future of the internet to be more private and more secure. We understand that the bill sponsors intend AICOA to regulate only gatekeeper companies and their controlled products. It is not intended to regulate or impact the agreements or product offerings of non-regulated independent companies like Mozilla that partner with gatekeepers for critical services. Nor does it require trading off privacy and security in order to enhance competition.

We disagree with the position taken by opponents to AICOA that competition legislation will undermine privacy and security. It is true that companies like Apple and Google offer key privacy features and security services that protect millions; for example, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) approach and Google’s Safebrowsing service. Mozilla advocated for Apple to implement ATT, and Firefox (and all major browsers) use Safebrowsing. We do not believe these technologies would be impacted by AICOA because they do not engage in problematic self-preferencing behavior and because the bill includes clear protections for privacy and security. 

Our view is that self-preferencing is preventing internet development from being more private and secure than it is today. For example, Mozilla was at the forefront of developing technology against cross-site tracking. Yet we have never released this technology to Firefox users on iOS because of App Store rules preferring Apple’s own browser engine over alternatives. As another example, Android’s affiliated browser Chrome does not offer anti-tracking technology. This leaves the majority of people on the planet without effective privacy protections. Real browser competition would empower millions to choose freely.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Mozilla Manifesto and two decades of our advocacy for a better internet. There has been progress in many areas, but the time has come for government action. 15 years of every major platform deciding for you that you should use their software is far too long. Enabling a level playing field for independent options is good for people’s online experiences, good for innovation and the economy, and ultimately good for a healthy, open internet.  We applaud those leading the charge on antitrust reform in the US and across the globe. The time for change is now.

The post Calling for Antitrust Reform appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. Today Robyn Exton, CEO & Founder of HER, talks to us about her love of reality TV shows, her obsession with online real estate and the newest Pride features in her app.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

The queer corner, especially Queer Tiktok! It has been a joy to get sucked in to. The accounts I can’t get enough of are Jessica Out of the Closet and Ty Deran.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I’m really into looking at houses online at the moment, and the weirder the better. I like changing my settings on Zillow to look in crazy weird locations and at different prices to see what comes up. That behavior has crossed into my social media and I’m now following realtors in places like Istanbul and Bangkok. Don’t know how I got here but I love it.

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing?

The metrics page for HER – I just end up opening it again 30 minutes later because a new idea strikes or I become obsessed with checking a next AB test.

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you? 

Alok Vaid-Menon because they are such a talented writer, powerful speaker, educator and all-round inspiration.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

Our Pride Pins in the HER app launched June 1st. We’ve always had core Pins for identity like lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, etc. But now with Pride festivals, we’ve added a seasonal collection for each city that celebrates a local community landmark. My favorites are the London one (where I’m from) with Gays the Word on there, and the New York one featuring Cubby Hole because its one of my favorite remaining lesbian bars. But they’re all so cute, I love them!

What was the first online community you engaged with?

I used to play this online game called SissyFight that had chat rooms around it. It’s an online video game where you fight other girls in the playground [as an early exploration of bullying between young girls and the emotional impact] and I remember it being pretty intense for a teen, but I loved it and met a bunch of people online there.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now? 

A million Web3 things I think I should understand but still dont really really get. 

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like?

It would be filled with reality TV dating shows with only queer contestants and people falling in love and breaking up and all the drama around it. I love reality dating shows and can’t bloody wait for them to get more queer.

Robyn Exton is the CEO & Founder of HER, the world’s largest dating and community app for queer women, nonbinary, trans and gender non-conforming folks. HER builds products and experiences that connect queers in the way that works best for them. The app is home to 10 million people across the world, with dating and community connections. With content, events and communities, HER is opening up opportunities for LGBTQ women and queer folks that never existed before.

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The post CEO and Founder of HER Robyn Exton Shares Celebrates Pride from Her Corner of the Internet appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. In this next installment, Tony Award-nominated Arnulfo Maldonado talks to us about what brings him inspiration, his nostalgia for MySpace, and how he uses Pocket to immerse himself into a specific world to be able to design theater sets.

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

Whenever I need to be randomly inspired I check out BOOOOOOOM for design inspiration.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into? 

When the Radiohead Public Library first debuted, I quickly realized I could spend hours browsing through it. And while I haven’t done a deep dive yet, I am looking forward to a lazy Sunday afternoon where I can just explore all facets of this site. It’s a really well curated site of all-things Radiohead, including old concert footage and music videos.

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing?

I use Pinterest a lot for visuals for work. And I always have one million tabs of various rabbit hole Pinterest tabs open because each one has something or many somethings that may lead to other interesting visuals. So each time I close one I feel like I’m plugging up another deep dive rabbit hole.

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you? 

I’ve been especially taken by historical queer curated instagram accounts that offer a history of queerness in film and the arts like @queer.cinema.archive one by my favorite artist’s foundation @felixgonzaleztorres.foundation. 

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now?

A STRANGE LOOP on Broadway — the social media team is fire when it comes to daily content on the show, in particular the show’s Twitter feed. Also of interest is the Twitter handle devoted entirely to if Tyler Perry called ‘Did Tyler See A Strange Loop‘ — waiting for the day that the tweet turns to: YES!

What was the first online community you engaged with? 

Probably early ‘00s music message boards and MySpace as I remember being very proud of my curated home page. I was late to LiveJournal so I never created content for it, but I really enjoyed the deep dive of many LiveJournals – it was like getting access to people’s diaries.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?

I am designing a production of Quiara Alegria Hudes‘ memoir ‘MY BROKEN LANGUAGE’ (writer of ‘IN THE HEIGHTS’, as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play ‘WATER BY THE SPOONFUL’) in the fall at the Signature Theatre and this ReVista article something I’ve been meaning to read to help me get into a bit of the world. The show doesn’t really touch on santerias but santerias were very much a part of Quiara’s life growing up in Philadelphia. Also have yet to read The New York Times article about the potential Basquiat forgeries being presented at a Florida art gallery.

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like? 

It would encompass all aspects of my interests: theater/performance art/ visual arts/ music but have a rotating roster of curated pieces by different artists

Arnulfo Maldonado recently received a Tony nomination for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson, currently playing at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. In addition he received the 2020 Obie for Sustained Excellence in Set Design, as well as a Special Citation Obie as part of the Creative Team of the Pulitzer Prize winning Off-Broadway production of A Strange Loop. Other notable credits — Broadway: Trouble In Mind (American Airlines Theater). Off-Broadway: A Case For the Existence of God (Signature Theatre); Wish You Were Here, Selling Kabul, Dance Nation (Playwrights Horizons); Nollywood Dreams, School Girls, Or… (MCC Theater), Sugar in Our Wounds (MTC, Lucille Lortel Award – Outstanding Scenic Design), One in Two (New Group) and To My Girls (Second Stage). Arnulfo is a recipient of a Princess Grace Fabergé Theater Award and a multiple Henry Hewes Design nominee.

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The post Tony-nominated Arnulfo Maldonado Shares Pride and Joy From His Corner of the Internet appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner of the Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later and what sites and forums shaped them.

With Pride celebrations taking place throughout June, we’re featuring LGBTQ+ leaders this month as part of our My Corner of the Internet series. First up is Kevin Wong, the vice president of communications at Trevor Project, where we talk to him about what he’s consuming online, his love of his cat Izzie and the intersectionality of LGBTQ and AAPI communities. 

What is your favorite corner of the internet? 

I’ve been engaging with more Instagram accounts highlighting AAPI news and accomplishments, like Goldhouse, Netflix Golden, NextShark, NBC Asian America and more. While there’s a noticeable increase in AAPI representation in media, it still isn’t mainstream, so I like following these accounts so I can always see what’s happening. 

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into?

I love weird facts about animals or science, so any time someone starts a digestible twitter thread, I feel like I’m in heaven. 

What is the one tab on your browser you always regret closing?

Definitely my Gmail tab, hands down.

Who is an LGBTQ+ person with a very online presence that is a role model for you? 

Whew, obviously Jay Jurden. He’s a bi comedian and he keeps all of his followers laughing during some pretty challenging times. I’ve seen him perform stand-up in real life too and the hits just keep coming!

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now? 

For the last five years, I have NOT shut up about our cat, Izzie. She’s a russian blue and she’s extremely affectionate! She even loves strangers.  

What was the first online community you engaged with?

I remember growing up I really wanted to connect with more LGBTQ people, so I sought those connections out online. Then, when I started working in Communications, I engaged with PR professionals online, as well as other AAPI people on Twitter.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now?

I’ve noticed how calming it is for me to watch shows and movies that I already saw, like “The Witcher,” “Fullmetal Alchemist” and the John Wick trilogy. Plus, I can second-screen or doze off if I want to! 

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like?

It would be amazing to have a corner of the internet that was constantly affirming you, acknowledging your strengths and boosting your self confidence. So many of my friends tell me they don’t get enough of that validation, and I think there’s always room for more of it in everyone’s life. But if I could make my own corner of the internet into a physical space, then it would be equal parts comfy nap spots and dance party!  

Kevin Wong (he/him) is the Vice President of Communications for The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ young people. He oversees the organization’s communications strategy, including media relations, celebrity engagement, internal and executive communications, speaking engagements and awards, crisis communications and more.

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The post Trevor Project’s Kevin Wong Shares What’s In His Corner of the Internet appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, what we should save in Pocket to read later, and what sites and forums shaped them.

This month we talk with Karen Ho, the journalist behind the Doomscrolling Reminder Bot that reminds its more than 71,000 followers on Twitter to drink water, sit up straight and stop doomscrolling.

Photo credit: Kristin Foster

What is your favorite corner of the internet?

The Journalists of Color Slack. I also play Wordle every day – my sister got me into it a few weeks ago.

What is an internet deep dive that you can’t wait to jump back into? 

After I finally watch “Everything Everywhere All At Once” in theaters, I will read every article written about the movie, the filmmakers and the stars.

What is the one tab you always regret closing? 

I wrote out an email pitch to the New Yorker about my master’s thesis, but never sent it out of nervousness. A staff member ended up writing about the exact topic several months later, and it was nominated for a National Magazine Award in Public Service.

What can you not stop talking about on the internet right now? 

The ongoing hate crimes against Asian Americans; how working in the media industry is especially odd and often overwhelming right now; how the U.S. continues to fail in its approach to COVID-19; and my very cute dog Max, who does not care what I do for work or how many followers I have on Twitter. I also tell a lot of people about Goodwill Auctions, and plan to launch a newsletter about it soon.

What was the first online community you engaged with? 

A Sailor Moon fansite where I read episode guides, then a lot of time on Neopets, Teen Open Diary and LiveJournal.

What articles and videos are in your Pocket waiting to be read/watched right now? 

It’s such a mess. A huge backlog of John Oliver, Planet Money, and This American Life episodes; features from the New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg Businessweek; and several business explainers on inflation, supply chain issues, hiring, and what Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter really means.

When was the last time you caught yourself doomscrolling and what did you do to break out of it?

When the Politico news broke. I tweeted reminders out loud to myself and others about how getting enough sleep would give me more energy to read thoughtful articles and do my work today than staying up late reading analysis and bad opinions.

If you could create your own corner of the internet what would it look like? 

A feed like Twitter, but with more safety and moderation guidelines and features. The commenting communities of old Deadspin and The Toast. The enthusiasm and pure joy of Tom Lum’s video about bees perceiving time. Nicole Cliffe’s Twitter prompts. The tone and style of Matt Levine and Rusty Foster’s newsletters. The New York Times Styles Desk Gift Guide from 2020 (and a lot of whatever editor/writer Choire Sicha and graphic designer Tracy Ma dream up, they are both geniuses). More well-being options for managing time and focus. And lots of pet photos.

Karen K. Ho is a freelance business reporter and writer who splits her time between Toronto and New York City. She has been published in outlets like TIME, GQ, Men’s Health, Glamour, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She is also the creator of the Doomscrolling Reminder Bot.

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The post Social media’s ‘Doomscrolling Reminder Lady’ on her favorite corners of the internet appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

In January of 2019, Mozilla joined the University of Edinburgh, Charles University, University of Sheffield and University of Tartu as part of a project funded by the European Union called Project Bergamot. The ultimate goal of this consortium was to build a set of neural machine translation tools that would enable Mozilla to develop a website translation add-on that operates locally, i.e. the engines, language models and in-page translation algorithms would need to reside and be executed entirely in the user’s computer, so none of the data would be sent to the cloud, making it entirely private.

In addition to that, two novel features needed to be introduced. The first was translation of forms, to allow users to input text in their own language that is dynamically translated on-the-fly to the page’s language. The second feature was quality estimation of the translations where low confidence translations should be automatically highlighted on the page, in order to notify the user of potential errors.

This set of requirements posed a number of technological challenges to the team: the translation engine was entirely written in programming languages that compile to native code. We needed a way to streamline the distribution of the project in order to avoid the overhead involved in providing builds compatible with all platforms supported by Firefox — that would be impracticable to scale and maintain. Also, the engine needed to perform fast enough on CPUs and not rely on GPUs like is traditionally required by deep learning solutions.

Our solution to that was to develop a high-level API around the machine translation engine, port it to WebAssembly, and optimize the operations for matrix multiplication to run efficiently on CPUs. That enabled us to not only develop the translations add-on but also allowed every web page to integrate local machine translation, like in this website, which lets the user perform free-form translations without using the cloud.    

The translations add-on is now available in the Firefox Add-On store for installation on Firefox Nightly, Beta and in General Release. We are looking for users’ feedback and in the add-on, you’ll see a button to fill out a survey that will help Project Bergamot collaborators understand which direction we should take the product. 

To empower the community to contribute with new languages we also developed a comprehensive training pipeline to allow enthusiasts to easily train new models, helping expand the add-on reach. 

This work aligns with Mozilla’s commitment to keeping the web accessible to everyone regardless of their language while also building open-source projects of value to our community with a focus on privacy. Please join us and send suggestions — we need all of your voices to make this add-on truly accessible for all. 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825303 .

The post Mozilla releases local machine translation tools as part of Project Bergamot appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

When we launched Mozilla VPN, a fast and easy-to-use VPN, it was in a market crowded by companies making promises about privacy and security and we believed our reputation for building products that help you keep your information safe would make our product stand-out. To date, tens of thousands of people have signed up to subscribe to our Mozilla VPN, which provides encryption, device-level protection of your connection and information whenever you are on the web.

As we continue to look for new ways to grow our audience, we saw that many of our competitors used affiliate marketing as a way to get people to buy their service. The challenge is that affiliate marketing is a space rife with tons of data collection practices. At Mozilla, online privacy has always been one of our top priorities. We knew that in order for us to pursue affiliate marketing we would have to do it in a transparent way with as little data as possible to provide people with the best privacy possible. 

Prioritizing privacy right from the start with affiliate marketing

You’re in the market for a new phone and start by doing research on reviews sites, then pick one of the site’s top choices and click on the link to buy? This is an example of affiliate marketing. Essentially, a trusted media site is giving their thumbs up so that once you click on the link to buy they get paid for that referral. Companies use affiliate marketing as a method to leverage well-known publishers to bring awareness of their products and drive people to buy. 

Data collection happens when people’s information is shared once they click on a link either through a publisher’s site or using an influencer’s code. There is an attribution tagged to that link or code so that the publisher or influencer gets credit for sending that user to the company’s site. During that transaction, information like an IP address or any other additional data about the person is passed through a third party, an affiliate network partner. 

At Mozilla where we prioritize people’s privacy, choosing the right affiliate network partner was our first step. We selected Commission Junction because they have experience in the VPN category and were willing to collaborate with us to build a privacy-forward solution for attribution. 

Together with our engineering team we integrated affiliate marketing in a way that was designed to limit data transfer and collection. We only collect and pass the data necessary to credit an affiliate network partner with the subscription they helped us get. We use a server-to-server integration to prevent leaking user IP addresses. Our code is open source to ensure transparency around this data. 

We inform people about this upon accessing our website and people who do not wish to see this data collected can opt out.

This approach is in line and a reflection with our lean data practices and our privacy promise.

Since the launch of our affiliate marketing program in April, we continue to evaluate companies who are aligned with the same values that we embody and represent the best of the web.

Now available with a seven-day risk-free trial

Summer is just around the corner and as you begin planning your vacation, whether you’re staying in a hotel or renting a home, or traveling between airports or coffee shops, you can have peace of mind using Mozilla VPN wherever you are. Mozilla VPN encrypts your connection protecting your privacy and concealing your location. You can feel safe knowing that Mozilla VPN does not log or sell your data. Starting this month we’re offering a seven day-free trial for mobile devices (Android and iOS) so you can get protection “on-the-go” wherever you browse the web. 

Building privacy products at Mozilla

We know that it’s more important than ever for you to be safe, and for you to know that what you do online is your own business. Developed by Mozilla, a mission-driven company with a 20-year track record of fighting for online privacy and a healthier internet, we are committed to innovate and bring new features to the Mozilla VPN. By subscribing to Mozilla VPN, users support both Mozilla’s product development and our mission to build a better web for all. 

Check out the Mozilla VPN and subscribe today from our website.

Device-level encryption from a name you can trust

Try Mozilla VPN

For more on Mozilla’s privacy products:

• Latest Firefox Relay includes bigger attachment size and filters for promotional emails
• Keep your multiple online lives private with Multi-Account Containers Add-on on Mozilla VPN

The post Marketing our privacy products while preserving privacy  appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Being feminine and having technical skills are not mutually exclusive. This should be obvious, but Xyla Foxlin has had to work hard to prove femininity and engineering can go hand in hand. While in college, she started a YouTube channel called Beauty and the Bolt, where she co-produced tutorials on STEM topics like electronics, math and physics. Schools and other programs used the videos to teach young people, and the project became a nonprofit where she served as executive director. Now, Xyla has her own YouTube channel, where she gets to “play around” with whatever material she can get her hands on in her garage. She made a corset out of a cedar strip. She built a rocket and launched it, wearing a dress. Last year, she bought a small plane – something she’s worked toward since learning to fly an aircraft while working as an airport crew member during high school (“I’d show up to fuel this guy’s plane and he’d be like, ‘No way.’”) We talked to Xyla about getting into engineering, what she loves about the internet and building a Tesla coil for a beauty pageant. 

Tell us about your name.

I have very interesting parents and they let me name myself when I was like 10. They had Foxlin as a combination of both of their names and they both changed their names when they got married. So changing names is sort of a family hobby. 

They named me Kayla because they thought they had made it up. And then it was  on the top 10 girls’ names list that year, and they were really heartbroken about it. They spent my whole childhood talking about how much they regretted naming me Kayla. What’s even better is my middle name is Ray. So they named me Kayla Ray, and I’m like a Jewish Asian from Boston,not a Southern Belle. 

At one point, I was sitting at a diner with my parents and my mom said, “Pick a new name. We’ll just go change it like right now.” My dad really wanted a high Scrabble scoring name and I liked X’s more than Zs because I was 10. I didn’t understand the adult implications of the letter X yet. Xena was on the list, but the warrior princess kind of did it first. By the end of the night, my new name was Xyla.

You were in the robotics team in high school but didn’t build robots until college. What changed?

I was in the back hoping someone would let me do something. But the reality is a lot of times when you join any organization, you have to get in there and be really loud and be like, “I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to try it.” And that is not really socially conditioned into most girls. 

So I was quiet and obedient and I did whatever was told to me. I was told to organize the outreach events, make the engineering notebook or organize the bake sale. I organized a lot of big sales and raised a lot of money. 

When I went to college, I was like, “I’m going to be the best engineer I can possibly be.” My freshman year, I joined  the robotics team. I joined the rocket team. I was going to hackathons on weekends. I was building robots for this NASA robotic mining competition. 

Tell us about the YouTube channel you started in college, Beauty and the Bolt. 

It was born out of an issue I saw with the Makerspace that I worked at in school. There was this moment where a girl walked in and she wanted to 3D-print a phone case. She wasn’t an engineer. It was maybe her first time in this space. She was already really uncomfortable. We were really busy that day, and so my boss was like, “Just give her the text tutorial.” So I sat her down on the machine, I opened up the document for her and said, “Just read through this. I’ll get you set up and then come see me if you have any issues.” It was 42 pages long. I saw her scroll through it, and then when I had my back turned, she had closed her laptop.

I thought, “That sucks. We need a better way of doing this.” So I reached out to one of my friends and asked, “How do you feel about making video tutorials for the space?” Because I think that if someone had a video to watch on how to do it, it would lower the barrier to entry for the people who are uncomfortable. 

So we made a handful of videos on how to use machines in the Makerspace. We posted them on YouTube. A ton of schools and other Makerspaces found them and started using them as their training. We started getting requests for more videos and then it snowballed into a nonprofit.

You also competed in pageants for a year during college and won Miss Greater Cleveland as part of the Miss America program. Why did you decide to explore that?

I was sort of angry about how there was this notion that I couldn’t be super feminine and also be an engineer at the same time. People would make fun of me for wearing pink and flowers. And I thought , screw all of you. I’m just going to go compete at Miss Ohio and see what happens. 

One of the other reasons I did it is I wanted an excuse to build a musical Tesla coil. I read through the Miss America talent rules and fire is not allowed. Although fire is a plasma, not all plasma is technically fire. I figured showing up with a lightning machine was not technically outside of the rules of Miss America. So there’s the mischievous part of me that was like, “Now I have to do it.” 

I built a little Tesla coil and I hooked it up to my electric violin and played. It was part of the personal mission I had of trying to get girls who are more feminine to know that they could do stuff like engineering, and that it wouldn’t make them any less of who they are.

Now you run your own YouTube channel.

With the nonprofit, I felt a lot of pressure to keep my projects simple and classroom friendly. When I started my own channel,, I want to be able to build whatever wacky, crazy idea that I can come up with. I want to be able to push myself really hard and make projects that I don’t even think I know how to do. I am me, the person Xyla Foxlin and I’m building the things that Xyla Foxlin wants to build.

What would high school freshman Xyla think if she could see you now?

She’d be so jazzed. I don’t think there was ever a moment in my life where I thought I would own an airplane at 25. I have played that moment in my mind a bunch of times: What if I could travel back in time and talk to the 13-year-old version of myself? That it paid off and it was worth it.

What’s your favorite part about the internet?

One of my favorite things about being my age and living in 2022 is that the internet lets you create whatever job that you want. You have to be very entrepreneurial. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. It’s not for everyone, but the tools are at your disposal to forge your own path and create the job that you want.

Firefox is exploring all the ways the internet makes our planet an awesome place. Almost everything we do today ties back to the online world in some way — so, join us in highlighting the funny, weird, inspiring and courageous stories that remind us why we love the world wide web.

Get the browser that makes a difference

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The post Firefox Presents: A YouTube creator blending femininity and engineering appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

With the rapid growth of e-commerce in the last few years, more people are expecting their browser to help them out when shopping online. Firefox has supported credit card autofill in the United States and Canada since 2018. Starting today Firefox can remember and fill credit card details additionally in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

How to use credit card autofill

In order to use credit card autofill, enter your credit card information when checking out online, as you normally do. After submitting your payment details, Firefox will prompt you to save your card information if it is a new credit card, or to update if you have saved this card before.

After saving or updating your details, you will be able to quickly fill out payment forms in the future.

For more on Firefox:

• Celebrating Firefox: How we got to 100
• Firefox’s Picture-in-Picture rolls out subtitles – a Mozilla Connect community requested feature

The post Credit card autofill now enabled in the United Kingdom, France and Germany appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Whether it’s celebrating the first 100 days of school or turning 100 years old, reaching a 100th milestone is a big deal worthy of confetti, streamers and cake, and of course, reflection. Today, Firefox is releasing its 100th version to our users and we wanted to take a moment to pause and look back on how we got to where we are today together as well as what features we are releasing in our 100th version. 

In 2004, we announced the release of Firefox 1.0 with a crowdfunded New York Times ad, which listed the names of every single person who contributed to building that first release — hundreds of people. Our goal with Firefox 1.0 was to provide a robust, user-friendly and trustworthy web experience. We received praise for our features that helped users avoid pop-ups, increased online fraud protection, made tabbed browsing more efficient and gave people the ability to customize their browser with add-ons. Our goal was to put our users first and personalize their web experience and that goal still holds true today. 

Since then our community of users  — past and current — has grown to thousands of people and continues to shape who we are today. We are so grateful for all the work they have done from filing bugs, submitting ideas through Mozilla Connect, downloading and testing Firefox Nightly and Beta releases and continuing to choose Firefox as their browser. Thank you!

Before we delve into the new features for Firefox 100, we wanted to share artwork we received when we sent out a call to submit fan art inspired by Firefox. Throughout this month, we will be sharing the art we received on our social media channels over the next couple of weeks. If you have your own Firefox inspired art you’d like to share? Tag us @Firefox for a chance to be featured. In the meantime, here is one we received that we wanted to share.

Here are the new features for Firefox 100: 

Picture-in-Picture now available with subtitles – a Mozilla Connect community requested feature

In 2019 we released Picture-in-Picture and it quickly became a favorite among users. Since its release we continued to improve it, first, by making it available across Windows, Mac and Linux, then making multiple Picture-in-Pictures (which coincidentally was a plus for sports enthusiasts), and today with subtitles and captions. This feature just keeps getting better and we owe it to our users sharing their feedback. 

Earlier this year we launched Mozilla Connect, a collaborative space for users to share product feedback, submit ideas for new features and participate in meaningful discussions that help shape future releases. It’s where we received the idea to enhance Picture-in-Picture with subtitles and captions support. 

The subtitles and captions in Picture-in-Picture will initially be available on three websites — YouTube, Prime Video and Netflix — plus websites that support WebVTT format like coursera.org and Twitter. We hope to expand the feature to even more sites. Now whether you’re hard-of-hearing, a multi-tasker or a multilingual user, we have you covered with Picture-in-Picture subtitles. To learn more about the impact of captions and how Picture-in-Picture will become more usable to a range of users with varying needs, we’ve written an article here.

To hear more about the journey PiP subtitles followed from community idea to shipping feature, or contribute ideas and thoughts of your own, join us over in Mozilla Connect. We’d love to hear from you.

Dress up your Firefox mobile browsers with new browser wallpapers 

Do you ever walk into a room with plain white solid walls and just feel, well, meh? We understand the feeling. There’s something about bright colors and fun patterns that bring us joy. Whether you’re a minimalist or a maximalist, we’ve got a wallpaper for you. In March, we announced new wallpapers on FirefoxAndroid and iOS for the US. Today, we added two new wallpapers — Beach vibes and Twilight hills —  available globally. You can find the wallpapers feature in your Settings and pick the one that suits your style. On iOS, we will be roll out wallpapers this week.

Firefox on Android and iOS: Your history and tabs are now clutter-free 

Today, we have clutter-free history and clutter-free tabs available on Android. We will roll out on iOS this week. Two separate features with the same intention: to simplify and organize your stuff so you can jump back into the stuff you care about.

For clutter-free history, instead of an endless sea of URLs leaving you feeling overwhelmed, we’ve organized it for you in an intuitive way. One of the ways we’ve done this is by grouping history items by the original item, for example if you’re looking for shoes and you’ve looked at several models, you can find them grouped in one folder under your search term. Another way we’ve organized your history is removing duplicate sites thus reducing the visual clutter. Lastly, you can now search within your history. Keep in mind that we are doing this in a privacy preserving way so you can rest assured that your data isn’t being sent back to Mozilla. 

For clutter-free tabs, we heard from users who struggle with “tab clutter” but keep tabs open so they can go back to them later. Now, we will focus on your recent tabs in your tab tray so you can easily switch between the tabs depending on what you’re working on.  Once you haven’t visited a tab within 14 days, we will move it to an “inactive state” in your tab tray. This means that you can still hold on and go back to those tabs but they will no longer clutter your view and you can easily close them when you’re ready. Clutter-free tabs was released on Android last year and and will roll out on iOS this week.

Firefox for Android: Get more private with HTTPS-only mode

In March, we added HTTPS-only mode to Firefox Focus, our simple, privacy by default companion app. We thought that our Firefox for Android app users could also benefit from this privacy-first feature and today HTTPS-only mode is available on Android. We break down HTTPS in detail here. 

TL;DR: Firefox for Android now automatically opts into HTTPS for the best available security and privacy – supporting life’s get in and out of moments where you may want to do quick searches with no distractions or worries.

Plus, new features for our users around the world including our first-run language switcher and credit card auto fill

The first-run language switcher is a new feature that makes it easier for people to use their preferred language. When first run, Firefox will recognize that you have a device language preference and, where it differs from Firefox’s default language, ask whether you’d like to switch to one of the more than 100  languages we have available to choose from. The new credit card auto fill feature was launched previously in North America, and is now enabled in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. For more information on how the new credit card auto fill works, please visit here. 

Check out these new features today and download them on your desktop and mobile devices: Firefox, Firefox on Android and Firefox for iOS.

The post Celebrating Firefox: How we got to 100 appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

There are so many different ways that Firefox users count on Picture-in-Picture for their best browsing and content viewing experiences:

• Toddler duty? Don’t sweat it! Stream your child’s favorite movie to watch on your desktop while you hold down your job and the title of “favorite parent!”

• Can’t miss the big game? Firefox’s Multiple Picture-in-Picture feature is the gametime assist you need! Watch all the games playing live at the same time, no fancy home set-up required.

• Learning new coding skills? Open an online tutorial video while keeping your developer software full screen where you test the code.

• Trying a new recipe? With Picture-in-Picture you can watch Emily Mariko’s viral salmon rice bowl how-to while also having the in-text recipe open on your main browser tab.

Beginning with Firefox 1.0, we’ve continued to put our users first to develop and deliver on the features most important to them. Our mission then – to build an internet open and accessible to all – still remains the same today. That’s why, nearly 99 releases later, we’re excited to introduce subtitles and captions to Firefox’s Picture-in-Picture (PiP). 

A community-led effort

In 2019, we released Picture-in-Picture and it soon topped our best features lists. This Firefox browser feature allows you to seamlessly pop any video out from the webpage into a floating, size-adjustable window in just one click. After hearing from Firefox users who wanted more than just one picture-in-picture view, we launched Multiple Picture-in-Picture (multi-PiP), which allows users to pop out and play multiple videos at the same time and on top of other tabs and windows. Now, we’re rolling out PiP with subtitles and captions – another highly requested feature straight from our community!

In fact, our product managers engaged our recently launched Mozilla Connect community – a collaborative space for users to share product feedback, submit ideas for new features, and participate in meaningful discussions that help shape future releases – to help develop exciting updates to the Firefox video and PiP experiences. This is where we received an astounding amount of feedback to enhance Picture-in-Picture with subtitles and captions support to make it more functional for a wider range of users.

So, how does the subtitles and captions feature on Picture-In-Picture work? 

The subtitles and captions feature in Picture-in-Picture is available on three major streaming sites – YouTube, Prime Video, and Netflix – plus all websites that support the emerging W3C standard called WebVTT (Web Video Text Track) format, such as Twitter and Coursera. It’s really as simple as turning on the subtitles or captions on the in-page video player of your favorite website, and they will appear in PiP when launched. 

There are many sites that don’t yet support the emerging web standard, so if you don’t see captions when using PiP on your favorite streaming site, let the website know that you want them to support WebVTT or vote on the community page to help Firefox select the streaming sites we should support next by building special site-specific adapters for these websites. If you would like to contribute your own site-specific adapter, you can do it here (how-to included), so that more websites support subtitles in PiP. 

How do captions/subtitles make videos more usable, and therefore more accessible? 

It’s true that adding captions and subtitles can make videos more accessible to a wider range of users. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 20% of North Americans and more than 55% of Europeans speak more than one language.  It can prove handy to watch videos with subtitles in your second language, or when you’re interested in watching something in a language you don’t know at all. For viewers that are non-native speakers, subtitles help them learn a new language faster and with a greater depth of understanding.

Another highly visible example, is that Firefox users who experience a degree of hearing loss may rely on captions to follow along to video content. Interestingly, the majority of people who like watching videos with captions are hearing, yet still opt in for their own benefit! Reading captions can improve comprehension and memorization and it might be helpful to use them while multitasking and studying at a library or shared workspace, or any other situation where sound may be distracting or inappropriate. There are also many other situations when users would want to watch videos with the sound off and captions on.

“Today users with disabilities have a choice when it comes to accessible browsers, but accessibility is never actually ‘done’ and there’s still a lot more browsers could do to better support users with disabilities. So, with that, Firefox is looking to see what innovations can be provided to improve the accessibility of web browsing and empower users with disabilities in more ways.”

Asa Dotzler, product manager for Firefox Accessibility

As Firefox continues to make its products more usable to a range of users with varying needs, the accessibility of our products will only increase, and we have our community to thank for that! Now, whether you identify as being hard-of-hearing, a non-native language speaker or having an affinity for having multiple tabs open at one time, we have you covered with Picture-in-Picture subtitles. 

Got things to do and things to watch? Go ahead and download the latest version of Firefox here to use Picture-in-Picture in Firefox.

The post Firefox’s Picture-in-Picture rolls out subtitles – a Mozilla Connect community requested feature appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.