I don't know why so many companies feel compelled to needlessly take political stances. I think they can only lose from that.
Although I have heard Nike earned billions with the Kaepernick campaigns, so maybe sometimes it does pay off. But for Mozilla? Do they get government funding?
It may not be literal religion, in the sense of believing "God says this is the right thing to do," but it is the same underlying instinct - "This is Right, and I must do all in my power to serve it."
Humans pick other people who agree with them for their teams, so after a while corporate cultures are almost guaranteed to become homogeneous.
Once they are, groupthink and lack of dissenting opinions means the company starts to explicitly support whatever causes fit its corporate culture.
It's a religious impulse for people, for companies is pure profit-driven marketing. They are into politics because people nowadays love politics. It is everywhere. People want to brand themselves and carry their political flag everywhere. So it sells.
They explicitly said the want to do more censorship and promote fake news (like the New York Times), so how can I trust that they won't influence my browsing? What is their differentiating factor to Google now?
It is a 180° turn on what they seemed to stand for in the past, an open web.
"Mozilla doesn't gather your data to show you ads"
So they say, but they have teamed up with Google and Pocket before. And how do they plan to fight "hate speech" and promote fake news, without analyzing my data? What if they don't like what I write or look at?
Although I have heard Nike earned billions with the Kaepernick campaigns, so maybe sometimes it does pay off. But for Mozilla? Do they get government funding?