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Several weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox dodged a bullet aimed at its business model — a potential court-ordered cutoff of the Google search-default payments that constitute its primary course of income. But that escape from one feared outcome of the U.S. search-antitrust case against the web giant doesnt change two other things: Firefox remains in an embattled position. That’s bad news for users. Without Firefox, web competition itself would be in a far more dire state. To address its longstanding competition problem, Mozilla’s developers are putting AI to work — albeit, in a less pushy manner than their competitors. A conversation with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at Web Summit in Lisbon in November featured many such things-could-be-worse moments, starting with my question about the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handing down a ruling in the antitrust case that allowed Google to keep paying browser developers to make its search engine their default. We spent a lot of time working on the case, and we wrote amicus briefs and worked with the judge, Chambers said. I think he really heard our perspective around the importance of keeping browser engines and browser competition safe. Nine months earlier, Chambers had voiced serious concerns about the prospect of that revenue stream getting dammed. The 2023 annual report of Firefoxs nonprofit corporate parent, the latest available, shows that $495 million of its $653 million in total revenues and support that year came from royalties, meaning a certain percentage of revenues earned by its partners through their search engines incorporated in the Firefox web browser — in other words, Google. The 230-page opinion by District Judge Amit Mehta opened up a little more latitude for browser developers by holding that Google could not pay for exclusive payment in every browser-usage scenario. But Mozilla has not rushed to explore possibilities created by that ruling, such as making a non-Google, privacy-optimized search site the default for private-browsing windows. We still have Google search as the default, but we continue to add different options, Chambers said. For example, Firefox recently added the AI search tool Perplexity to the menu of search sites available in its address bar. AI, but for whom? Mozillas rollout of in-browser AI tools, unlike those of competing browser developers, has not included preset defaults. Firefoxs AI sidebar introduces itself with a choice of AI chatbots, including the big three of OpenAIs ChatGPT, Googles Gemini, and Microsofts Copilot, along with Anthropics Claude and the less-obvious option of Paris-based Mistrals Le Chat. Its upcoming AI Window, revealed the day I spoke to Chambers, doesnt have a preset default either, although Mozilla has not announced which AI services will be available through this waitlist-required option. I think there’s about 12% of the general population in the U.S., France, and Germany that don’t want to use AI, she said. My guess is it’s probably a little higher of Firefox users. But she said Mozillas efforts to make AI an option to choose rather than a default to refuse have helped. We don’t jam it down their throats, she said. We do them all in a very privacy-preserving way. In particular, Firefox relies on on-device processing for such features as language translation and automatically organizing an overwhelming array of browser tabs. Chambers also stressed that Mozilla wants to ensure that AI doesnt close off the open web. It’s incredibly important that people can still discover things, that they can verify, that they can explore around, she said. Yet, the AI Overview answers of its Google default seem to be discouraging that sort of exploration all too well. As an organization, Mozilla has not leaned too hard into AI. Saying the code that we launch is all still written by people, Chambers added that Mozillas developers have found Anthropics Claude Code and other tools more useful for things like testing and for working through bugs and so forth. Market share matters Mozillas core problem, however, is not making new AI features easy to find its finding new users. The browser that singlehandedly destroyed Internet Explorers near-monopoly and then held a quarter of the desktop-browser market in 2011 now sits in fourth place, with under 4% of the market worldwide and in the United States, per Cloudflares statistics. Chambers said that this tide is slowly turning in Europe thanks to the EUs Digital Markets Act, which requires companies designated as gatekeepers to take such extra steps to avoid favoring their own products as browser-choice screens in Android and iOS. Mozilla says its since seen a 149% jump in daily active mobile users in France and a 130% boost in Germany. Chambers called the DMA a really great boost for us, saying people get to choose browsers, and then they’re choosing us. She described the desktop market as tougher, offering this overall assessment: Our market share is pretty steady, but we’re making some really good progress. Whatever slice of the browser market Firefox holds also matters for web compatibility — its the only vaguely mass-market browser that doesnt use WebKit or the Blink engine inside Chrome and browsers written on its open-source Chromium software, such as rave and Vivaldi. Developing and maintaining a web-rendering framework outside of that duopoly is no easy task, but Chambers called it incredibly important to do. In our earlier conversation, she emphasized that Mozilla owning its own engine gives it a seat at the table in web-standards discussions. Business horizons Mozilla has spent years struggling to develop lines of business beyond its Google search-default royalties, with iffy results it shut down its read-it-later Pocket service this summer. But it continues to sell an add-on VPN based on Mullvads service, which Chambers said will soon be integrated into the browser. In June of 2024, Mozilla stepped into Googles lane by buying the ad-tech firm Anonym, which Chambers said does a better job of still providing high-quality advertising results while keeping information more private through such privacy-preserving techniques as differential privacy. She expressed some hope for an upcoming revision to the EUs e-privacy rules that could help this division better compete with the likes of Google. But zooming out, much of Mozillas pitch does not involve features or options as much as it centers around what Firefox and the organization behind it are not. As people look around at the people that are shaping the future of the world and the web, a lot of them are billionaires, a lot of them don’t seem to be very aligned with values that they may hold, and I think they’re looking to different leaders, right? she said. They’re trying to find people that are fighting for a better internet, which we’re doing. Chambers leaned on Star Wars in describing Mozillas work as a little bit of a new version of the Rebel Alliance, Chambers explained, calling this a return to the internets early days when open-source people banded together and they created really great alternatives. Asked if Google or Microsoft would be the Empire in this analogy, she waved off the question. I think it’s the traditional big tech companies. Mozillas role? Jedis. Definitely Jedis. Disclosure: I moderated three panels at Web Summit, in return for which the events organizers paid for my hotel and are reimbursing my airfare.
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Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of peoples feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected peoples emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. Im a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to re-rank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time. Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw. We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party. This 60 Minutes segment covers how divisive social media posts get more traction than neutral posts. Why it matters A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do. Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods, and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions. Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users democratic attitudes. What other research is being done in this field Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number. For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes. At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel, and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feedsfor example, the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well. Whats next This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open. We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values, and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Tiziano Piccardi is an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendeesit might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected focus blocks and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work. Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followings. She says shes started using the Focus Time feature inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. Before, my day was really just a stream of constant meetings, and I think a lot of people can relate to that, she says. It was meeting after meeting, ping after ping, and I was finding that I didnt have a lot of time to do the deep work thats really important to move things forward. Now, she notes, its much easier to see forward momentum. [The focus time feature] is really helping me get in the groove and tackle projects . . . instead of getting bogged down by endless meetings. Deep work has become a job requirement While the idea of deep work isnt new, the urgency around it is. Leaders can no longer treat focus as a luxury. In todays reactive workplace, carving out uninterrupted time for thinking and creating has become a core leadership responsibility. And employees want this just as much as executives. According to a recent Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK workers, 47% said they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% said theyd like their employers to formally schedule such quiet periods. This suggests that protecting focus isnt a personal quirkits a cultural shift waiting to happen. But its all too easy to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that may appear urgent (such as last-minute requests and fire drills) but rarely move you towards the end-of-year KPIs that determine your bonus and future promotion potential. At Lifehack Method, where we coach executives and teams on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, teams flounder in shallow work. When they protect it, they model a culture of depth, clarity, and results. Every Friday, our clients practice a Weekly Planning ritual where they calendarize the entire week, ensuring strategic work has nonnegotiable slots before the week fills up with reactive tasks. Forget time management, start managing your attention The calendar is a useful tool, but the deeper shift is about what we choose to protect. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, the old paradigm of time managementsqueezing as much as possible into the dayhas limits and can even be detrimental. The new frontier is attention management: the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments, as Grant defines it in a New York Times essay. When we coach leaders in our programs, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The question isnt How do I fit this in? but Does this deserve my attention? That pivot can mean the difference between a week lost in shallow work and a week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your mind of those pesky urgent tasks and give yourself the gift of diving into your most leveraged activities. These are often not even on your to-do list, thats how little attention they tend to get! When a calendar block isnt enough, bring a buddy Of course, protecting time on a calendar doesnt always mean using it well. Getting forward momentum is tough when youre facing procrastination and anxiety about how to start. Thats where accountability comes in. Enter virtual coworking, a rising trend that pairs you with a partner online to ensure you show up and do the work. Many of our clients here at Lifehack Method rely heavily on coworking sessions as a force multiplier to speed through otherwise procrastinated tasks. Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that real-time, subtle feedback during lapses of attention helped participants regain focus. The researchers concluded that it may be more effective to intervene during low-focus moments than to simply enforce long, uninterrupted blocks. For high-stakes or creative work, this suggests that lightweight accountability systemslike coworking sessions or structured check-inscan serve as the feedback nudges that keep people in the zone. Virtual coworking platforms are seeing traction among enterprise employees. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the worlds No. 1 virtual coworking community. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members currently average 31% more sessions than the average user, and 13% more time spent on the platform. Donahue shares that at work, she uses both virtual and in-person coworking to ensure she says on task. I am a big fan of coworking. I feel that it adds a layer of accountability and its just nice to sit around the campfire with other people who are in it as well. Its a great way to do deep focused work almost like a sprint. How to make focus time impactful Protecting focus blocks isnt just about willpower. It requires communication and culture change. Leaders who succeed tend to: Treat focus time like a sacred meeting. Dont reschedule unless its truly urgent. Communicate clearly. Let your team know when youre offline for focus and when youll be available again. Pair protection with accountability. Use tools like Focusmate, oras we do at Lifehack Methodstack focus time with rituals like our Winning the Week Method planning process, which makes deep work part of the weekly rhythm. Model the behavior. When managers visibly protect focus, employees feel empowered to do the same. Protect your focus to future-proof your job As tools evolve and workplace demands intensify, the rarest resource is no longer money, ideas, talent, or even time. Its unbroken attention. Leaders who defend it will drive innovation; those who dont risk drowning in noise. Focus time is not indulgent. Its the only way to do the kind of workcompanies actually pay leaders to do.
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