topic why are they all white (or orange)? in Discussions

why are they all white (or orange)?

idutswdwllt — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 12:58:35 GMT

in the new "add you friends campaign", why is there no representation of non-white internet icons???

https://www.firefox.com/de/m/friends/

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

dftf — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 15:02:39 GMT

@idutswdwllt There are many prominent non-white YouTube stars now, and more-specifically memes featuring non-white people, but was that the case in the early years of YouTube, during the time-period this campaign's stars are from?

The memes featured in the ad, and the year it first became a meme:
• 2004 - "Numa Numa Guy"
• 2005 - "Where the Hell Is Matt?"
• 2006 - "Evolution of Dance"
• 2006 - "Shoes" song, by Kelly
• 2007 - "Chocolate Rain"
• 2007 - "Success Kid"
• 2009 - "Annoying Orange"
• 2011 - "Chuck Testa"
• 2012 - "Bad Luck Brian"
• 2012 - "Overly Attached Girlfriend"
• 2014 - "Apparently Kid"

What notable non-white people from memes of that 2004-2014 period have been overlooked?

Ones I can think of:
• 2010 - "Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife" (given the subject-matter, not ideal for an ad)
• 2011 - "Disappointed Black Guy Meme" (receives a racist message, looks disappointed; suggesting people use Firefox to send racist messages is likely not what they'd want in an ad)
• 2012 - "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" - one they could have featured
• 2013 - "Popeye Kid" (may play into the "black people all love fried chicken" stereotype)
• 2020 - "Shocked Black Guy" (too-new)
• 2020 - "What Did You Mean By That?" (too-new)

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

idutswdwllt — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 13:16:37 GMT

@dftf Thank you for continuing the conversation. However, I argue that the point you offered in your reply is not relevant here. I would like to draw attention to the question, why BIPoC people or other marginalised groups are absent from the early years of YouTube? I argue that the reason is structural discrimination. Marginalised groups have always struggled with being overlooked, being heard, and being taken seriously. I am calling out Mozilla's responsibility as a company with high visibility to not reproduce skewed representation of society. I argue that structural discrimination is reproduced by launching a campaign that is factually based on YouTube's beginnings without taking into account that said beginnings have happened in a context where structural discrimination of marginalised groups is a given in society. I argue that campaigns drawing on historical events (even from the very near past) should be aware of mechanisms of structural discrimination we still struggle with today (under-representation of marginalised groups) and actively situate the material they are drawing from. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the campaign designers to ask if the historical source material they are drawing from is inherently skewed due to structural discrimination. Here is a great example: Historic accounts of women are systematically absent from history books, because women have been seen as second-class, less important people for centuries and therefore society wasn't interested in keeping track of their lives. It would be wrong to assume that the missing accounts are a result of irrelevance of women's historic experiences. I argue that it is wrong to continue telling mostly male history. I argue that we as society (and here, Mozilla) need(s) to ACTIVELY take up countermeasures against skewed historic accounts (or factually correct, but skewed representations) to work towards equal representation and worthiness of all people. I argue that we should start balancing male white history accounts with a minimum of equal time spent talking about indigenous, female, or black accounts of the same events. And I argue that Mozilla should design campaigns that give all members of society equal representation. Even when that means that they are not drawing from nostalgic, but all-white (and orange) source material.

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

dftf — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 22:12:39 GMT

> why BIPoC people or other marginalised groups are absent from the early years of YouTube

Probably because in many poorer-countries (India, Mexico, Africa) people did not have access to laptops or PCs, or Internet connections, around the time YouTube launched (2005)?

> And I argue that Mozilla should design campaigns that give all members of society equal representation. Even when that means that they are not drawing from nostalgic, but all-white (and orange) source material.

They usually do: "Kit", their cartoon fox mascot, is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

In this campaign though, they wanted to remind people of a particular time-period and did so using popular memes of the time. If the majority of those memes came from white-people at that time, I'm not-sure what else they could do?

Maybe take a look on the Mozilla Foundation website -- very-diverse mix of people featured in the photos on there, and you can read about what that branch of Mozilla does to help people.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

roodypoo — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 20:33:35 GMT

Manufactured outrage for virtue-signaling brownie points. How tired and sad.

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

idutswdwllt — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 21:12:37 GMT

Thank you for your reply, @dftf.

> In this campaign though, they wanted to remind people of a particular time-period and did so using popular memes of the time. If the majority of those memes came from white-people at that time, I'm not-sure what else they could do?

I agree that it is somewhat futile to discuss (and in my case, reject) something that cannot be changed anymore (the campaign is launched). The point I am trying to make is that they should have designed the campaign differently.

> They usually do: "Kit", their cartoon fox mascot, is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

I know that Mozilla is advocating for visibility of diversity. Probably that is part of the reason, why this campaign irritated me in the first place.

> Probably because in many poorer-countries (India, Mexico, Africa) people did not have access to laptops or PCs, or Internet connections, around the time YouTube launched (2005)?

I still think my point stands, as in you here gave the perfect example. People of the Global South face structural discrimination in the form of having delayed access to new technological developments. To adress this discrimination and contribute to changing it towards more equality, I argue that we (all of society) need to ACTIVELY involve marginalised voices in our campaigns and discussions. It is not enough to let those speak who have already been heard before. We need to actively seek out underrepresented voices and start builing conversations and discussions that equally hear everyone.

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

idutswdwllt — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 21:13:30 GMT

Have you not had enough cookies in your life? How tired and sad.

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

dftf — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 22:54:21 GMT

> "... they should have designed the campaign differently"

Maybe, but how?

They wanted to remind people of a time when Firefox was last really-popular, and needed something of that time that would be Internet-based. Sure, they could have used maybe music or movies of the time, but (1) that would be more-expensive to licence for the ad and (2) neither were really web-browser based at that time. Likewise a campaign featuring video-games of the time would also be irrelevant: Firefox was not on any games console.

The only "neutral" way I can see would be to perhaps show old versions of Firefox and the old versions of websites as they were at that time, and then be like "remember Firefox and these sites then? Well, this is what they look like today, and Firefox is still here too". But that doesn't then have the human-connection the people in the memes offer. (Plus: again, if most of the websites featured were Western ones, wouldn't that still be exclusionary?).

Can you suggest what would have been a better campaign?

> I argue that we (all of society) need to ACTIVELY involve marginalised voices in our campaigns and discussions. It is not enough to let those speak who have already been heard before

Are ads really the place for that though?

The focus of this ad was: "hey, remember all these memes? And do you remember, when you watched them online, you may have used Firefox? Well, we're still around too".

I'm struggling to see what ad they could have made instead featuring wider representation of different communities that would still link to Firefox as a product and not be political?

Let's say Firefox did a "This is why I use Firefox" campaign, featuring many different people from different communities, backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, sexualities and genders. Is it not just going to become political ("As a Palestinian, I use Firefox to go to this website to warn me about incoming Israeli missile-strikes") or ("As a democrat, I use Firefox to find ways to support people's continued access to free abortions") or ("As a human-rights campaigner, I use Firefox to highlight the continued human-rights abuses in China"). Or risk accusations of stereotyping ("As an LGBTIQ+ person, I use Firefox to find nearby furry conventions to show-off my fursona, dahling... woof!") or ("As a black person, I use Firefox to message my lawyer... I'm on the third traffic-stop this month!). Or religious ("As a Muslim, I use Firefox to watch videos about the life of the true God, Allah. Peace be upon him.")

Can't we just have an ad reminding us of funny memes and not advocate for stuff beyond reminding us of the product? I can only see that being more-controversial as it'll stray into some of the areas I mentioned, and inevitably end-up just using stereotypes.

I mean, people of all races, religions, genders, languages or whatever use Firefox for one thing: to browse the web. The moment you start adding other stuff ("As a citizen of the UK, I use Firefox to browse the latest EU legislation and discover the benefits and new laws we no-longer benefit from"), etc, then it's not really about the product anymore.

If people want to advocate for stuff, then do so: run your own ads, or start your own pressure-groups or political-campaigns. But why does an ad for a web-browser need to include examples like I gave?

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

dftf — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:18:55 GMT

@idutswdwllt : okay, so here's a challenge for you. Imagine you work at a marketing agency and you are given this brief:

Mozilla Firefox was at its most-popular between roughly 2006 to 2013. We need to design an ad campaign that reminds people of that era, probably using nostalgia, and links that time to using the Firefox browser.

How would you propose doing so in a more-inclusive manor?

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

roodypoo — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:45:51 GMT

That doesn't even make sense. But nice try, I guess. Stay triggered.

Just out of curiosity, are you a member of one of those groups your purport to be upset on behalf of? Or are you just another white SJW? Have you ever though of letting those groups speak for themselves, or asking them if they care about decades-old memes and the racial makeup of something so cringey and silly?

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

idutswdwllt — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 16:42:48 GMT

@dftf
I have given your messages some thought. Here's what I come up with:

I made a mistake in assuming Mozilla isn't working sensitive to discrimination. I first made a factual mistake: There is ethnical diversity in the "Add your friends"-campaign. And second, I haven't given enough notice to the context provided by Mozilla's work ethics and fight against discrimination. For example, I found Mozilla as a supporter of this group, which is adressing structural discrimination in a digital context: https://superrr.net/en
Thank you for your creative ideas about how they could have designed the campaign differently. I haven't come up with a clever way to solve it though.
And if I am honest, I am not interested in the question of how they could have better designed the campaign. I am more interested in asking how add campaign conditions or techniques (drawing on nostalgia, who is adressed) might contribute or repeat structural discrimination. Or on a broader level, I am interested in the question, how we can come up with solutions of the poly-crisis we are living in, while being part of the problem (the systems that created the poly-crisis) in the first place. I do not think there is a definite answer to that problem. I do not think there can be a definite answer to an ongoing and immensely complex and ever-changing problem. But maybe, asking the question is enough to start a process that can lead to answers and mistakes and more answers.
"Are ads really the place for that though?" > Why should we exclude adds from reflecting on how their design or content can contribute to discrimination? "I'm struggling to see what ad they could have made instead featuring wider representation of different communities that would still link to Firefox as a product and not be political?" > I argue that ads or products are NEVER not political. That is impossible. Everything is political. The ads, how we receive them, who receives them. Our world is political, so everything in it is. Even our private relationships are political. Private relationships can be a small scale environment, where e.g. patriarchal dynamics play out if we do not ACTIVELY start to name them, adress them, change them.
In conclusion, I have strayed very far of my initial provocative thread headline and claim. I think, it doesn't make sense to continue a discussion with that headline. I am not interested in limiting the discussion to solving my initial claim of poor representation.
Thanks for the discussion and goodbye.

Re: why are they all white (or orange)?

dftf — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 09:26:36 GMT

> The point I am trying to make is that they should have designed the campaign differently.

Yet I asked you to propose how they could have done so, but you replied "I haven't come up with a clever way to solve it though". The only way I could think of would be to go through viral video-memes from the earliest, to an example of the most-recent (which would mean more PoC in later examples) and do a "Firefox has always been here" campaign. But I'm not-sure that works as well as "remember Firefox", as the entire point of the ad is "hey, we still exist" not "we've been with you the whole time", as that then only appeals to existing users, not people who have forgot Firefox they want back.

> I know that Mozilla is advocating for visibility of diversity. Probably that is part of the reason, why this campaign irritated me in the first place.

The issue here though seems to be: you expect them to promote diversity in every single advert they create, but is that always possible (or necessary)? Does every ad need to do that?

• The all-new electric car ... shame slave-labour is needed to harvest the battery minerals
• Our new kitchen cleaner ... but remember, while you can easily kill bacteria around your home, many people don't even have a home, and have to drink bacteria-infested waters
• Total World War III: The End War, coming soon to theatres. But remember while this is a movie, real wars around the world are occurring, such as in Gaza or Ukraine.
• Our brand new potato-chips. And with each bag, we will donate 10% of the profits to Ireland, in memory of An Gorta Mór (the Potato Famine).
• Easter Eggs, in store now. But remember, we've got "Holiday Eggs" so those who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddist, Sikh, Shinto, Jainist and more can also feel included.
• But remember, when voting in the upcoming election, spare a thought for those around the world who live in dictatorships, or who don't have free-and-fair elections

Surely the point of diversity is people can like different things, and promote different things, not everyone all needs to echo the same message, and like the same things?

> People of the Global South face structural discrimination in the form of having delayed access to new technological developments. [...] we (all of society) need to ACTIVELY involve marginalised voices in our campaigns and discussions.

Sure, but is that really a job for Mozilla, and this particular "remember Firefox still exists" ad-campaign? Last time I checked, Mozilla makes a browser and e-mail client, they're not an international aid agency, human-rights organisation or political advocacy group?