The Sidebar is a newsletter from Mozilla, the makers of Firefox. We’ll drop into your inbox every week with tech insights, tips and behind-the-scenes stories about the web you won’t find anywhere else.
WHAT WE LOVED ON THE WEB THIS WEEK
A piece that reframed how I think about Reddit at 3 a.m.
When it’s too late to text the group chat about whether or not somebody else felt an earthquake (because it’s 3 a.m. and I have manners), I check r/AskLosAngeles. There’s almost always a post. And if there isn’t, it was probably the pipes, a cat on the roof, or something my tired brain made up.
These local online spaces might be more important than we realize, writes Deepti Doshi, co-director of New_Public, a nonprofit focused on digital public spaces. In a new piece for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, she notes that platforms like subreddits and neighborhood forums are increasingly stepping in where civic infrastructure — libraries, local newspapers, community centers — has faded. And what keeps these spaces functional isn’t advanced tech. It’s the moderators and community stewards who set the tone, maintain trust and hold it all together (often unnoticed — though we see it, and we’re grateful).
— Kristina, editor at Mozilla
HOW-TO…
Learn about AI before it learns too much about you
If you’re feeling behind on how AI is shaping the world around us but don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. Sneha Revanur, founder of Encode Justice and one of the leading youth voices in AI policy, shared the books, films and reporting that helped shape her perspective.
She started organizing around algorithmic bias at 15 and now leads a global coalition advocating for human-centered AI, from local campaigns to policy briefings with lawmakers. Sneha shared how she started learning about AI:
🎥 Coded Bias and The Social Dilemma — two accessible intros to how algorithms shape daily life.
📰 ProPublica and The Markup for investigative reporting on tech harms and accountability.
📚 Deeper dives with Automating Inequality, Algorithms of Oppression and Weapons of Math Destruction.
For more recs and how Sneha turned her interest into action, read our full interview.
THE COMMENT SECTION
You’re not underperforming. The system is.
ICYMI: We caught up with Melanie Ehrenkranz, the creator of Laid Off, a newsletter and Discord community that treats layoffs less like a personal setback and more like what they often are: a structural inevitability.
What started as a space for interviews has grown into something bigger — threads on rejection emails, severance strategies, legal questions and a community of people comparing notes in real time. It’s not about bouncing back faster or rebranding your “funemployment.” It’s about acknowledging that job loss is baked into the way work operates now, and giving people a place to talk through what that actually feels like.
📧 Read our conversation with Melanie here.
ONE COOL PROJECT
Building in public
I work at Mozilla, so I’ve had a front-row seat to Mozilla Connect — a space where people who use Firefox share ideas with the people building it. Not in a vague "feedback will be reviewed" kind of way, but in real conversations that sometimes lead to real changes.
It’s become a low-key case study in building software a little more out in the open. Not perfect, but more transparent than most. And it’s shaped everything from feature priorities to how teams think about accessibility.
If you’re interested in how tech gets made — or how it could be made differently — this is worth the read.