OkCupid just ratcheted up its clicktivism game.
OkCupid Takes Public Stand Against New Mozilla CEO
The popular dating site supports same-sex marriage with a major statement on its front door.
The online dating site is speaking out against Brendan Eich, the new CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, which offers the free Firefox Web browser. Eich has come under fire for publicly supporting a controversial California state constitutional amendment that sought to ban same-sex marriage.
Instead of seeing a login page, those who visit the front page of OkCupid’s website using the Firefox browser are instead redirected to an interstitial message urging people to shift from Firefox to another browser to access the OkCupid site.
“Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples,” OkCupid said on its site. “We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.”
In 2008, Eich donated $1,000 to support the campaign for Proposition 8, which passed the same year.
The intro message is perhaps the biggest public push-back from a private company against Mozilla’s Eich since the news of the CEO’s support for Proposition 8 broke last week. And it’s a significant move with potential business implications; Firefox currently holds nearly 20 percent of desktop browser market share, according to analytics website NetMarketShare. That’s a large chunk of visitors to potentially turn away from your site.
“Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company,” the company said on its site. “OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.”
Other detractors of Eich’s include current Mozilla employees, many of whom have spoken out publicly against their new CEO’s past political actions.
Update 4:20 pm PT: A Mozilla spokesperson issued a response to OkCupid’s move on Monday, saying the following:
“Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally. OkCupid never reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm facts.”
On March 28, Eich took to his personal blog to “express [his] sorrow at having caused pain,” though did not appear to backtrack on his 2008 campaign donation.
While users are still able to access the dating site via a small link on the bottom of the page, OkCupid urges visitors to download different browsers to visit the site, posting links to Google’s Chrome software, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or the Opera browser.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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