I wonder how much posts like these do to push people away from Firefox and towards other alternatives like Brave, Orion, etc.
Surely, given the HN audience, virtually nobody in here is seriously discovering that Firefox exists. However, once the HN reader's mind is set to move away from Chrome, the comments here always push various alternatives to Firefox (mostly forks) that might be unknown and interesting to try.
Another way to reason about it is such posts in such communities probably don't pull a lot of "normies" to Firefox... however they probably also push a lot of "nerds" to Firefox alternatives, not to Firefox itself.
I think the root of it is that crowd of nerds aren't particularly interested in going back to Firefox. That they have a new interest in getting off Chrome doesn't change that as they already have a browser they aren't too thrilled with installed and configured. The promise of some new variant that does things right (tm) is the only thing interesting enough to trigger a switch.
Surely, given the HN audience, virtually nobody in here is seriously discovering that Firefox exists. However, once the HN reader's mind is set to move away from Chrome, the comments here always push various alternatives to Firefox (mostly forks) that might be unknown and interesting to try.
Another way to reason about it is such posts in such communities probably don't pull a lot of "normies" to Firefox... however they probably also push a lot of "nerds" to Firefox alternatives, not to Firefox itself.