Comments on: Libertarians are just crazy for firefox (and other observations)

By: Jose Troche

Jose Troche — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:19:48 +0000

The numbers intrigue me. Would you ever consider expanding the poll to includecomparing political affiliation to smart phone, operating system, and computers?

By: Zafke

Zafke — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:54:39 +0000

Very interesting and original analysis! As a moderate conservative, I completely agree with what’s being said in this article. I have some other thoughts which might be worth telling:
For me personally, I use IE because : I want to support a taxpaying corporation, which employs many people, but another reason why I don’t download FireFox is because I see it as extra rubble on my desktop, I don’t actually know whether this is true, but I have the feeling that this only adds unnecessary code to one’s desktop.
The author has a pretty complete view of the reasons involved, but maybe this is also something worth considering: In many cases, Mac, FireFox, Youtube kind of guys are liberal, this is something which gets noticed by Conservatives, who tend to go the other way as a reaction to that. What I’m trying to say, very inarticulately, is that maybe, these choices are just reinforced by the breakdown of users over the browsers which is already in effect, rather then there would be a ‘reason’ other than, ‘not wanting to be associated with ‘that liberal/conservative’ image’

By: John

John — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:52:30 +0000

The only problem I see in this data is people don’t know to classify themselves.

If I was asked if I was a:
Conservative, I’d say yes.
Libertarian – Yes
Liberal – No
Socialist – $%#% No

Democrats currently should consider themselves Socialists. Maybe a few democrats were telling the truth.

A multiple choice test of political ideals would have done better exposing their real political philosophy for them.

I use Firefox, hate IE. And I’ll use free software over paid.

Otherwise, great results!

By: Sierra Swearingen

Sierra Swearingen — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:59:33 +0000

Amazing! But it jives with what I would have supposed, just as you did. Liberals like to have (at least the illusion of) control over their lives, and they express that by using freedom of choice when they install a web browser. They resent being compelled to buy products they don’t need, and they express that by installing FireFox for free.

But wait – am I wrong that Republicans don’t have similar attitudes? Maybe there’s some other explanation for the Republican IE bias. Like “if I paid for it I’m going to get my money’s worth,” or thoughts to that effect. Maybe you’re right – that Republicans would rather use the products of a major corporation, regardless of performance.

Interesting.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:40:11 +0000

That’s really interesting, but i can see it. It makes sense…..I use chrome as much as I can…I didn’t understand the conclusions on the browsers like chrome.

By: julien

julien — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:32:08 +0000

great results, devon!

By: Monica

Monica — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:33:16 +0000

Must be why I’m all over Firefox.

By: ben

ben — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:29:16 +0000

This is really interesting. I’ve never thought to view browsers like that.

By: probabilityzero

probabilityzero — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:19:59 +0000

This is fascinating, really, and probably the best use of MTurk I’ve seen.