It is naive to trust any US-based service. The devil's advocate in me just wanted to hear why you believe what you do, so thanks for that.

My angle was mostly to point out that Ladybird hasn't done anything obviously morally bankrupt like the politicians you pointed out - the only detracting factors to me about the project are 1) that the nonprofit is based in the US 2) that it's not written in Rust.

Of course, it's worth being suspicious of a web browser of all things. I just see Cloudflare's contribution in a neutral light given Cloudflare's general strategy towards PR and the fact that the Ladybird browser is likely going to be a very niche product - and they aren't even focusing on Windows support for the foreseeable future.

Do I trust Ladybird more than Mozilla? Only very slightly, but the bar is pretty low - and it's not blind trust.