353
Mozilla is shutting down their Mastodon instance. (mozilla.social)
submitted 10 months ago by 101@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Vipsu@lemmy.world 90 points 10 months ago

Lemmy support would be much more fitting for Mozilla. They could add plugin or lemmy integration to their browser that could show discussions from subscribed communities matching the current url.

Effectively acting as a "comment section" but for any page. One would only need lemmy account to comment on youtube videos, news articles, blogs etc.

[-] mke@programming.dev 38 points 10 months ago

I didn't want to rain on your parade, but:

  • Firefox has hundreds of millions of users.
  • Lemmy has less than half a million total users, and YTD MAU peaked at 52k.

Even putting aside technical details, I fail to see how "Lemmy integration in the browser" could be a good product strategy. A plugin/extension can also be developed by independent developers, which seems much more fitting for the size of the target demographic. Maybe I'm missing something.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah, something like 50k users is a drop in the bucket. It's a nice size for a community, but not big enough to warrant a browser feature.

[-] Vipsu@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Well since they were/are hosting Mastodon instance they do seem to have some interest in the fediverse. They do also have official plugins.

Personally I feel something like this could be the next step for social link aggregation and discussion platforms. Being able to share and discuss on about videos and articles without having to register to dozens or more pages while also having some control over the people you interract with through instances, subscribed communities etc.

Source media would also be unable to control what can or cannot be discussed. Many youtube videos and news articles for example may block all comments. It would be up to community on how to moderate discussion.

[-] ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 0 points 10 months ago

plugin/extension

that seems like the way to go for this

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

Wow that might actually be amazing. A comment section for every page?

[-] SteveTech@programming.dev 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I swear Lemmy comments for YouTube had a feature that let you open it for any page, but it seems the GitHub and Firefox page been deleted.

Edit: Looks like I've still got a fork: https://github.com/Steve-Tech/Reddit-Comments-for-YouTube (it says Reddit, but works for Lemmy too)

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Think of all the tracking data!

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

🥺

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Im on your side, just need a way to protect the users.

Putting a frame under every url you browse to needs to be done right™️

[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Gab tried to pull the same thing with their Dissenter plugin. It was such a bad idea that Mozilla and Google banded together to remove the extensions from their stores for ToS violations.

Now imagine what a nightmare it would be to moderate the ability to comment on anything online with actual standards and decency.

[-] tabular@lemmy.world 80 points 10 months ago

I didn't use it but the lack of an explanation is a frustrating response. Give feedback to the feedback??

[-] Virkkunen@fedia.io 54 points 10 months ago

They're a small indie company and they need the server power to run the AI in Firefox

[-] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 59 points 10 months ago

Sigh, so is Mozilla just like Google now? Can't trust any services to stick around?

[-] almar_quigley@lemmy.world 65 points 10 months ago

It’s a mastodon server. I don’t want them spending money on that anyways. They should be focusing on the browser, not social media infrastructure.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

Exactly. They should be dropping anything that isn't revenue positive or isn't furthering the goals of browser. Rust is a great project because it's being used directly in the browser. Mastodon isn't, because it has no relationship to their browser efforts. I'm on the fence about the VPN, but if it's revenue positive, it should probably stick around, and it sort of benefits the browser as well.

[-] progandy@feddit.org 1 points 10 months ago

The VPN is really not much more than white labelled mullvad + the browser extension with separate VPN servers per container.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Right, and if it's not profitable, it should be scrapped, but if it pays for itself, I see no harm in keeping it.

[-] HeerlijkeDrop@thebrainbin.org 11 points 10 months ago

Always has been

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 5 points 10 months ago

It is again beginning to feel rather dysfunctional..

[-] Zier@fedia.io 2 points 10 months ago

Yes. And add microsoft to that category. Firefox will kill itself off.

[-] superkret@feddit.org 35 points 10 months ago

They're still on Xitter, though.

[-] mke@programming.dev 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, I think that's natural. A large segment of their market is still there. Throwing away years of work when the accounts cost relatively little to maintain would be wasteful. I don't see how their presence there is relevant to this discussion.

[-] superkret@feddit.org 7 points 10 months ago

Is that a question!

[-] mke@programming.dev 6 points 10 months ago

Sorta. Only as a discussion starter, if you wanted. I was unsure how to frame my thoughts without being rude, but it seems I ended up being confusing instead. I'll edit my comment to try again, please try to read it in its intended spirit.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago

Until they change CEOs again. I wonder what it'd be like to not have corporate parasites everywhere

[-] meliante@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

You either die the hero

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 10 months ago

Mozilla is only focusing on AI stuff.

[-] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Ah, the hate-chorus when the people making the only browser keeping choice alive does... Literally anything.

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 10 months ago

After Mozilla introduced "Allow web sites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement", I was out for good now. I moved to forks like Floorp, LibreWolf or Waterfox.

[-] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah I read about that and it's in no way a breach of privacy. So you overreacted, probably without even researching what you were reacting to

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 10 months ago

No I didn't overrated. Users where opt-in in ad tracking by default after that Firefox update. Users were not notified about this. And "privacy-preserving ad measurement" is misleading on purpose, I don't understand why you would fall for that too.

This all happened when Mozilla bought an ad company called Anonym. I'm fully done with Firefox now. I moved to a Firefox fork.

[-] IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

But they are forks and they rely on Firefox development. Using them is fine, but with Mozilla funding and keeping up with browser development, they'd be poor

Its a bit like Brave taking Chromium, changing a few lines and saying "we built a browser".

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure why all the down-votes.. But I'm not lying.. Look at: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/. Or https://digiworld.news/news/65190/mozilla-invests-30m-to-launch-mozillaai-and-redefine-the-next-era-of-ai. There are literately millions invested into AI by Mozilla.

And they are mostly hiring AI engineers as well: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/careers/listings/

..

[-] IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

I'm assuming because they don't have those AI engineers. I don't agree with this or AI, but diversification isn't something that can be ignored.

They need to focus on browser and bet on things that could succeed in the future. Winding down those bets that failed (like 3d visual worlds) is sensible.

Of the 60 they are laying off, how many of those work on Firefox?

[-] testtchncs@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

what else does Mozilla have? matrix ? @ChatGPT@lemmings.world

[-] ChatGPT@lemmings.world 1 points 10 months ago

It seems like there is no user named "Mozilla" on the lemmy.world instance. However, Mozilla does have a variety of other projects and services apart from Firefox and Thunderbird, such as:

  1. Mozilla Matrix: Mozilla operates an instance of the Matrix chat protocol. You can join and communicate on their Matrix channels.
  2. Mozilla VPN: A virtual private network service.
  3. Pocket: An application for managing a reading list of articles from the web.
  4. Common Voice: A project to help make voice recognition open and accessible to everyone.
  5. MDN Web Docs: Documentation for web technologies, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

For more detailed information, you might want to visit the Mozilla website or their GitHub repository.

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Oh no! Anyway…

this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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