2y ago

Mozilla Senior Director of Content explained why Mozilla has taken an interest in the fediverse and Mastodon

Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future | TechCrunch

"the company looked at the history of social media over the past decade and didn’t like what it saw.... existing companies that are only model motivated by profit and just insane user growth, and are willing to tolerate and amplify really toxic content because it looks like engagement... "

Technology @beehaw.org

Jure Repinc @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future

techcrunch.com /2023/11/03/why-mozilla-is-betting-on-a-decentralized-social-networking-future/

Technology @lemmy.world

Einar @lemm.ee

2y ago

Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future

techcrunch.com /2023/11/03/why-mozilla-is-betting-on-a-decentralized-social-networking-future/

Technology @lemmy.ml

Jure Repinc @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future

techcrunch.com /2023/11/03/why-mozilla-is-betting-on-a-decentralized-social-networking-future/

108 comments

I like Mozilla, I respect their mission and their good nature. I can’t help but feel the billions they receive from Google make it too easy for them to be, at best, unfocused and, at worst, lazy. They offer a lot of random services like this. I fear this play is just chasing another possible mediocre revenue generator for them. Like pocket, like Mozilla vpn and private relay, etc.
- Maintaining a web browser is an intensely cost and time prohibitive endeavor, especially nowadays. The FOSS community can maintain a lot of things but the sheer scale of Firefox, the need for expertise, the necessary labor, it just can't be done by volunteers and donations, at least not without using Chromium. They have to get a cash infusion from somewhere.
  I don't like it anymore than you do but ultimately the issue isn't Mozilla, it's the state of the technology market. Silicon Valley is no place for a non-profit organization right now, no matter how much we need it.
  What we need is regulations and anti-trust, but even that may not truly save us.
  They need money. That's it. That's the long and short of it.
  
  If you're interested in donating, go to https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/?form=donate
  
  What's stopping web standards from being made simple or unchanging enough for a smaller project to maintain a functional web browser?
  
  This seems like a reasonable and insightful take. Is there a way a non-profit could still survive in silicon valley? For ex, IETF isn't a profit focused organization.
- I hope they hit on something stand-out soon. To establish more sustainability. Seems like everything is in change right now.
- What should they be doing instead? Begging for donations? I do agree in general, tho. Seems they should at least be squirreling away some (or most) of that money into a foundation, because they're obviously going to need it one day.
- Would be great if they did not get money from google. They could set.up a donations program or something and regularly ask for it like Wikipedia. Donation based browser, peoples Browser.
  
  You can donate to Mozilla, and I do. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-GB/
  A lot of people will have to donate a lot to equal the amount they are getting from Google though, and if Google pulls that money I feel that Firefox would end before people donate enough to make up the shortfall.
  
  Asking for a donation would be a damn near fatal blow to retention and they know it. Given how its going with Google's anti-trust case though, they'll need to ask for money at some point.
- I feel like this relationship of: one company pays a competitor to promote an unrelated product that could very reasonably be used to engage in anti-competitive behavior should at the very least be heavily regulated by the SEC, or possibly just outright prohibited. Alphabet is the epitome of the mega-corporation who has the resources to compete viciously in almost any industry, but has the breadth for plausible deniability about who their competition is.
  "What? Mozilla isn't competition...browser? Oh you mean chrome? That little thing? Nah, we just do that on the side. We're an ad company."
  Meanwhile: "What? Meta? You mean like Facebook? We don't compete with them, hah, remember Google+? They compete with TikTok...Oh ads? I guess so, but that's kind of a side thing. We do mobile os/web analytics/email/whatever."
- Yeah revenue generator... They want a full name to get on the wait list, no reason for that except marketing.
We desperately need a company like Mozilla to take the reigns of something like Lemmy. The original developers are far too biased and short sighted to see the bigger picture, it needs to be an independent group that promotes more open source development.
- Where do you get that from? I have no love for tankies, but from what I've seen, they've built a product that's free of their biases, opensourced it and thrown it over the wall with no strings attached.
  If you want to make a rooten-tooten white supremacist nazi instance with Lemmy, you can do exactly that. Nobody has to federate with you, and you don't have to federate with them.
  Strange take.
  
  While I generally agree with you, you can't call that a strange take.
  Their views are concerning, but so far I haven't seen them trying to force their views anywhere yet. And having a fork as a real option helps mitigate a lot of that risk.
  I'm certainly okay with the $50k/year they're trying to make for working on this full time. I'd be fine with triple that.
  If it gets out of hand, we have options. They're aware of that (in fact offered it), and have been acting appropriately afaik.
  
  Strange take.
  Not for folks who have been following the development. It’s one thing if it’s just a couple of devs working on the project and trying their best, it’s an entirely different thing when a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues. It's become a pattern and will almost certainly continue. At this point a significant number of users have been lost because the devs have been largely unable to capitalize on previous waves on growth due to slow development. Because of all this Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute. A fork would probably be a significant improvement as far as brand perception goes.
  
  It seems to me they're saying Lemmy needs corporate backing to grow? Cause if they were so bothered by the opinions of the Lemmy devs they could simply use Kbin instead.
  
  I'm not sure if this is what that person meant, but, usually it's on the original development team to handle outreach and building the identity of the software - in Lemmy's case, they have a bit of a not-great reputation... Even if they had the reach, that reputation hurts.
  Having Mozilla - or any top tier foss-friendly company - kinda take the reins a bit would probably be good.
- The solution for capitalism-out-of-control is not more capitalism. The less big money players in the fediverse the better.
  
  Mozilla is a non profit. The most "capitalist" they get is the Mozilla Corp a company owned by the foundation which is basically just for tax purposes. Having a big player in the fediverse helps.
  
  What we need is a bunch of small groups and companies. It isn't a problem if there isn't a giant centralization of power.
  You don't see Salsa companies ruining tomatoes
- It's open source, anyone can fork the repo any time they want. The original devs won't like it but also there is bugger all they can do about it. It's just that it would be a full time job to take on and no one has the time.
- lemmy and reddit are too niche. mozilla getting into mastodon or friendica is far better
  
  God someone needs to help friendica. Mastodon and lemmy both have pretty decent ux. Friendica looks like it's from 2006.
  
  One of those half-billion user niches, eh.
- Specifically, the model should be the Wikimedia Foundation. That is, a non-profit organization with lots of stakeholders and slow procedures to guarantee accountability, and lots of resources to guarantee it won't go away. This is the pragmatic least-bad solution to the problem of centralization on the internet.
  
  Wikipedia Foundation is also bloated and unfocused outside of their mainstay product. But like Mozilla, they generally do good with the bloat and unfocused resources. Inefficiencies are easy to identify but hard to mitigate.
- Yeah I've considered leaving Lemmy because of who is in charge of development right now. They were not ready for its sudden burst in popularity and are not handling it well.
  
  Could you expand? How aren't they handling it well?
  
  @AdmiralShat @Kushan It's federated right? so you don't need to leave, just move on to a different federated server in the network.. or am I missing something?
  
  Oh snap, as someone who's recently joined, do you have some information you could point me to?
  
  Time for a repo fork?
- What do you mean? I haven't followed the development directly, I've just been a user and so far things seem to be going pretty well. Curious what shortsightedness you are talking about?
- I think Mozilla has poor judgment and bad leadership. I don't mind if they participate but they shouldn't be in charge
They're a bit late to the party, but better late than never...
- not really social media is basically booming right now with the implosion of twitter
- Better Nate than lever.
I hope there instance doesn't get really big. That would be a recipe for disaster especially since they don't seem to have a plan to financial stability
So it's moza?
- Shifting the power from a CEO to an instance admin is a massive improvement.
  One has autocratic control over the entire site, potentially hundreds of millions of users, investors breathing down their neck, server infrastructure, and other systemic pressures; meanwhile, a fediverse instance admin has autocratic control over nothing but their own instance, a few thousand users at most, with the only money and hardware involved being their own.
  The fediverse is incredibly more horizontal and decentralized than any corporate social media, the improvement is massive. And i'm a believer that vertical structures and concentrations of power are at the root of a lot of problems in society, so this is gravy to me.
  But yes, it's worth remembering that it's not completely decentralized, and admins still have absolute power over their instance. My Mastodon instance admin doesn't want us to use the name GIMP to refer to the open source image manipulator; they say "gimp" is a slur aimed at disabled people, which i've never heard before in my life.
- You can pick your own instance and switch later. It thus allows you to choose an admin/moderation team, something that’s impossible with traditional social media.
  
  Not to mention you can self host and be your own admin.
- Forum moderator? Mastodon admin? Same thing really.
- Basic telemetry that users can easily opt out of after install is privacy-invasive to you?
- Difference is that YOU CAN BE THE ADMIN whenever you want while still being able to talk to others. Over.

108 comments