Mozilla is shutting down their Mastodon instance.
(mozilla.social)
from 101@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Sep 2024 18:23
https://feddit.org/post/2943376
from 101@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Sep 2024 18:23
https://feddit.org/post/2943376
threaded - newest
Sigh, so is Mozilla just like Google now? Can’t trust any services to stick around?
It is again beginning to feel rather dysfunctional…
Always has been
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.
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.
The VPN is really not much more than white labelled mullvad + the browser extension with separate VPN servers per container.
Right, and if it’s not profitable, it should be scrapped, but if it pays for itself, I see no harm in keeping it.
Yes. And add microsoft to that category.
Firefox will kill itself off.
Always has been
The majority of those are nothing burgers. They shut down their dedicated password app when they integrated its features into the browser, they shut down their encrypted file sharing tool when they realized it was being used for very nefarious uses, they shut down Positron and it’s affiliated projects because nobody started using it over Electron… and a lot of the rest are extremely niche (like viewing websites in 3d, cool but not all that useful).
The same now with mozilla.social. nobody is using it
Was it even a goal? Mastodon can be used for internal communication, e.g. social.kernel.org is only for linux developers, and I know a local university where they have a defederated mastodon instance where every student automatically got registered.
If they just needed it for posting news maybe simply having a profile on one of the big instances would be enough. I see they had only 270 users.
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“Its” has been deprecated.
“It’s” follows the rule for contractions with words ending in “s” (is, has) as well as the apostrophe-s rule for possessive forms. As you have demonstrated, the distinction is obvious in context; there is no significant opportunity for confusion.
Keeping the old form does nothing for society other than to inflate the egos of authoritarian English teachers, provide an opportunity for pedantry, confuse spell checkers, and introduce an unneeded exception to the possessive form. Nothing of value is lost by eliminating the old word.
So, “It’s” is a homonym: two words spelled and pronounced the same, but carrying different meanings.
They’re still on Xitter, though.
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.
Is that a question!
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.
I mean, maintaining an instance is a larger job than having a twitter account. I don’t think they’re all that comparable.
I didn’t use it but the lack of an explanation is a frustrating response. Give feedback to the feedback??
They're a small indie company and they need the server power to run the AI in Firefox
I don’t think Firefox has any AI that they need to run for you. The language thing (if that counts) is local thing.
It was a joke about how it seems they're putting most, if not all, efforts into their AI
Oh, okay. I just know about the translating thing and the sidebar
You either die the hero
Oh no! Anyway…
Mozilla is only focusing on AI stuff.
Ah, the hate-chorus when the people making the only browser keeping choice alive does… Literally anything.
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.
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
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.
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”.
Not true at all lol
And locally-run translation that utilises AI, as well as AI accessibility features for blind users isn’t nefarious. I mean, unless you dislike private translations and would rather send that data to Google, or hate blind people, but I’d hope you don’t.
People need to actually look into features before they have a stupid and completely reactionary “it says AI therefore evil” response. People who react that way are morons.
What is not true? Mozilla is lay off people with a move to AI: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/. And invested millions into AI: https://digiworld.news/news/65190/mozilla-invests-30m-to-launch-mozillaai-and-redefine-the-next-era-of-ai. And are hiring a lot of AI engineers specifically: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/careers/listings/
Literally none of that goes against what I’ve said.
Hiring people to work on local AI features and accessibility features does not mean it’s their only focus.
Completely silly take, and not the gotcha you think it is.
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/
..
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?
Good. Stop fucking around, focus on the browser. If they can make it provide value that Google can’t, they are succeeding. Google cant compete in privacy.
They are dropping it to focus on the important shit. Forcing bullshit genai stuff into their browser and working on adtech.
It’s an opt-in feature that just opens whatever AI service you picked, their website in a sidebar. You can even use your own local AI if you want to. Or not use it at all. But the AI isn’t actually in your browser any more than it is in your browser when you open their website in a tab.
If the translation thing counts as AI then that’s actually a really cool and more private use of it compared to querying a server. It can do the translation completely locally. Works pretty well too in my experience, though it does think for a moment when you tell it to translate.
Got to love ignorant hot tapes based on article headings.
Do they at least have an account on someone else’s instance then? If they do, it’s fine for them to not have to spend resources on maintaining their own.
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.
Wow that might actually be amazing. A comment section for every page?
Think of all the tracking data!
🥺
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™️
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: github.com/…/Reddit-Comments-for-YouTube (it says Reddit, but works for Lemmy too)
I didn’t want to rain on your parade, but:
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.
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.
that seems like the way to go for this
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.
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.
Why was it a bad idea? Seems like a wonderful idea. Minus Gab.
Some kind of web of trust and inheriting ignored users based on it and weights - and it will work.
Sounds to me like an extension that by design tracks every Web page you visit.
Not necessarily and only those you comment.
That’s the point, to comment any webpage. It’s clear you visited it if you comment it.
Presumably it loads comments when you visit a page. That would send a request with the URL to whatever service they’re running.
Unless you make a p2p system and search comments by page hash in some way (maybe just over I2P?) making it hard for other nodes to understand from which node it comes and which node downloads those comments.
OK, I agree. Not very good. But in theory it can be better.
Until they change CEOs again. I wonder what it’d be like to not have corporate parasites everywhere
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what else does Mozilla have? matrix ? @ChatGPT@lemmings.world
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:
For more detailed information, you might want to visit the Mozilla website or their GitHub repository.
Rats…that company’s gonna miss out on all the fun.