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Mozilla is shutting down their Mastodon instance. (mozilla.social)

submitted 1 month ago by 101@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] Vipsu@lemmy.world 91 points 1 month 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 1 month 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 8 points 1 month 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 1 points 1 month 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.

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[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

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

[-] SteveTech@programming.dev 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 2 points 1 month ago

Think of all the tracking data!

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

🥺

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month 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 9 points 1 month 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.

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[-] tabular@lemmy.world 83 points 1 month ago

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

[-] Virkkunen@fedia.io 51 points 1 month ago

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

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

I don't think Firefox has any AI that they need to run for you. The language thing (if that counts) is local thing.

[-] Virkkunen@fedia.io 15 points 1 month ago

It was a joke about how it seems they're putting most, if not all, efforts into their AI

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Oh, okay. I just know about the translating thing and the sidebar

[-] 1984@lemmy.today 44 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[-] YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub 16 points 1 month ago

They are dropping it to focus on the important shit. Forcing bullshit genai stuff into their browser and working on adtech.

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 18 points 1 month ago

Forcing bullshit genai stuff into their browser

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.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Got to love ignorant hot tapes based on article headings.

[-] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago

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

[-] almar_quigley@lemmy.world 68 points 1 month 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 1 month 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.

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[+] helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

[deleted]

[-] june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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).

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

The same now with mozilla.social. nobody is using it

[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Was it even a goal? Mastodon can be used for internal communication, e.g. https://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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[-] HeerlijkeDrop@thebrainbin.org 4 points 1 month ago

Always has been

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 points 1 month ago

It is again beginning to feel rather dysfunctional..

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[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago

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

[-] superkret@feddit.org 27 points 1 month ago

They're still on Xitter, though.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 52 points 1 month ago

I mean, maintaining an instance is a larger job than having a twitter account. I don't think they're all that comparable.

[-] mke@programming.dev 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 4 points 1 month ago

Is that a question!

[-] mke@programming.dev 7 points 1 month 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.

[-] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] meliante@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

You either die the hero

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Oh no! Anyway…

[-] testtchncs@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

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

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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024

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