354
Mozilla is shutting down their Mastodon instance. (mozilla.social)
submitted 2 years ago by 101@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
60 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] Vipsu@lemmy.world 92 points 2 years 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 39 points 2 years 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 2 years 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago

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

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

Think of all the tracking data!

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

🥺

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years 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 2 years 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.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] tabular@lemmy.world 84 points 2 years ago

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

[-] Virkkunen@fedia.io 53 points 2 years ago

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

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago

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

[-] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 45 points 2 years ago

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

[-] almar_quigley@lemmy.world 71 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years 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.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 7 points 2 years ago
[-] june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago

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

[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] HeerlijkeDrop@thebrainbin.org 4 points 2 years ago

Always has been

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 points 2 years ago

It is again beginning to feel rather dysfunctional..

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] 1984@lemmy.today 44 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 18 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago

Got to love ignorant hot tapes based on article headings.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 32 points 2 years ago

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

[-] superkret@feddit.org 27 points 2 years ago

They're still on Xitter, though.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 54 points 2 years 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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago

Is that a question!

[-] mke@programming.dev 7 points 2 years 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 2 years 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.

[-] VanHalbgott@lemmus.org 5 points 2 years ago

Rats…that company’s gonna miss out on all the fun.

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Oh no! Anyway…

[-] testtchncs@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

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

[-] ChatGPT@lemmings.world 1 points 2 years 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.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
354 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

87909 readers
4381 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws