[HN Gopher] Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mas...
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Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in
December
Author : rglullis
Score : 118 points
Date : 2024-09-17 20:09 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| rglullis wrote:
| The writing was on the wall anyway. With the news of the
| political struggles between Steve Teixeira (who was pushing for
| deeper integration with open social web) and Laura Chambers (who
| seems more interested in keeping Google happy to receive the fat
| checks) it was clear that the whole "Let's open an instance and
| call an experiment with new social media" was just a way to
| pretend they were doing anything in the space while not hurting
| any of Big Tech's feelings.
|
| Back in May I wrote a series of blog posts about mozilla.social,
| ActivityPub and what I thought could be done instead.
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40428098)
| stefan_ wrote:
| > [Steve Teixeira] began a new effort to explore Moz Social, an
| ethical social media product.
|
| I don't understand.. was this "Moz Social"? What is "Moz
| Social"? Google believes its the forums of some SEO bullshit
| company. Did the "Open Social Web" have 300 users?
|
| God knows they did that guy dirty, but the executives at
| Mozilla really are a hopeless bunch.
| rvz wrote:
| Mozilla gave plenty of time for this instance to do something
| spectacular but perhaps, this experiment never made sense in the
| first place.
|
| > Mozilla.social was a small instance, having only 270 active
| users as of the time of Tuesday's announcement.
|
| There is just no financial benefit for Mozilla in spinning up a
| Mastodon instance only to be used by what <300 active users?
|
| > By comparison, the most popular Mastodon instance,
| Mastodon.social, has over 247,500 monthly active users.
|
| That's Threads remember? They are now part of the 'fediverse' and
| interoperate with Mastodon with over ~180M+ monthly active users
| which is >150x bigger than the monthly active users of the entire
| fediverse!
|
| We already have the results after witnessing a live experiment
| [0] when Brazil banned Twitter / X and with lots of alternatives
| to sign up to; the majority of Brazilians signed up to either
| Bluesky or Threads.
|
| Maybe Mozilla looked at an _actual_ migration from X to BlueSky
| or Threads and realized that there was really no point in running
| a Mastodon instance when Threads was the biggest one.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408985
| rglullis wrote:
| Threads is not fully open. If they looked at Threads and
| thought "that's a lot of people", then it would be *one more*
| reason to have their own instance.
|
| But anyway, I do agree that having their own instance is kind
| of pointless. We need to get rid of "servers" and get back to
| an Open Social _Web_. I wrote in May what I thought would be a
| smarter approach for them (https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-
| for-social-media-less-fedi...). Instead of yet-another mastodon
| server, they would be better off if they started building
| something like https://browser.pub inside of Firefox.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > There is just no financial benefit for Mozilla in spinning up
| a Mastodon instance only to be used by what <300 active users?
|
| Was the instance every actually open to the public? Seems to
| have been invite-only for the entire duration.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Yeah that's the biggest issue. I remember when it launched
| and it was invite only. If they indeed opened the
| registration at some point nobody knew about it. So they
| really failed at promoting whatever they were trying to do.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Only a subset of Threads users are currently exposed to the
| Fediverse, and I believe only partially (not sure if replies
| have been enabled yet, and if they are, if they're visible as
| regular replies, or under a separate heading?).
|
| I'd also note that social media use differs hugely per country.
| See, for example, WhatsApp vs iMessage use in the US and
| outside, or how Brazil used to be big on Orkut. I wouldn't draw
| too many conclusions from Brazilian usage patterns vs the rest
| of the world.
| winwang wrote:
| I think the vast majority of users just want a good experience.
| UI fluidity, timeliness of notifications, DMs, image/video
| quality, etc. Decentralization is near the last of their
| concerns.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| As a side note, just remember that Threads is currently in the
| Embrace (an open protocol) part of the Embrace, Extend,
| Extinguish sequence. Whether in 2 years or 10, the extend part
| will eventually come, followed soon after by Extinguish.
| criddell wrote:
| And in 2 or 10 years, a new federated system will probably
| launch, learning from the mistakes of systems of the past.
| Maybe that one will be the one that takes root?
| rglullis wrote:
| This is pointless FUD. Facebook did not extinguished XMPP by
| adopting from Messenger, did it?
| timeon wrote:
| They also bought Instagram and turned it to Ad broadcaster.
| st3fan wrote:
| Bad example. Probably not intentional, but of course they
| did kill XMPP usage in the end. Messenger (and all the
| other big tech non-XMPP platforms) is where the users are
| now. Nobody recently said "i need to get on XMPP to connect
| to my community, friends & family".
|
| You can probably give an example that you actively use it,
| but you are probably one in a million.
|
| Lets hope Meta is not going to steamroll over the fediverse
| in a similar way.
| redserk wrote:
| They didn't do federation with XMPP. At best you could
| use Pidgin or other XMPP clients. That doesn't count as
| any form of embrace.
|
| XMPP is a needlessly complex protocol with very poor
| organization and planning that, in the process of trying
| to cater to everyone, catered to nobody except a vocal
| aspirational group online.
|
| Simply put, XMPP killed XMPP.
| rglullis wrote:
| No, they did not. The number of XMPP users pre-Facebook
| (and pre-Google talk) is on the same order as it is
| today.
|
| My point is that _even if Facebook were to attempt EEE
| with ActivityPub, the existing userbase would not give
| up_.
| Groxx wrote:
| To perhaps give context here and to others:
|
| 270 users on an instance is 100% fine. There are _tons_ of
| instances with ~1 person. _It 's a federated system_, it's like
| them running their own email domain: it costs little and they
| can interact with everyone, and it provides a measure of
| provable identity beyond just "@mozilla on
| totally.real.mastodon.xyz".
|
| It does come with maintenance and moderation needs though, e.g.
| picking which users and instances you want(/need) to block. And
| some... quirks... that mean joining a mega-instance actually
| does behave better than a small instance. Kinda like email.
|
| So far I haven't seen any reasons given why they're shutting it
| down. Just "it's shutting down". "Only 270 users" is almost
| certainly not related to it though, closed-registration
| official hosts is completely normal. Kinda like email.
| maelito wrote:
| Maybe they realized Mastodon has no real migration from one
| instance to another, ant that it's been a criticized limitation
| since 2019.
|
| Edit : people answering my message probably think as I did that
| Mastodon enables messages migration (your posts), but no. The
| "fediverse" doesn't allow you to migrate your posts with your
| profile migration. It's like keeping your android contacts but
| losing all your photos. Well more precisely, they're on this old
| hard drive, you can't show them to your friends and the hard
| drive can disappear anytime.
|
| 2019 issue with 500 likes, core team doesn't care much.
| https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
| api wrote:
| IMHO this is an absolutely fatal design flaw. It means that if
| it were to become very popular eventually the largest instances
| would take over the network due to network effects. ActivityPub
| has eventual centralization baked in.
|
| Nostr is closer to a real decentralized social network, though
| it has other problems. Chief among these is trying to be
| Twitter, which has always been a model of interaction that
| lends itself to obnoxiousness. This was also a problem with
| Mastodon. If we're trying to do better, we should not be trying
| to duplicate a toxic environment. Still Nostr is
| architecturally superior.
| ptero wrote:
| Can you expand on the Nostr problems? Honest question. I
| mostly see it trying to offer another (architecturally better
| and robust to censorship) mechanism for group communication.
|
| I think (hope, TBH) that Nostr can fill the niche of the
| Usenet of the past where some groups did slide into
| obnoxiousness but others maintained intelligent and
| thoughtful discussions for many years. My 2c.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I always liked the reddit post-scarcity solution to this --
| make it as easy as possible to fork / start a new
| community.
|
| Users will vote with their feet.
|
| What was required to start a new usenet domain? (a bit
| before my time)
| tedivm wrote:
| What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to
| another without problem, and all my followers/followings came
| over without an issue.
| Tomte wrote:
| Only if your old instance still exists and cooperates.
|
| I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after
| banning you (because if they banned you they probably would
| like to punish you further).
| maelito wrote:
| Worse : my old instance had its backup down for months.
|
| Also, no GIF support. I asked the admin if he was wanting
| to get my help, or some funds to help for the servers. Said
| no.
|
| Imagine : to get GIF support by switching instance, I would
| lose my posts.
|
| After I did the migration, we talked, the backup worked
| again.
|
| Couldn't even see his answers nor thank him, since once the
| migration is acted you lose access to your past
| discussions.
|
| Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one
| of the "laws" specific to the instance.
| echelon wrote:
| > I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer
| after banning you (because if they banned you they probably
| would like to punish you further).
|
| This is the fucked up problem with federation and it's why
| we need true peer-to-peer social media.
|
| Instead of corporate ideological kowtowing, now it's a
| thousand little fiefdoms of tiny tyrants deciding if you
| pattern fit to the ascribed dogma.
| maelito wrote:
| You've lost your posts.
|
| Of course keeping your followers is important. But having a
| new empty wall was a real problem for me.
|
| I didn't know it. Nobody told me, from the people to the
| interface that I would lose my 3500 messages. It's like
| having your blog content on another domain in the hands of
| another host, that can shut your old page down when he wants.
|
| It's the perfect walled garden in terms of content.
|
| Also, the instance where I was had its backup feature down
| for months. Finally, the followers migration failed at 80 %.
| walterbell wrote:
| Is this doc page incorrect,
| https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-
| on...
|
| _> On this page you can also download a copy of your
| archive that can be read by any ActivityPub software. This
| archive includes all of your posts and media. So even if
| the instance that you are moving from shuts down, as is the
| case with KNZK, you will still have a copy of all of your
| posts!_
| fencepost wrote:
| It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past
| content - understandable because that past content likely has
| references from other instances and pushing those changes
| across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably
| fraught with potential security problems.
|
| I believe for retaining content it's pretty much retaining it
| for yourself by downloading an archive, though some instances
| may allow uploading that. There's also at least one browser-
| based web app that lets you open and view the content of that
| archive - otherwise it's kind of useless.
|
| Edit: https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z
| maelito wrote:
| > It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your
| past content - understandable because that past content
| likely has references from other instances and pushing
| those changes across would be a heavy operation,
| unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security
| problems.
|
| Yes of course I'm getting the technical and conceptual
| difficulties as a developer, but it's awful UX. It's a real
| deal breaker once you discover it. You cannot use Mastodon
| as your primary content database anymore.
| jeromegv wrote:
| It's a social network. Do you expect Facebook or Twitter
| to be your primary content database?
|
| But I do agree UX could and should be better
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think most people expect their Facebook and Twitter
| posts to be around in 5 years.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's then less like comfortable moving and more like
| fleeing or going on exile. You're happy to be still alive
| but you've lost all you had.
| closewith wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea. This means migration is next to useless.
|
| The people responding to you saying this is expected are
| missing the point.
| maelito wrote:
| > This means migration is next to useless.
|
| Well not completely. Lots of people see microblogging as the
| daily rant, the cat pictures. For them, it's not a big
| problem.
|
| But for people like me that use microbloging as a way to
| publish content, that use the search feature quite often to
| retrieve past thoughts, past links, etc it's a fatal flaw,
| like other users told it.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The biggest problem with making Mastodon better is exactly
| that: anyone who dares suggest the way it's always been has a
| flaw will quickly be shouted down by people telling them that
| they're an idiot who clearly doesn't understand that the
| shortcoming is a feature.
| jeromegv wrote:
| We are on a forum, having a discussion. Not everyone
| disagreeing is someone shouting you down. Nobody called
| each other an idiot here.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Have you expressed disagreement with a duly sworn officer
| of the Mastodon HOA before? Because they _definitely_
| like to yell at and call people with whom they disagree
| idiots.
|
| It is, frankly, a very unwelcoming place.
| nine_k wrote:
| But maybe _for them_ it 's a feature. It keeps the
| microblog content in a particular shape, like daily chat
| but not too-serious, long-term-valuable content.
|
| Clearly there's a market for both. And maybe they could
| even be... confederated? That is, it might be possible to
| combine several sources in your stream, and accept
| identities across servers for easy commenting. Heh, this
| all awfully reminds me of the stuff that was already built
| in early 2000s, with RSS/Atom, the original OpenID, and no
| huge corporations interested in taking over these small
| potatoes.
| throw7 wrote:
| The migration issue is why I've never bothered with the
| "fediverse/mastodon".
|
| The other one is choosing a server. That's actually a critical
| first step that most don't really understand about the
| "fediverse". Just looking over the "rules" of mozilla.social is
| insufferable and a non-starter.
| somat wrote:
| Don't be a digital serf, run your own instance.
|
| Personally I would start here, not because it is good but
| because it is simple.
|
| https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk
| pkulak wrote:
| Yes, unlike every other social network. Or email. Or SMS. Or
| any other chat. Etc.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Can we fork Mozilla? The browser can become a community product
| again? Where's Jamie Zawinski when you need him. It's time for a
| rewrite of the about:mozilla screen.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Everyone whines when Mozilla does anything that isn't related
| to Firefox and I don't understand it. I use Firefox daily and I
| run into maybe 1 bug every 6 months which is much fewer than
| when I as running Chrome. What exactly do you want them to pour
| more resources into?
| wmf wrote:
| Developing Firefox costs $200M per year. You want to replace
| that with a community of volunteers?
| drpossum wrote:
| > Developing Firefox costs $200M per year.
|
| Citation please.
| mrighele wrote:
| The Wikipedia page [1] links to an annual report from 2022
| [2] where it is stated (page 6) that the expenses for 2022
| for "Software development" were about 220 Million Dollars
| [X], though I guess that the entry includes software other
| than just Firefox and there is no breakdown.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
|
| [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
|
| [X] Plus 58 Million Dollars for "Branding and marketing"
| and 108 Million Dollars for "General and administrative"
| ... ouch !
| closewith wrote:
| I would like you to try to support this with evidence from
| their annual reports.
| Timshel wrote:
| For those doubting the corp is 750 peoples (2020). And the
| Software dev expenses are listed at around $200 millions:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
| zihotki wrote:
| 750 people is a total number. Number of people involved
| into developing Firefox is way less.
|
| $200 millions are the aggregated expenses of ALL software
| 'development' efforts of Mozilla Corporation like VPN,
| Relay, Pocket, mozilla.social, etc. And there are a lot of
| interesting expenses which are billed as development.
| According to Lunduke (1) who dived into the details a bit,
| there are many very questionnable expenses which are not
| related to Firefox development.
|
| So the questions is still very open, how much does Firefox
| development actually costs? Developing Thunderbird costed
| around $2 millions in 2021 (2).
|
| 1 - https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-
| invest... 2 -
| https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-
| thriving...
| mempko wrote:
| Lunduke is heavily biased right wing nut job with an axe
| to grind. I would not consider him an objective
| journalist.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| $190M of which is the CEO's salary.
|
| (an exaggeration, but it wouldn't surprise me if a big
| portion of that is c suite salaries)
| zihotki wrote:
| Or does it? https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-
| money-invest...
|
| Only a fraction of Mozilla luxurious spending goes for
| Firefox development.
| nine_k wrote:
| OK, let's assume that the Mozilla engineering team is 500
| people. I could not find reliable numbers, but this looks
| like the right ballpark. Let's assume that an engineer, _on
| average_ , costs $250k/year; the cost for employer is much
| higher than just the salary. This is already $125M. There
| are also people other than engineers needed to run an org.
| Build infra also costs something. Let's assume that Firefox
| could keep being developed, as the sole product, for $200M
| / year.
|
| Then let's assume that a Firefox user would be willing to
| pay, _on average_ , $5 / mo, or $60 / year, to support the
| project. More in richer countries, less in less well-off.
| This would mean that about 3.4 million of paying users
| would suffice.
|
| Worldwide, Firefox has 362 million users [1]. Only 1% of
| users would have to pay an equivalent of a hamburger a
| month to sustain Firefox. If 5% paid, it would be a price
| of a cup of plain coffee per month.
|
| Now we need just one teeny tiny thing: somebody capable of
| organizing this.
|
| [1]: https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/firefox-
| statistics...
| elric wrote:
| > we need just one teeny tiny thing: somebody capable of
| organizing this
|
| That and an efficient way of making those payments. Can
| we please get an online payment method that's as simple
| as cash already?
| wmf wrote:
| If recent history is any guide, that would result in many
| people immediately losing everything in scams and hacks.
|
| Anyway, $5/month isn't a micropayment and could easily be
| done through existing app stores.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If only HTTP 402 had been widely supported.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402
| zihotki wrote:
| Why 500? For example, https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88
| fe2400002400628c85/employ... estimates estimates that
| only 40% of the employees are engineering. And they are
| all around the world so US salaries don't apply.
|
| Also the question is still open, how many of those people
| are relevant for Firefox development. There are a lot of
| people working on other projects of Mozilla Co.
|
| Mozilla tries very hard to not to answer those questions.
| They could have made a separate fund for Firefox
| development just like they did for Thunderbird. For
| comparison, Thunderfird team was 24 people in 2022 and
| development costed $2 million.
|
| Better save your efforts into making sense of Mozilla's
| shady politics and economics and invest effort into
| promoting https://ladybird.org/ - a truly independent
| browser developed from scratch by a non-profit.
| nine_k wrote:
| My idea was to show that even if we use rather
| conservative estimates, with some safety margin, running
| Firefox development on users' donations / subscription
| looks very viable.
|
| Also, donating to a non-profit is tax-deductible in the
| US, so some donations can be larger as a tax
| optimization.
| jdlshore wrote:
| What evidence do you have that 1% of users would be
| willing to pay a subscription to Firefox? Given that the
| alternatives are free and probably already installed, and
| given the friction involved with signing up for a new
| subscription, I suspect the actual percentage is much
| less.
| wmf wrote:
| ~$200M Marketing Firefox
|
| ~$200M Developing Firefox
|
| ~$15M Executive salaries
|
| ~$1M Woke stuff
|
| Lunduke is digging in the wrong place.
| elric wrote:
| Stopping development of user-hostile features could reduce
| the cost somewhat.
|
| Snark aside, it's crazy how it's basically become impossible
| to build and maintain a browser unless you're a megacorp or a
| billionaire.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| What offends people about Mozilla the organization doing
| anything outside of providing a state-of-the-art browser as a
| public good?
| shmerl wrote:
| You can contribute to Servo?
| Sarkie wrote:
| Social without social
| FirstLvR wrote:
| Fediverse, sadly, goes against the full experience we requiere
|
| The objective is desc network but also want a single place for
| all our stuff, topics, news, etc
|
| Same reason why Reddit haven't been replaced yet :/
| FMecha wrote:
| This is what traditional forums excel at - for instance, a
| niche-specific forum may also contain off-topic boards for
| topics unrelated to the niche, such as general current affairs
| or media.
|
| wrt to Reddit, I mean, Lemmy does exist, but much like Mastodon
| instances try to be "another Twitter", Lemmy (instances) also
| tries to be "another Reddit". At the end of the day, it's a
| human/userbase problem of "platforms change, hivemind doesn't".
| superkuh wrote:
| Mozilla slowly retreating from open federated protocols. They
| dropped off IRC a few years back, now off fediverse. When can we
| expect them to close the matrix server and start using Slack
| corporation?
| sub7 wrote:
| Here's a fun exercise - capture all the traffic Firefox sends to
| mozilla.com/org and mozgcp.net etc
|
| It's a shocking amount of telemetry, combined with dark patterns
| to reset settings on every update.
|
| Then you go to their website and see that "safe and private" is
| part of the headline sales pitch. Absolutely disgraceful.
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(page generated 2024-09-22 23:00 UTC)