Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future
(techcrunch.com)
from JRepin@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 03 Nov 2023 22:43
https://lemmy.ml/post/7456748
from JRepin@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 03 Nov 2023 22:43
https://lemmy.ml/post/7456748
The mission-driven tech company behind the Firefox browser, Pocket reader and other apps is now investing its energy into the so-called “fediverse” — a collection of decentralized social networking applications, like Mastodon, that communicate with one another over the ActivityPub protocol.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Consumers are hungry for a new way of social networking, where trust and safety are paramount and power isn’t centralized with a Big Tech CEO in charge… or at least that’s what Mozilla believes.
The mission-driven tech company behind the Firefox browser, Pocket reader and other apps is now investing its energy into the so-called “fediverse” — a collection of decentralized social networking applications, like Mastodon, that communicate with one another over the ActivityPub protocol.
And, as a wholly owned subsidiary of a nonprofit, the company says it’s not motivated by generating earnings for shareholders or returning a VC investment, allowing it to progress with a collaborative approach where it takes in input from a lot of different voices.
“I think that it’s a pretty poor track record by 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,” she says.
However, the company is aiming to tackle some of the obstacles that have prevented users from joining and participating in the fediverse so far, including the technical hurdles around onboarding, finding people to follow and discovering interesting content to discuss.
What Mozilla wants to accomplish, then, is to help reconfigure the Mastodon onboarding process so that when someone — including a publisher or creator — joins its instance (or the fediverse in general) they’re able to build their audience with more ease.
The original article contains 1,792 words, the summary contains 242 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Hey, that’s us!
I thought they were just adding activitypub to some products / making their own accounts but
Now THAT would be cool. If the browser had a built in way to handle some of this stuff, it would be a lot simpler to deal with some of the issues. I’d love to learn more
This is literally the bottleneck of all of fediverse imo.
With ease of use integrated into the fediverse, half of social media could become irrelevant.
My brain went “Firefox has what 7% market share? What’s 50% of that?? Actually, that probably is 4x the ‘Fediverse’ user total right there”
I feel like if Firefox added features for the fediverse, they’d do it in a way that other browsers could implement it too.
With Facebook and Tumblr working on Fediverse stuff, it would be weird if Chrome didn’t add the features too
7 was a stand in for a single digit numbet… didn’t realize it was that low. Yikes
Even if it is that low in relative terms, your point probably still stands.
Three percent of all browsers is a fuckton of users, considering that includes mobile users who are going to be less likely to change their browser then desktop users. There is an estimated 6.92 billion smartphone users. Three percent of that is more users than there are people in the United States.
It does make sense. Most of the android users directly use google search bar and dont even bother to open a browser directly if its one shot query or not using multiple tabs.
I remember the good old days when FF almost hit 30%.
4.87% on North American Desktops, 6.16% worldwide, 10.77% in Europe, 17.43% in Germany. Not even showing up on mobile and tablet, here’s the numbers.
World-wide usage of adblock is much higher, 42.7%, so if Google actually goes through with their plan Chrome is going to lose market share, massively.
It makes a lot of sense to me to just have minimum standards for Fediverse instances, and then anyone who wants to host users can be a default instance for a period of time and just rotate through them Round Robin-style so nobody gets slammed with too many new users at once.
Edge allows you to “follow” YouTube channels outside of the website itself, not sure how deep that integration goes though as I’ve never bothered to use it.
Also this is the idea behind Grayjay, where creators would be able to have a “universal identity” across platforms.
For now it’s mostly a YouTube and some other video streaming sites alternative.
Mom mom I’m on TV
Mom, the normies noticed me.
“Did you reee at them honey?”
“Ugh yes mom”
I really hope they’re successful. The ideals they’re working towards are great, but something I’ve learned at every point in life is that people like things easy. They like to be spoon fed, and the algorithms do exactly that. People need to want something different and that’s where I fear the biggest hurdle will be.
You re correct. Chronological is better than algorithm promoting posts with engagement and only posts say are related on top and creating a bubble.
But if we can toggle for both. If we can choose chronological or curated by just clicking a switch, then it would be much better.
Lemmy Lemmy Lemmy! 👅
Perfect match. Lemmings constantly steer users away from Google and spread the word of Firefox with uBlock Origin.
It’s mostly Mastodon. The text doesn’t even mention Lemmy or Kbin.
I’m glad that Mozilla is doing this. It benefits both sides (Mozilla and the Fediverse), in a transparent way. Hopefully we get some Fediverse companion for Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey.
I have never understood why so many people find the structure of Twitter/Mastodon more appealing than that of Reddit/Lemmy.
I like it when I read other people’s thoughts on a matter, then react to them by adding relevant thoughts of my own and hoping people will react to mine too. Like on a traditional discussion forum (or for even older people, newsgroup or mailing list). That is what Reddit/Lemmy does reasonably well, although not quite as well as those traditional discussion forums.
On Twitter/Mastodon I have to have original thoughts of my own to be able to post anything at all, and even if I do have some, no one will read them if they aren’t already following me.
Yeah, Mastodon is much larger than Lemmy yet it feels like shouting into the void. I like it as a means to keep up on news by following journalists who’ve fled twitter but I’ve yet to get any real interaction on my posts. Meanwhile on Lemmy I’m never running out of things to read and people to discuss posts with.
Depends on the instance id say. I run one and its not a void but the big ones are for sure.
I agree with your preference for forum/community style.
But I think the purpose of microblogging is to follow a personality, rather than a topic or community. And users that share there do so to cultivate a following, which would be harder on Reddit/Lemmy (only ones that I can think of who do that successfully are onlyfans users).
Yes, I guess so. I have no interest in becoming any kind of celebrity. That sounds stressful and can make you a target for harassment.
I prefer it when I can post my thoughts anonymously without anyone knowing or caring who I am. If a thought is good, it doesn’t matter whose thought it is.
Agreed. Micro-blogging, is more top down info downstreaming. While the forum/community focuses on information exchange on a more even keel level.
Microblogs like Mastodon are excellent for following specific people, and for getting an overview of the current zeitgeist. Forums like Lemmy are excellent for following specific topics. Both are useful in different ways.
Why would I follow a specific person for non-video content? That strikes me as way too parasocial to me. All that person is going to tell me is their personal opinion, and I barely trust the news articles that appear here, much less some famous person’s random opinion.
it’s very useful to follow subject matter experts, when you’ve identified them
Yeah, that’s part of why I don’t find a lot of value in twitter-style platforms.
I don’t get it, either. I use a plugin to expand horizontal space on Lemmy, because I already hate how much real estate it wastes. Mastodon is much much worse, with this aesthetic that forces you to use a mobile “long-ways” view of the content.
I’m convinced that Mastodon is more popular only because Elon has pissed off Twitter users more than Spez has pissed off Reddit users.
Do you like small talk? I feel like that’s been a delimiting factors for me and my friends.
They have to start somewhere. Mastodon is the highest profile app in the fediverse and it’s best to capitalize on Twitter imploding while the dregs are hot.
Don’t worry, Reddit will do something stupid to get in the headlines eventually.
Mastodon does exist though, i have a feeling other parts of the fediverse need more help
I’m just hoping that Peertube is in a spot to capitalize when Youtube crashes and burns in a couple of years
It’s not. I wish it was, but it’s not.
I meant more as “will be” when the time comes
I’m not hopeful. Video hosting is a different ball game, and free video platforms only exist due to the deep pockets and “users now, profit later” strategy of big tech.
The only way I see it working is where creators pay for the hosting costs of their own content and monetize on their own terms.
So are they going to release non-AGPL (probably MPL) implementations of fediverse software? That would be real progress.
What non-AGPL software were you hoping to be compatible with fediverse software? Or am I misunderstanding why you want non-AGPL software?
Why would that be progress?
This actually looks very promising, I’m excited!
wtf is this fediverse they talking about
The deep state universe
How deep we talkin’ here?
It’s blackholes all the way down.
Totally, ask MAGA what Q told them. Blackhole woke communism, all the way.
We gotta drain the black holes!!!
Q, the guy from Star Trek?
It’s a mystery. Only the higher level programmers share these secrets among themselves.
elk is nice for twitter users who are scared of the fediverse. if they can take the principles of elk but make it much smoother and easier to use, that’s a win for everyone. i know i’m going to hop on mozilla.social when i can.