Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/17/mozilla-exits-the-fediverse-and-will-shutter-its-mastodon-server-in-december/

by rglullis • 2 years ago

159 112 2 years ago

rglullis4• 2 years ago

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_• 2 years ago

[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• 2 years ago

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

rglullis4• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

jeromegv3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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?

rglullis4• 2 years ago

This is pointless FUD. Facebook did not extinguished XMPP by adopting from Messenger, did it?

Groxx• 2 years ago

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.

bachmeier2• 2 years ago

They've got Mozilla and Firefox accounts on Threads, and they've chosen not to federate them. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explain how that's consistent with Mozilla's mission.

maelito8• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

poopsmithe• 2 years ago

Nostr is not trying to be Twitter; Nostr the protocol is more generalized than that. It just so happens that a lot of people want a Twitter alternative right now, so that's a popular Nostr webapp to make.

There is also Nostr chess, Nostr podcasting, Nostr marketplaces, Nostr data vending machines, Nostr blogs, and more. See https://nostrapps.com/ for a sample of what people are making.

tedivm• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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).

maelito8• 2 years ago

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 %.

fencepost2• 2 years ago

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

closewith3• 2 years ago

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.

maelito8• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

throw7• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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

simonask2• 2 years ago

Why would you go through the trouble, when nobody else is doing that, because the success of the system is highly dependent on network effects?

These things have first-mover disadvantage, and last-mover advantage.

ranger_danger• 2 years ago

You can't expect most people to run their own instance, there needs to be a more user-friendly way to migrate accounts.

lolinder2• 2 years ago

My understanding has been that the design of Mastodon is such that this is not universalizable—if everyone ran their own instance every instance would end up with too much traffic and drown. Is this understanding wrong?

sbarre4• 2 years ago

This kind of attitude is the reason Mastodon will never be attractive to a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in it.

maelito8• 2 years ago

I'm sorry but I'm 100 % involved in a big open source project (rebuilding google maps).

Why would I spend time hosting an instance of mastodon ? I'm happy to pay for it.

Bluesky says it's 10 cents per user per year. Happy to pay for this.

pkulak• 2 years ago

Yes, unlike every other social network. Or email. Or SMS. Or any other chat. Etc.

LeoPanthera• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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?

dpkirchner2• 2 years ago

I think an alternative to Electron that makes it easier to write efficient desktop applications using web technologies would be welcome. Basically, figure out why so many Electron apps end up slow and laggy and make first-party code that does those tasks better (and in Rust, for nerd cred.)

Edit to add: although I guess this would be related to Firefox. Oh well!

lolinder2• 2 years ago

Dev tools have fallen way behind Chrome's. I'm the only one on my team who never switches to Chrome for debugging work, and when web developers switch en masse to Chrome for testing their code that hurts the diversity of the ecosystem.

The sad thing is that dev tools used to be Firefox's standout feature, but it seems that Google got that memo and Mozilla forgot it.

wmf3• 2 years ago

Developing Firefox costs $200M per year. You want to replace that with a community of volunteers?

drpossum• 2 years ago

Developing Firefox costs $200M per year.

Citation please.

closewith3• 2 years ago

I would like you to try to support this with evidence from their annual reports.

Timshel• 2 years ago

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

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

$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)

zihotki3• 2 years ago

Or does it? https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

Only a fraction of Mozilla luxurious spending goes for Firefox development.

elric3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

What offends people about Mozilla the organization doing anything outside of providing a state-of-the-art browser as a public good?

this_user• 2 years ago

The fact that their projects are always DOA while their main product continues to lose market shares. If you were the CEO of Apple and you keep launching random products in fields were you have no expertise that are always abandoned after 2-3 years while the iPhone market share has dropped to single digits, you won't be the CEO for much longer.

shmerl• 2 years ago

You can contribute to Servo?

Sarkie• 2 years ago

Social without social

FirstLvR• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

chris_wot• 2 years ago

Every new initiative at Mozilla eventually gets shutdown. Seriously, they are worse than Google.

meiraleal• 2 years ago

It is funny how we (firefox users) take Mozilla's fails so personal. That something that became very common now tho. Mozilla is incapable of creating anything relevant in its current format, unfortunately. Soon, they won't have even a userbase to try these failed experiments.

SV_BubbleTime• 2 years ago

But I thought fediverse, threads, bluesky, my favorite political Oni, etc were all going to kill Twitter dead in weeks.

Turns out Network Effects are a pain pain in the ass if you don’t have them, but also none of those ever had a chance to kill twitter.

krick• 2 years ago

It's seems clumsy. I wouldn't really cheer for them opening this Mastodon server or whatever, because, really, all that Mozilla is expected to do is to advance Firefox. But since they did, what's the point of shutting it down? It upsets some people, because "once again Mozilla turns its back at free and wonderful stuff", and I'd imagine running a Mastodon server must be virtually free, isn't it?

butz• 2 years ago

Mozilla should focus on building a web browser, and stop dipping into side projects. And by saying "building web browser" I do not mean "adding ads and AI into Firefox". We need an embeddable and reusable browser engine, which could be easily wrapped in UI and features, depending on what user actually requires for their task - "customizability" is a long forgotten word nowadays.

Mozilla exits the Fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December

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