Features Firefox should implement to weaken Facebook's stranglehold of the web

http://blogg.forteller.net/2013/first-steps/

by forteller • 13 years ago

146 104 13 years ago

blogg.forteller.net

darklajid3• 13 years ago

I like both ideas, a lot. I'm a heavy FF user (usually > 100 tabs open, heavily customized, running Aurora) but never used these live updates. I didn't even know that they exist.

A decent (stable, open) xmpp client somewhere in my FF session would be much appreciated, given that GTalk's going away/moving to Hangouts and I'm migrating to my self-hosted XMPP server.

mfincham• 13 years ago

What does an XMPP client built in to FF give you that a normal stand-alone XMPP client wouldn't?

forteller16• 13 years ago

It gives you a huge network/user base who would never install a stand-alone client, but who let Facebook lock them in to their chat system because it's dead simple.

Remember, this is not about making life easier for geeks like us, people who actually know what XMPP is. It's about making it just as seamless to use Open web technologies/social networks for normal people as it is to use closed/private systems like Facebook.

7952• 13 years ago

The big advantage would be in rendering embedded content using the browser engine. If someone drops a link to a youtube video into chat I should be able to play it inline without needing to use third party services like google+ or facebook that make simple consumption an act of sharing. IM should be treated as a first class citizen, and the browser is more user friendly than the OS (for desktop), and more private than the cloud.

dingaling• 13 years ago

There is already an XMPP & IRC chat client built into Thunderbird, which to me seems a more logical place for it ( in the communication app )

https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/instant-messag...

It works decently well.

darklajid3• 13 years ago

I didn't know that, thanks for sharing.

The two issues I have with that:

1) I don't use Thunderbird right now, for anything. Mails are either in FF (webmail) or in other applications. I'm not sure if I want to drop webmail in favor of Thunderbird.

2) The status of Thunderbird is still a mystery to me. I'm still not sure if Mozilla is slowly backing off or if they're just not praising TB anymore.

pjmlp• 13 years ago

I never understand how to have more than 10 open tabs, and even then only when searching for stuff.

maaarghk2• 13 years ago

Just ship diaspora by default. If I had any time to donate to OSS development, I'd be there. And I think lots of other devs who want to make a difference to the world through OSS should consider it.

devx• 13 years ago

It would be nice if they could secure communications end-to-end going through Facebook chat or Google Talk, too, but I'm not sure that's possible anymore, with both of them using pretty proprietary protocols or API's now.

icebraining3• 13 years ago

The site is not loading for me, here's the Coral Cache: http://blogg.forteller.net.nyud.net/2013/first-steps/

forteller16• 13 years ago

Thanks! I also put up a mirror over on WP.com: http://forteller.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/mirror-first-steps...

yukkurishite2• 13 years ago

Not only are there plenty of applications that already do this, you could also develop a firefox plugin for it. Why on Earth would you want it in the browser core?

forteller16• 13 years ago

Well, as I say in the blog post: «I’m sure there are some extensions out there doing all this already. But that’s just not good enough. It needs to be built into the browser to make it easy and visible enough.»

What do I mean not visible enough? For people to use it, they need to know about it. Most people don't even know they can use extensions (or even what a browser is), but they do know that Facebook has a chat function, because it's right there.

Remember, this is not about making life easier for geeks like us. It's about making it just as seamless to use Open web technologies/social networks for normal people as it is to use closed/private systems like Facebook.

yukkurishite2• 13 years ago

But what added value would there be in implementing it in firefox core? What do you mean by "easy and visible enough"?

jessaustin• 13 years ago

Most people don't even know they can use extensions (or even what a browser is), but they do know that Facebook has a chat function, because it's right there.

This seems to suggest a web app or suite of web apps that "competes" with Fb, in some sense. You don't have to install (or even know the URL of) a web app! Mozilla may get there eventually, but they're not going to travel the obvious, NSA-(or plug in your favorite bad actor-)vulnerable way. I think their current work with identity on Persona could grow into that, but they're going to keep it distributed, which I appreciate.

EDIT: Now that I've RTFA, I find that you also are thinking along these lines. However, I think you've glossed over who is actually running the server. In order for Persona to function, in order for all my data to be synced across all my devices, in order for any of my friends to see any of my comments, someone has to pay an electric bill every month. If there is a vast marketplace of server-operators, they can compete on price, {NSA, advertising}-resistance, etc.

I could see Mozilla carrying the web to that paradise of individual autonomy, but I could also see Fb and Fb-alikes derailing the effort along the way. They embraced-and-extended the web once already; I can imagine them doing it again: "Sure I can chat with my friends and "like" my favorite brands through Firefox, but did you see that Facebook allows me to frobnicate my Facebook snorrzlers as well?"

voyou2• 13 years ago

I think the key thing isn't so much "built-in to Firefox" as "supported and promoted by Mozilla." Some kind of federated chat web app would be cool and, if you could use WebRTC to make the main functions of it peer-to-peer, might not require a huge amount of server infrastructure. If Mozilla could afford to offer that infrastructure to Firefox users for free, it would help with adoption.

abus2• 13 years ago

It could be a default addon (as I think a lot of new features should be), then users that are concerned about bloat can remove it.

forteller16• 13 years ago

Sorry about my server going down! You can read a mirror over on WordPress.com: http://forteller.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/mirror-first-steps...

hynahmwxsbyb• 13 years ago

What stranglehold? Does anyone really use Facebook anymore?

blisterpeanuts• 13 years ago

It's not that easy to avoid Facebook. Many sites are switching to FB social plugin for talkbacks. I've stopped posting comments and questions on many news sites after they started requiring a Facebook identity. Or else I open an incognito window, use my alternative Facebook identity created just for talkbacks, but for some reason my comments don't appear in the stream.

I wish there were a better alternative (could this be an opportunity?).

olliesaunders• 13 years ago

You obviously don’t socialize with non-programmers very much

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

There was a trending headline last week (didn't bother to read it) FB reported teen traffic is down.

Maybe it's just me but when I go out various places in Austin I don't hear people talking about Facebook anymore. And I see fewer "Like us on Facebook" signs on trucks and business storefronts.

apricot13• 13 years ago

didn't flock try to do this and fail? they did go a bit over the top with the social integrations though.

I personally prefer having my chat and browser separate although I do agree with the need for RSS to be simplified/made more understandable for the level of the average facebook user.

forteller16• 13 years ago

Yes, you're right. They tried to integrate social networks in the browser. But as you say: They went over the top. I'm just suggesting making feeds easier/better and integrating a chat function not dependent on Facebook or any other of the big, closed players.

The other important reason why Flock failed was that they where new. Firefox already has a huge user base who would just get these new functions trough a normal update.

It's about visibility: People can't use what they don't know exists. Most people didn't know Flock existed.

antocv2• 13 years ago

Since you mentioned the horror that is XMPP, I am glad to know that this idea and any project will fail and end up on the trashcan of internet history just like all other "federation"/XMPP technologies, such as... oh wait we dont actually have or use XMPP for anything it was meant to be.

Thats right, its only facebook and google internally that take advantage of XMPP while keeping the rest out. Thats what federation does and this idea is no better than jabber which we thought was a good idea 11 years ago.

This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well.

You know what is a good solution to the "facebook is taking over the web" Remove their like-buttons from your pages! It is all of the web devleopers of the world who chose to add facebook scripts to their webpage that are the problem. Thats what needs to be solved. Facebook wouldnt be nearly what it is if it wasnt for all those webdevs that thought it was good idea to run fb scripts and snitch out their and the webs user.

This battle can be moved to the browser if need be, just run ghostry and better privacy by default, block all accessess to facebook domains form any other domains, and thats it.

forteller16• 13 years ago

This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well.

Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc.

Remove their like-buttons from your pages!

I agree we should do this. But that won't help people keep in contact with their friends. And so it won't change the thing I'm focusing on here.

antocv2• 13 years ago

If your goal is to have a free and open uncontrolled, uncensored chat-system that is NSA kinda proof then lets do that, Im all for it.

I just dont think XMPP fulfills the uncontrolled and uncensored and surveillence resistent parts. We need to look at web of trust, bitmessage and such instead, those are more fun problems than "to spite facebook".

But sure, any solution will benefit greatly if its bundled with the browser since that appears to be the only program most users actually use on their computing devices. Imagine if Tor and a tor-relay or even tor-exit-node came preconfigured with every Firefox and turned on by default. That would be fun.

sigzero• 13 years ago

Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook.

"Is a" and "has a" are worlds apart.

shmerl7• 13 years ago

Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people.

I'd rephrase it. Browser is turned into a virtual operating system for millions of people already. While it can be useful, I don't really like when that trend is pushed to the extreme and everyone rushes to run everything through the browser even without clear benefits. The point of that? I always prefer standalone chat clients (as well as e-mail clients and etc.). If some chat service can't interoperate with standalone clients, it's garbage.

Facebook can by the way, since they do use XMPP. Their problem is unwillingness to support federation. They are too selfish. So I never use their service (nor do I use their social network anyway).

icebraining3• 13 years ago

Thats right, its only facebook and google internally that take advantage of XMPP while keeping the rest out. Thats what federation does

Counter-example: email.

dspillett2• 13 years ago

Caveat: email as we know it developed in frontier times when things could grow organically and/or by general consensus rather than being driven by commercial needs.

The frontier days for this sort of communication are over for the most part. Anything that shows signs of being significant will get jumped upon by commercial entities who will try to direct it in a manner that helps their larger goals (and if we are more cynical, expressly in a manner inconvenient to their competitor's goals) potentially (in fact most likely) at the expense of the overall scheme (despite publicly doing it to "help the users/community/public".

Anything new now has forces acting to shape it (for better or, often, for worse) that email never had to contend with until it was so widespread no one entity or collection of entities could wreck it for everyone (despite the best efforts of some such entities!).

e12e3• 13 years ago

... and VoIP?

loup-vaillant2• 13 years ago

Less and less of a counter example. If you leave out work mailboxes, most people these days don't send their email any more: they ask Google, Microsoft, or their ISP to do it from them, from their web browser.

Some people are worried about Facebook taking over the internet? First of all, I'm worried about the web taking over the internet. And becoming more and more centralized in the process.

Alas, any truly distributed scheme will face the lack of symmetric bandwidth. Which is why MegaUpload ever existed in the first place: if we could upload as fast as we download, distributed networks such as Bittorent would be too damn efficient. (On average, we're ultimately limited by the smallest of the two. Upload minus download is exactly zero over a closed peer to peer network.)

X4• 13 years ago

I have studied XMPP and the whole protocol stack, compared to everything else I could find out there (in a paper I'm working on). However, the conclusion is that XMPP is not worth the an investment although it looks really fascinating at first and second thought. It's pretty much doable with simpler web technology, webstandards also help to keep out the madness that XMPP calls standards..

The biggest selling points of XMPP are that everbody already has XMPP. The counter argument that weakens this position is that everybody already has email, an IP and a phone number too.

shmerl7• 13 years ago

XMPP/Jabber itself is not a bad idea at all. As well as federation. Companies who sabotage XMPP federation by not adopting it (M$, Yahoo, AOL etc), or backing off from it (Google) or proliferating new incompatible junk (Whatsapp and other monstrosities) are a bad thing.

MichaelGG2• 13 years ago

That's ridiculous. Someone comes up with a spec, and if a company doesn't redo their systems to implement it and connect to others with it, they are sabotaging it?

tehwalrus3• 13 years ago

I'd love it if this sort of thing worked. I see a few problems:

1) All the people are on facebook. Only a % use firefox (as opposed to chrome, and all the others,) so this doesn't actually mirror your existing friend network, let alone solve the problem of making it easier (which is the only way people will actually switch.)

2) Facebook and google chat already have a list of your friends/contacts right there to hand. Firefox would need to gather this data somehow, which would either be intrusive (think LinkedIn "import your gmail contacts") or annoying (I am not going to mess around exporting things manually, and neither will the real humans).

3) Existing network implementations. As per Adam Lerymenko's "Redecentralize" talk[1], all the existing services are based on centralised network architectures. Unless Mozilla build their own central network of contacts etc, we'll be stuck using the existing monolithic sites that don't respect privacy as backends. Which (as per the Talkilla example) isn't the point. If Zero tier one et al are successful one day, then maybe we'll all be own our own separate VPNs with our friends (although that doesn't mirror the global social graph either.)

[1] http://redecentralize.org/interviews/2013/07/30/02-adam-zero...

e12e3• 13 years ago

Regarding 3) Mozilla already runs free sync servers, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to allow syncing of contacts (In fact, extending Mozilla sync api/service to support Thunderbird might be a good idea...?).

Other alternatives are syncing contacts via IMAP or LDAP -- although I'm not entirely sold on either of those...

As for "liberating" your contacts from Facebook/Google/Etc -- your browser might actually have an advantage -- everyone that uses these sites, already trusts their browser with the login information. That's not much of a stretch to implement some wrappers around the various apis to get a "local" (in browser profile) copy of the list(s).

Firefox (or Iceweasel) already manages many of my passwords, I'd have no problem syncing my contacts with Firefox too (although I currently don't see much of a need for it. Might make a good addon either way -- makes using disconnected webmail services even easier if Firefox has my address list...).

tehwalrus3• 13 years ago

re: saving passwords in a browser: oh yeah, people still do that. I haven't for years. I leave a few auth cookies around, true, but not for sensitive sites.

reubenmorais2• 13 years ago

Regarding 1) and 2), that's why the author suggests XMPP. It would mean you can aggregate Google and Facebook chat in the browser, have your existing contacts lists, etc.

Of course, users of Facebook chat can't add arbitrary XMPP contacts to their friends list, but that's a different problem.

acdha2• 13 years ago

I hope they run with the idea of a single dedicated share button (like iOS): you can add the services you use, rather than those that a publisher chose to embed, and with more work it'd be nice for starting to back away from endless third-party tracking because you wouldn't need to execute FB/Twitter/etc. JavaScript on every page in the hopes that someone will use it.

There was some noise about this in August but it doesn't look like more than an initial trial balloon: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/08/06/firefox-makes-it-ea...

voyou2• 13 years ago

Web Intents[1] would have helped with this, but they don't seem to have got much traction (Wikipedia says Google have stopped working on the idea).

1: http://webintents.org/

acdha2• 13 years ago

Agreed - I remember hearing about that but it feels like a relic of the days when Google wasn't trying to shove everyone into Google+

vaadu• 13 years ago

Shoving more bloated code into my browser is hardly a good thing. Firefox needs to stay focused on 4 things: speed, security, standards, stability

Chrome has done this and thrived. I still use Firefox for the extensions and the fact that Google can not be trusted.

Zoomla2• 13 years ago

Chrome also thrives because so many people use Google's search engine and they keep telling you to install Chrome...

OvidNaso• 13 years ago

I do wonder, in the early days of Chrome, how many people downloaded Firefox, did their first search with the default search engine, then downloaded Chrome.

reubenmorais2• 13 years ago

That's a very conflicting message. You don't want "bloated code", but you use Firefox for its extensions. You think browsers should focus on 4 things, but one of the main factors keeping you away from Chrome is not in that list.

HelloMcFly• 13 years ago

I prefer to pick and choose which code to add to the "bloat" rather than having all of it prepackaged for me.

tuxracer• 13 years ago

People are forgetting Firefox's roots. Mozilla's original browser included an XMPP IM client, IRC client, email client, and (oh yeah) browser. It was a slow bloated mess. The whole point of Firefox was to be a lean single-purpose app and let add-ons fill other needs on a case-by-case basis. People like the author of this article are basically asking Firefox to coalesce back into what it was split off from in the first place.

forteller16• 13 years ago

As the author I have to disagree. All I'm asking is that they make the Free/Open Atom and RSS feeds work at least as good as the streams in Facebook does, and that they implement chat.

First one: That only needs to switch the Feed button to a "Like" button that subscribes you to the feed in one click. Then it needs to change the "new tab" page from a speed dial to a stream of those feeds. This stream could be hosted in the cloud (probably it should, to be available anywhere), and so would not add any bloat.

The chat I understand can be seen as bloat. But still, it's just one function, not those hoards of functions that the original Mozilla suite had.

And the point here is that it's really important to make people less dependent on Facebook, to pave the way for other initiatives and efforts to create another chip in the Facebook wall, and then some others another chip, etc. until the wall finally comes crashing down. IMO that's so important that one extra function, adding a little bloat, is well worth it.

emn132• 13 years ago

Do you believe the old mozilla suite had more code than FF does today?

Complexity isn't easy, but it's not that black and white. Just because the first time round it didn't work out so well doesn't mean it won't this time; especially since the circumstances are so very different.

In any case, things like personas are supported, but most of the complexity isn't in the browser; new functionality doesn't need to be tightly coupled to the browser - just exposed.

I actually think the problem isn't so much on the software side, it's organizational: trying to do too many things at once means making sacrifices.

pfraze• 13 years ago

There's a weird parallel to having browsers implement applications and having governments handle business needs. There's only one upstream, and it can destroy the downstream whether it works or not. You gotta be really selective about what you implement there.

It's more important that FF enable downstream to make applications which can then compete with Facebook and break the silos model, which I think is happening with WebRTC.

junto• 13 years ago

I have previously thought about a similar idea, where we have a standard for a social media stream. People can pick lots of different social media hosting companies. You tap in your social media updates and your hosting company hosts that stream.

You tell your friends your social media URL and they add it to their social media client. If your browser had a client, then it would be responsible for merging all of those feeds into one news feed (just like Facebook's). The important thing here is that everything can be decentralized. It is a bit like merged RSS feeds.

Of course a majority of people would hand that responsibility over to a social media hosting company (such as Facebook), but if you really wanted to, you could write your own client, or hook it directly into your website.

Everything would be secure by default.

forteller16• 13 years ago

That sounds exactly like the idea behind federated social networks. I've blogged about that in my post 'Think like the internet – Or how to fight Facebook, and win" http://blogg.forteller.net/2011/think-internet/

gesman• 13 years ago

People have an organic need to procrastinate and Facebook satisfied this urge of the weak.

adam419• 13 years ago

Well said

runn1ng• 13 years ago

So... the future should be to feature bloat browsers.

Opera already tried that. They weren't very succesful.

lucideer• 13 years ago

I think someone's mixing up correlation with causation again . . .

clarry• 13 years ago

They've been feature bloated for a while now, and are still growing all the time. Before Google gave the order to kill IE6 and the world switched from optional to mandatory JS, one could've easily used something like links, w3m, lynx, or a small 3kloc browser hacked in a weekend (been there, done that). Things more or less just worked, and looked the way you wanted things to look.

Now? How many lines of code do you have in Gecko or Webkit, and a reasonable browser built around them? And all the things they depend on? Let's not forget you also need support for one of the most complex programming languages. Browsers really are HUGE.

abolishme• 13 years ago

Am I the only one around here // who thinks Facebook works just fine!?

Also, if you want to compete with Facebook. Find a way to make a social network company grow to 100s of employees without advertisements. That's really all it would take.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

If you want to weaken Facebook, here's an idea. Get a dot-com and put it on a business card with your email address and/or phone number. When you meet people, give them that card. That's what I do. I keep them in my wallet. So much easier (less awkward) than exchanging phone numbers. I'm not even that extroverted and I'm surprised how many cards I give out. I always get a positive reaction to the card and never once had someone look at the card and say anything about Facebook. It's also revealing to see how different people react to the card. If more people did this, I think it would cut Facebook out of more social interactions.

forteller16• 13 years ago

Yes, that's a good thing. But it's only one tiny piece of the puzzle. It's like saying "if you want to tackle climate change don't try to lobby the government for stricter regulations or for a price on carbon, just recycle your trash". This is such a huge problem that we need both tiny, personal initiatives, and systemic change. We can put all our eggs in either one.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

I agree it's a tiny thing, but I think that first exchange has untapped potential. I like what Moo is doing, for example.

tommorris2• 13 years ago

Obligatory plug: http://indiewebcamp.com/ :)

code_duck2• 13 years ago

Facebook's functions seem a lot more reminiscent of web forums - database driven HTTP sites - than XMPP chat systems.

code_duck2• 13 years ago

Facebook's functions - photos with comments, user profile pages, persistent content - are more similar to web forums - database driven HTTP sites - than to an XMPP chat system.

forteller16• 13 years ago

Absolutely. That's why I say we need many more things to take down Facebook. This is just about starting, making it a little bit easier for people to not spend close to 100% of their online lives in the walled garden of Facebook, by giving them an easy option for two of their functions. It's not about replacing Facebook completely, it's just a start.

shmerl7• 13 years ago

I think it's a wrong comparison. Direct competitors to Facebook are decentralized social networks like Diaspora, not browsers.

forteller16• 13 years ago

Did you read the article? It's about weakening, not replacing.

As I say:

«Facebook is taking over the web and we need to save it. The issue is too complex to have one solution. The most obvious solution is federated social networks, but it’s also a very long term solution. We need more, sooner. One of these thousand small solutions should be to take back chat and subscriptions, by making them dead simple to use for everyone straight from the browser.»

shmerl7• 13 years ago

While commonly used, chat is just one feature there. There are many popular and closed chat services like Whatsapp for example which aren't connected to social networks. So I don't see why you focus on this problem in the context of Facebook. The problem is a problem in itself. I.e. "how to break the walls of walled garden instant messaging networks".

wahsd• 13 years ago

He makes a good point about all of those issues. It is already all kind of there in Firefox in one form or another.

Especially about the RSS feed feature, everyone cried a river when Google stupidly got rid of it's reader; here ya go, manage your feeds in the browser. Bam, done! It was right there in front of us all along.

Side note; interestingly enough HN does not have an RSS feed. Just saying.

robdrimmie• 13 years ago

HN does have an RSS feed, there's a link (https://news.ycombinator.com/rss) in the footer. It's not identified in a link as an alternate so auto-discovery may be difficult.

tommorris2• 13 years ago

"manage your feeds in the browser"

Okay, and that syncs my feeds to read offline to my phone and iPad and keeps track of what I have and haven't read across platforms, right? Oh, wait.

Tloewald• 13 years ago

Facebook has a stranglehold on the web?!

machbio• 13 years ago

From the Business point of view, it should embrace facebook - if user experience turns out bad, they will shift to chrome..which firefox would not want for itself

zaachary• 13 years ago

Chris from the Identity team at Mozilla posted this in a separate discussion, but it's a point that shouldn't be missed:

"Mozilla Persona is Free and Open Source all the way down, which is great, but not quite good enough. You need to be able to choose your own provider and switch from one (say Mozilla) to another (say Google or your own server) whenever you want. So Mozilla Persona should just be one of many options for your online account."

The author has a common misunderstanding of what Persona is and what it does. Persona is not an account system and it is not "provided" by Mozilla. It is a federated identity protocol that allows you to use your existing identity (e.g., at Google or Yahoo or Facebook) to authenticate to relying parties. The "account" is held by the Identity Provider (assuming the IdP speaks Persona), and the IdP may also speak other federated identity protocols, e.g., OpenID Connect.

Related confusion is in the below statement:

"Why not have your Persona account also handle your subscription list and logs?"

There is no Persona account, unless the author means the user's account at her Identity Provider.

Features Firefox should implement to weaken Facebook's stranglehold of the web

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