The internet deserves a better answer to social(blog.mozilla.org)
blog.mozilla.org
The internet deserves a better answer to social
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-social-mastodon-private-beta-announcement/
13 comments
My intuition is that browser plugins based on some federated system (e.g. Mastodon, Matrix) could enable this. Why complicate browsers even more? (No expertise here, so I'm probably missing the big picture)
> Why complicate browsers even more?
To simplify it for normal people. My family all use browser extensions to block ads/tracking and shore up security because I set it all up for them. My non-technical friends don't. They understand video game mods because adding mods is fun. But the idea of modding other kinds of programs makes no sense to them, because those are for getting work done, not for tinkering with.
So in order for it take off, it needs to be presented as just a native feature of the web. In people's heads, the logic should go like: "My email software lets me forward emails. My calendar software lets me invite people to calendar events. My contact software lets me merge duplicate contacts. My web browser lets me annotate web pages with other people. What a strange world it would be if things didn't work like that?"
To simplify it for normal people. My family all use browser extensions to block ads/tracking and shore up security because I set it all up for them. My non-technical friends don't. They understand video game mods because adding mods is fun. But the idea of modding other kinds of programs makes no sense to them, because those are for getting work done, not for tinkering with.
So in order for it take off, it needs to be presented as just a native feature of the web. In people's heads, the logic should go like: "My email software lets me forward emails. My calendar software lets me invite people to calendar events. My contact software lets me merge duplicate contacts. My web browser lets me annotate web pages with other people. What a strange world it would be if things didn't work like that?"
Didn't this exist some years ago in the form of either a browser plugin, or built into some Firefox clone? My Google-fu is failing me atm.
Annotea was an W3C experiment for Web Annotations. Had an RDF/XML data model and used XPointer for locating the annotated part of the resource. You could also have self hosted servers for your annotations.
Only really implemented in Amaya, the W3C’s own browser/editor, and like the rest of the browser a little bit clunky.
Only really implemented in Amaya, the W3C’s own browser/editor, and like the rest of the browser a little bit clunky.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Everyone with a vested interest to build it has an advertising opportunity in their mind.
We need just a few people who think like you do to actually build a future regular people want.
We need just a few people who think like you do to actually build a future regular people want.
Mozilla seems to be hellbent on squandering its resources, working on anything and everything except for their browser.
Moreover, the Fakespot acquisition and building a social platform (with an explicit political position) jeopardizes their position as a neutral browser vendor. Because a lot of people and resources in the organization would now be devoted towards content moderation, it would be easy for an extremist political group (which could either be left or right leaning) to force Mozilla to bake in censorship in their browser, by way of litigation or otherwise, as they already have the technology to do it elsewhere.
Moreover, the Fakespot acquisition and building a social platform (with an explicit political position) jeopardizes their position as a neutral browser vendor. Because a lot of people and resources in the organization would now be devoted towards content moderation, it would be easy for an extremist political group (which could either be left or right leaning) to force Mozilla to bake in censorship in their browser, by way of litigation or otherwise, as they already have the technology to do it elsewhere.
It started when they fired pretty much their entire Servo team and then a lot of their MDN staff, and then gave their CEO a pay rise. I think the last useful thing they made was their file sharing web app, which they also dropped.
It was forked at least, still use it all the time
https://send.vis.ee/
https://send.vis.ee/
They do, this isn’t it. And I don’t trust Mozilla to help with it.
I’d rather Mozilla work on making the browser the best client software ever. Make it a good citizen that uses local data in ways only a browser can.
Would be neat to have some productive peer to peer functionality and get a really nice distributed compute and storage system that uses like 5% of resources so users don’t notice. That would be neat and something Mozilla can do because they have client software that respects privacy and user autonomy.
I’d rather Mozilla work on making the browser the best client software ever. Make it a good citizen that uses local data in ways only a browser can.
Would be neat to have some productive peer to peer functionality and get a really nice distributed compute and storage system that uses like 5% of resources so users don’t notice. That would be neat and something Mozilla can do because they have client software that respects privacy and user autonomy.
The headline sounded interesting but this is apparently just another Mastodon instance.
vivaldi got their own mastodon instance so i guess its only fair mozilla jump on it as well.....
Like, I read Ars Technica. I have friends who read Ars Technica. Why can't we leave annotations for each other on Ars Technica without Ars Technica having any control over or knowledge of what we say? Why can't we do that to Facebook and Twitter and reddit and Hacker News and Mastodon and Medium? Sidechannels for everything. End-to-end encryption eventually. Self-hosted, you bet. All the most important features of social, with none of the advertising opportunity.