15 ms·

Mozilla to explore healthy social media alternative

396 points by cpeterso 4y ago

version_five 4y ago
I hope they work on a less-toxic gpt-chat alternative next. And a positive replacement for whatever SBF's company did. Anything I'm missing?
wkat4242 4y ago
I wonder if I could join the fediverse with my own mastodon (Or diaspora or whatever) on my own domain, just like a personal email server. Or would that be much more complicated? Never looked into it but if I do I I'd like to be totally self-managed.
- last_responder 4y ago
  Yes you can. That’s one of the main ideas of it
- 0x6c6f6c 4y ago
  Plenty of people do exactly this. I think one side effect is you wouldn't be as discoverable, if you cared about that. No less than just hosting a blog site of your own, but even that has SEO possibilities.
- trickjarrett 4y ago
  Yes, you definitely can, however running your own instance is not an out of the box process currently.
- post-factum 4y ago
  For sure you can, and also you really should if you are able to. If you are going to use the server by yourself only, you may also consider going with something easier on resources like GoToSocial instead of the fully-fledged Mastodon server.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Thanks for the heads-up on GoToSocial! I'll try it.
  - psic4t 4y ago
    Thanks for mentioning GoToSocial! I didn't know this one.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  I just setup a mastodon instance on a vps with my own domain. It was a fun evening project, I just followed mastodon's documentation along with a few supplemental searches. I'd say initial setup is pretty simple, tbd on upkeep ;)
- tpush 4y ago
  I just wish you could have you own domain while not hosting an instance, like just pointing your DNS records at an email server hosted by somebody else.
  - mrd3v0 4y ago
    Unless I'm reading your reply incorrectly, you absolutely could do the same thing. (You are referring to managed hosting solutions, right?) https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps/ https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server... This website has some instructions and pointers that might be helpful.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      The way I read it it's more like wanting to be able to present as user@mycustomdomain.com without having to have your own instance and retaining the ability to move between providers. Sorta like pointing your domain at Google Workplace for a few bucks a month.
- hobo_mark 4y ago
  Absolutely doable and it's a fun exercise. Mastodon is probably overkill for a single-user instance, there are other ActivityPub services that do not need Postgres+Redis+Ruby etc (pleroma, microblog...). ps: as I found out while setting up my own server, diaspora is its own thing, it can't federate with ActivityPub services.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Oh I thought diaspora was part of fediverse. It's listed on https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party so I assumed it could do ActivityPub. Guessed wrong, thanks for correcting me!
goalieca 4y ago
What makes social media unhealthy is a the fact the whole thing is a giant marketing exercise. Every company and every individual has their own brands to maintain. Even sites like Reddit have a brand and image to maintain.. with the right memes (whether political talking points or dank images). Decentralizing has nothing at all to do with these core issues.
- hecanjog 4y ago
  Companies are different from individuals.
- Taywee 4y ago
  I wonder if a large part of what makes social media unhealthy is exposing human nature to mass communication. I hate Facebook and Twitter as much as the next person, but maybe humans haven't evolved to be able to instantly reach an audience of thousands or millions without any personal or social risk. People have been dangerous and inhuman for many years in the past on a grand scale, but now every human can exist on a grand scale, and maybe the results of that alone are often unsavory.
  - JellyBeanThief 4y ago
    One direction we could go in to deepen this conversation is to bring in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction. It potentially explains some of why mass social media communication is so problematic.
  - yaomtc 4y ago
    Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
  - pontilanda 4y ago
    > I wonder if a large part of what makes social media unhealthy is exposing human nature to mass communication. Bingo. I do not believe for a moment that social media company A or B is worsening society. Heck, Facebook links your presumably real identity to your content and people are still disgusting online. No company will win by not rewarding “interesting content”. We tried that, it was called forums, and they lost out to more “rewarding” communities.
neopw 4y ago
pipeline_peak 4y ago
I’d like to see federated platforms do to Social media companies, what streaming has done to the entertainment industry. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter are nothing more than ML driven data collectors at this point. Obviously content is king, the average user wants their Instagram stars or whatever, they aren’t concerned with politics. But I’m optimistic to a major schism in ALL these mediocre platforms. I want to see more corporations hosting their own, Chik Fil A, BestBuy, anything to break the tide.
WatchDog 4y ago
- wwweston 4y ago
  Whatever social media’s problems have been, they absolutely have not included making political opinions unavailable — there is no platform on which every political identity hasn’t been represented.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    > they absolutely have not included making political opinions unavailable This is quite an odd take... especially given one of the largest social media companies was recently bought in part because of overtly unbalanced political censorship on the platform. Are there various political ideas on all social platforms? Sure... I guess if you look hard enough. You won't find everyone equally stifled in reach, however, which is the problem.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-algorithm-right-leaning/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-a...
      - Alupis 4y ago
        I don't know what point you are trying to make by simply posting links. Whatever it is, these links don't support your argument - that we can be certain of.
        wwweston 4y ago
        Imagine complaining about people posting links as a response on the internet. If carefully taking in their contents is an inconvenience for you, I’ll spell it out: the general narrative you’re invoking about twitter was always paired with specific pretense that it was conservative views that were somehow being unfairly squashed in discourse on twitter. To the surprise of no one who actually observed discourse on twitter (or understands certain frequent flaws in conservative psychology) it actually turns out that’s not true; they were plenty well represented and even arguably overamplified. Does this mean progressives were oppressed on twitter? You tell me — if you want to tell the story that even progressive representation is the real problem to be solved on social media, be my guest. But it ain’t gonna stop it from being obvious that the story of twitter’s purchase as a virtuous crusade to bring balance to discourse where conservatives just couldn’t get fair treatment doesn’t hold water — in addition, of course, to the ways the ensuing circus has made it clear that balance not the new owner’s motivation.
thebetatester 4y ago
As if I needed yet another place to have information tied to me out on the public searchable internet.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Have you looked at Aether?
Kukumber 4y ago
The sad fate of mozilla, they are reaching new lows trying to find room by surfing on the buzz
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
vouaobrasil 4y ago
I think the best social media experience is just to participate a little here, and little there, use email, have your own website, have a separate place for photos, a separate place for discussions, use relatively back-water like this, etc. The reason is that without a massive, centralized network, no company can benefit from it in a mass-production advertising/factory sort of way like Facebook. That's exactly why I refuse to use Facebook and I've never had an account. Spread it around, and don't put all your eggs in one basket. In fact, I don't think we even need huge social media companies and we'd do just fine without them.
jancsika 4y ago
Ok, so suppose I've got a spare RPI sitting around. Let's say I want to post text for a few people who follow me, and follow a handful of other accounts on mastodon or whatever. What is the absolute minimum I'd need to connect to "the fediverse?" Is there a CLI thingy I can just run to fetch posts, or to create posts?
- fanso99 4y ago
  You need an always online instance that can be federated if you want to own your identity and social graph. If you don't care about that, then you can just create an account in your instance of choice and then use a wide range of tools to post and retrieve content (including a CLI I believe).
sedivy94 4y ago
One word: MySpace
- culi 4y ago
  JustBecauseYouUsePascalCaseDoesntMakeItASingleWord
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
You know what would be even healthier? Browser competition.
- fanso99 4y ago
  Why does a browser company need to own a social media space? I am an avid Firefox user but don't see any pragmatic point in this "exploration". Maybe they want to own their instance and therefore control their identity? That kind of makes sense—we might see more of that from individual businesses in the future. But this announcement is not about that.
  - culi 4y ago
    > Why does a browser company need to own a social media space? Mozilla isn't a browser company, and did you read the post? All the examples cited where decentralized/federalized alternatives. They specifically DON'T wanna own anything
    - fanso99 4y ago
      They literally say in the first sentence that they will run a public instance on Mozilla.Social. This means they will own that instance. You could argue that no one owns anything exclusively in today's federalized world but that is not true in practical terms. They will own the identities/social graphs/content created locally. "Own" meaning they have total control over that instance and can, for example, enforce Mozilla-friendly policies, remove content, ban users (without the ability to export one's identity and social graph).
      - culi 4y ago
        But Mastodon is specifically built against that. Users can freely migrate their accounts and all posts are still accessible on other instances (up to a point). The whole point of Mastodon is that users and their content have "exit". If Mozilla does some weird shit with their instance, people can just... use a different instance. That's kinda the point. And Mozilla's instance will surely take the Mastodon Server Covenant which, among other things, requires users be notified at least 3 months ahead of time before a server gets shut down
dmitrygr 4y ago
How about exploring how ignoring users causes rapid losses in browser market share? It feels like Mozilla does EVERYTHING except improving Firefox.
- ciupicri 4y ago
  Just this evening I was complaining to a friend that top show 150% CPU usage for Firefox and I don't know the reason because both about:performance and about:processes are useless. They weren't telling me look this horrible site is using up your CPU. My friend's response? Use Chromium.
  - kbrosnan 4y ago
    Try the profiler. https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./guide-getting-started?id=capture-a-profile https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./guide-getting-started?...
    - ciupicri 4y ago
      If I'm not mistaking that's for investigating a single tab, while I have thousands of tabs with various websites.
      - kbrosnan 4y ago
        That can profile the whole browser as a unit. It does try to record only active threads. There are ways to set it to record everything. https://chat.mozilla.org/?#/room/#perfteam:mozilla.org https://chat.mozilla.org/?#/room/#perfteam:mozilla.org is good place to access the people who know more about the profiler than I.
- tpush 4y ago
  Do we need this same type of comment on every single post about Mozilla/Firefox? Does it not get tiring after a while? Because they are definitely tiring to read.
lern_too_spel 4y ago
Here we all are, talking on a heavily moderated forum that is meant to increase civility and reduce noise. If you think Mozilla's idea is bad, why are you here?
- groffee 4y ago
  Because they're supposed to be working on their browser, not dicking around with social media.
  - culi 4y ago
    Seems like they've been doing a lot of work on their browser. Definitely kept up with Chrome and Safari at least: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable What exactly is the issue? I don't think just throwing more money or people at that specific work would increase velocity. At a certain point you get too many cooks in the kitchen
    - modo_mario 4y ago
      I think a lot of people are still disappointed that for example servo didn't make it to it's endgoal and the team behind it mostly got fired whilst the CEO increases her compensation, the board expands and money is given to things like letting artists examine ai impact. They want it to outperform chromium browsers instead of implementing 3 separate ways to save tabs across devices. They want firefox to keep up in marketshare because it can keep as much as you want on your scoreboard... If it isn't used it ends up useless, dead and without a hand in webstandards. I still remember how many users it lost because google could switch video compression standards last second because ff could just be ignored leading to countless peers blaming firefox for being laggy with youtube open. It's worse now.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Presumably, they are planning to get revenue from this instead of having it be a charity.
- lmm 4y ago
klabb3 4y ago
Interesting project, although in all likelihood vast amounts of people crave toxicity, popularity contests and flamewars. Kinda like how school bullying appears everywhere, independent of culture. That doesn’t mean that healthy places cannot exist or thrive, but it means that there will always be demand for the unhealthy. Tech impacts society, but we’re mistaken if we think we can change human nature. I’d expect the outcome of the research to reach a different conclusion than people expect. For instance, I don’t think the typical system of likes and followers will ever be healthy. Beware of early results though, because it always takes a while for a platform to mature enough to see if it withstands the test of millions of users, socially speaking. My WIP theory is: people-oriented public broadcast mediums always deteriorate towards the unhealthy with massive scale. You can have one or the other, but not both. (People oriented means that there is a strong focus on the people, usually with real name and face, or emphasizing the user/display name) Anecdotally, to illustrate the point: - LinkedIn became a cesspool despite having a professional boring focus. My theory: because it’s people-oriented and public. - Group chats have thrived and are very rarely problematic, despite likes and reacts everywhere. My theory: private groups with implicit trust. No need to build your personal brand. - GitHub has not deteriorated (a bit perhaps, but very much usable still), despite having likes, being a public broadcast medium. My take: it’s because it is mostly content oriented.
- fanso99 4y ago
  I think a big part (if not the most critical one) of this deterioration is the addition of algorithmic feeds. As soon as a company starts prioritizing content, it breaks the natural flow of a conversation we have in real life. This leads to group mixing, polarization, emotionally-charged content prevalence, etc. I have never really used Twitter until very recently. It was shocking to me how much the algorithmic content insertion drives the conversation. E.g. I click on a link to read an individual thread: right in the middle of it, with almost no visual indication Twitter is inserting completely unrelated but "high engagement" content. It's brutal. Edit: imagine group chats sorted by engagement... a pile of responses in a disconnected sequence. Someone said something funny that got 10 likes? Push it to the top for the next 2 hours! (I am tempted to build this as an experiment just to see how awful—or effective?—this would be like.)
nequo 4y ago
Critically reflecting on the harms of social media is a commendable effort. But I think this analysis and the implied conclusion is superficial and misguided: In private hands our choice is limited, toxicity is rewarded, rage is called engagement, public trust is corroded, and basic human decency is often an afterthought. On a platform that is not centralized but consists of smaller competing providers, the incentives are the same for each provider: to maximize engagement. And given our current experience, the most effective way to do it is to incite anger and fear. Decentralization does nothing to address the core problem.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  First, that's then not a platform, and second, this doesn't seem to have happened with the known examples like usenet, e-mail, IRC..?
  - nequo 4y ago
    That is true but I think that was not because they were decentralized but because they were not run to raise revenue.
    - mariusor 4y ago
      To my knowledge there isn't any one fediverse server that is being run to raise revenue. If there's any money involved it's usually for running the servers.
- emaro 4y ago
  Why are the incentives for each provider to drive engagement? If I host a small server in the Fediverse, maybe I don't want/need engagement but happy users who appreciate a healthy community and are willing to pay a dollar a month to keep it running. I can compete with other providers, but I don't need to out-compete them.
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  Mozilla comes to this equation with their totally out of touch bullshit approach. Just like they fucked up their browser market share, now they are the missionaries of privacy and the people and the trees and world peace. While 99% of people do not know jackshit about all this. Therefore they DON'T CARE. Imagine how successful will this become.
karaterobot 4y ago
What about federation makes social media healthy? From what I've seen, the problems that keep coming up are not related to the network architecture, they're more about how people cannot relate to each other in a healthy way. If Mozilla has a solution to this, they should get a Nobel Peace Prize. On the other hand, if their idea is "this time it'll work, because it's us doing it" then I'm pretty skeptical.
deleted 4y ago
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TeeMassive 4y ago
Wonder if they'll let a backdoor access to intelligence agencies like the other did.
kajaktum 4y ago
I am pretty sure all form of public social media is toxic. If you give people: 1. a platform to speak their mind (basically can type anything) 2. is public (as opposed to private like Discord servers) then you will get everything bad about social media even without the for-profit incentives.
- fanso99 4y ago
  Yes, with one caveat: without algorithmic feeds users tend to form natural circles just like in real life. This dramatically reduces toxicity. Just let people post whatever they want and follow whoever they want. If a social media company will not attempt to mix and promote random high engagement content, users will far less likely discover it by themselves and engage in toxic behavior.
2devnull 4y ago
I don’t use Firefox much, but when I do the first thing I do is go to settings and uncheck “let Firefox install and run studies.” It’s good they have that option. Even though they are to good guys, I find it creepy they would run studies on people without consent. Hopefully they don’t do creepy stuff like that on the fediverse, but honestly the whole thing with pocket makes me doubt their intentions. They seem to talk the talk, but then do creepy stuff in the background.
vfclists 4y ago
That's Mozilla for you. Elon Musk bought Twitter so a "healthy social media alternative" is needed, one in which you should get "cancelled" if you disagree with the notion that "vociferous minorities" should be able to change the generally accepted meanings of words. OMG that's Steve Texeira!! How did he go from being an evangelist and writing excellent books on the unmatched RAD IDE known as Delphi, to indulging in "Wokespeak" on behalf of Mozilla?
- userbinator 4y ago
  I wonder if Mozilla needs to be given the Elon treatment too. Getting rid of everyone except those responsible for the core browser functionality might be a good start.
deleted 4y ago
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tamrix 4y ago
At some point everyone just has to learn to be better people and focus their attention on positive content online. It took humans thousands of years just to be civilised in a physical society. Hopefully it's faster online.
wcarron 4y ago
I find this disappointing. The world does not need alternative social media. Everything in our society is geared towards "Bigger, Faster, Broader === Better!". But it has completely ignored humanity and quality. The world needs less social media, full stop. Devoting resources to this is is a waste of time. In my opinion (and I recognize the irony of posting this online) fewer people deserve an audience. Fewer people (and companies) should be given a platform. Fewer hours should be drowned in the cesspools that are online communities. Fewer eyeballs on the internet is what we should be aiming for. The internet, and especially social media, is a great disruptor. A disruptor of community. Sure, it creates fluidity and eases the ability to interact. This is not really a positive, as a whole. Neutral at best. Efforts should instead be focused on fostering actual, face-to-face interactions. Online 'communities' are a disgustingly poor facsimile of interactions in the flesh. I mean, seriously, look what we've sacrificed. All for what? Phones that bombard us with notifications that someone said the content we posted was shit? Ads being shoved down our throats to try to monetize the activity of simply existing? Having the ability to leave racist comments on Youtube while you're taking a shit? I'm an atheist, but I have remarked to my dad that I somewhat mourn both the loss of religious centers and offices. They formed critical venues for actually meeting people, humanizing and understanding them, building relationships and friendships, discussing differences with immediate realization of consequence for ones words/actions. The internet is a fucking disgrace compared to that. Mozilla should build a series of cafes or something, in small-to-medium towns and cities. Foster actual, face-to-face, unscalable human connection. An unrealistic expectation, for sure. But goddamn could the world use some of that these days.
boplicity 4y ago
Two things are required for healthy social media: 1. A system of incentives that align with positive behavior. 2. Leadership that corrects both behavior and systemic issues, to encourage healthy behavior. The largest social media companies now largely ignore both of those issues. They systematically encourage negative behavior, while abdicating any real leadership, in terms of ensuring a positive environment for participants.
patientplatypus 4y ago
mdaniel 4y ago
Good, maybe they'll use their deep rust experience to pick up https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon#readme https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon#readme and drive it forward, or make their own if AGPL is incompatible with the Mozilla licensing infrastructure (I don't know)
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  The only thing Mozilla has deep experience in is creating a cult of people that believe they are still trying to do good.
dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
I really wish Mozilla would focus on Firefox.
- monzool 4y ago
  This! Yes. Please
kovac 4y ago
There's no healthy social media. Please focus your resources on Firefox.
- deleted 4y ago
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- omoikane 4y ago
  > There's no healthy social media. I am a bit more optimistic than that. Social media depends on how we use them, but because technology is advancing so fast, a lot of people have yet to settle on a usage pattern that is healthy for them. But I do agree on Mozilla should focus more on Firefox.
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    Technology isn't going to advance at a slower rate in the future, which means that even with your "optimistic" take people wont settle on a more healthy usage pattern. But the whole point is moot anyways. As long as SM is designed to drive engagement by exploiting the most base instincts in us, we will keep seeing unhealthy behaviour.
  - intended 4y ago
    There is no healthy social media. Until number of emotionally unhealthy people is <<<< mature healthy people, with time, SM will always be unhealthy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
gfodor 4y ago
For years people with contrarian political views were rushing to mastodon after getting deplatformed from Twitter (sometimes, as we now know, via reports by the FBI for violating “disinformation” rules.) Mozilla was not promoting decentralized social media then, but should have been. It’s too bad they are only taking this position once it is appealing to those who now want to leave Twitter because it’s no longer permabanning people due to their political views.
greggarious 4y ago
Mozilla needs to get their shit together. I had my internship offer signed by Brendan Eich. At the time I was a closeted first generation PhD student who only did a PhD because it paid about the same as being a pizza delivery driver with slightly better hours and benefits, but I nearly turned it down because I was on the verge of dropping out and travelling the world like I'd dreamed for a long time, and I wish I had, they ratfucked me. By the time I got there, they had cancelled the project I was going to work on. I designed a UX research study all on my own, and my main feedback from my managers (plural -- one who oversaw the project and another who oversaw the day to day in the SF office since they didn't trust the interns to not just smoke trees on the roof all day and run roughshod over the Castro all night, which had happened enough times they had to institute "A Policy") Imagine every day, going into work desperate to stay in California, as your "manager" takes everyone but you out to lunch, and your other "manager" often shows up to meetings an hour plus late with excuses like they "went jogging" as he casually mentions he doesn't even use Firefox outside work. Apparently I pissed off a bunch of senior people by loudly declaring rather than waste money on the doomed venture that was FireOS, they should focus on the memory leaks that were driving people to Chrome. (Which in turn, would give Google leverage to reduce the money given via the search bar placement they paid for, which was pretty much the sole source of income for the company.) What I'd hoped would happen is I'd get hired at Mozilla or somewhere else in the Bay that summer. Instead, it was the beginning of the end, and not just for my dreams of Californication or whatever -- Google moved into the same building around that time and started poaching people with cutesey social media posts about cakes and shit to cover inviting the engineers over. Within one CFAA expiration of that summer, I'd be sitting on K Street with a letter opener on my desk because they were too cheap to have anything but a short conversation about the exits after Charlie Hebdo. (You haven't truly lived until you tell some powerful person's kid who just made a transphobic comment that this isn't a stepping stone to Google or a high school and they need to watch their fucking mouth, then watched their eyes go wide and hands shake as they try to stand between you and your desk because they know in that moment how few fucks you have left to give.) Anyways, sorry to ramble -- I studied English Lit as one of my minors, so sometimes I post too hard when I have an all day migraine like the one I've had today, after I hit "add comment" on this I'm probably gonna go puke in the bathroom. Mozilla is great, on a technical level, but anything in the realm of social informatics should be left to others, the company is dying because of their repeated failures on these issues stemming back to when they killed Persona[1]. Companies like Google and Facebook have abused their access to knowing whose nyms are whom, and not just to target them with bullshit advertising that induces psychic harms and delivers malvertising, but Mozilla is rotting from the inside out and has been for some time. I met some great people that Summer after Snowden, but the good ones have almost all... moved on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona
marricks 4y ago
We really missed the boat on having something like “Craigslist for talking to friends and neighbors” launch decades ago. Just something unsexy that works and can stick around in the same form because the owner is a curmudgeon with out any dreams of grandeur. Perhaps the could never have happened to social media though because it was too hot a space. Everything else seems doomed to get caught up in this race to capture a billion eyeballs and wallets.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think the problem was that listserves soaked that up early on and when people moved it was either go Facebook or even worse places like Nextdoor. There are other services - groups.io is popular around here - but the trick is bootstrapping a community when the ad company is right there with so much free stuff.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >We really missed the boat on having something like “Craigslist for talking to friends and neighbors” launch decades ago. This sounds a lot like Nextdoor. The results haven't been pretty.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  All the bits and pieces have been around for decades. Usenet could easily have functioned as a marketplace, local gossip and information board, with proper segmentation. It's decentralized, there where numerous clients available, there just weren't enough users. It worked reasonably well for my university when I started 25 years ago, but it deteriorated quickly during the yearly 2000s. We also had forums, blogs and RSS. All technologies when combined provide a decentralized social media like experience. I think it was a healthier approach, but more segmented. Modern social media attempts to fit everything into a framework. From a financial perspective, it seems to work, but socially I'm not convinced. One of the thing that have impressed me is how willing people are to express repulsive behaviour, under their real name. You'd think that Facebooks real name policy would make help regulate behaviour, but it truly doesn't.
QuadrupleA 4y ago
I'm hopeful some nonprofit Signal/wikipedia-esque alternatives spring up to eventually replace the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc. The incentives are just too messed up in the ad-driven model. Some of the collective insanity of the last decade or so was no doubt just human nature, but these companies pushed all the levers they could to maximize it. A platform with a little human goodness that finds ways to encourage our best qualities could be a powerful force.
brigandish 4y ago
English culture (and hence, modern social media) is adversarial in nature, what we need is people to become better at arguing, not have less of it.
indymike 4y ago
When the model switched from giving people a way to share ideas, thoughts, photos, videos to corporate news and content distribution, social media lost its way. Just give me a way to quickly get rid of people I don't want to hear from. Stop force feeding me content. I'm here to share.
patrick451 4y ago
I'm old enough to remember when Mozilla installed malware into browsers across the world just so they could show ads. That's as creepy or worse than what facebook has done. I'm not credulous enough to think that a company will violate user trust that way knows the first thing about creating healthy communities.
denysvitali 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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rufusroflpunch 4y ago
I have to say, I think nostr shows a lot of promise. I think there is something special there.
- janandonly 4y ago
  Agree. Furthermore, the fact that basically anyone can run their own relay makes it very decentralized. See also: https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr
dibt 4y ago
Unfortunately, Mozilla has become too politicized in the past several years for them to be productive in this area. They also have a habit of shutting down projects that aren't immediately as successful as Firefox.
braingenious 4y ago
“Healthy social media” is a hilarious contradiction in terms. The entire internet became wholly unhealthy once people stopped fragmenting into little silos like chatrooms and interest-specific forums. “Social media” is just a concept for aspiring ad companies to figure out how to drive engagement. Everyone that attempts it eventually figures out the same thing: To drive traffic you’ll need culture wars, porn, shock images, and hate speech. People love interacting with all of that and there is no un-ringing that bell.
footlose_3815 4y ago
[dead]
fanso99 4y ago
I imagine the reason they are so keen to be a player in social media is because someone at Mozilla really pushes the idea that there is a community around Firefox (sure, Thunderbird, MDN, etc). There is no community. People who use a browser are not a community: we don't need a place to "hang out" because we all use Firefox. It's a ridiculous aspirational thinking that only moves Mozilla further into irrelevancy.
gorgoiler 4y ago
Hasn’t social media moved on from publicly posting with strangers? Of the 2bn people who engage with each other on a regular basis, surely almost all of this is done in private (WhatsApp, Insta, Slack, FB Groups)? While I don’t need an “open global fediverse” I do need tools to construct my own private spaces to which I can invite others: company chat, neighbours, family, friends. I guess the old problem of who gets to be admin is even thornier when “being admin” doesn’t just mean being able to choose a new background image, but also managing the actual software instance. Hopefully these are the problems Mozilla will tackle. Twitter v2 isn’t going to be useful to anyone but the 1% of the 1% that engage in public.
top_post 4y ago
Mozilla to explore healthy cigarette smoking..
tbrownaw 4y ago
> One that elevates critical thinking and reasoned argument, that honors shared experience and individual expression and brings together diverse and global communities to work together for the common good. That sounds like how the Rationalists do things (stuff like TheMotte and "effective altruism"). I don't think it's really caught on with the wider population.
chinathrow 4y ago
User since ancient times here: just make a good browser and a good mail client. Figure out a sustainable business model. Skip the rest.
eitland 4y ago
So are we finally getting Google+ back? Or another Twitter clone? That said, when it comes to Mozilla I'd prefer if they fix some long standing issues on the browser, from the top of my head: - fix the API so I can use Tree Style Tabs without crazy hacks again. - fix the dev tools so it copies the full token even if it has been shortened in the UI.
_8j50 4y ago
I just wanted to say, I spent time and thought in composing a comment only to for HN to tell me I am posting too fast (2 comments within 10 min and I spent 10min or so composing the comment). @dang, this sucks, it is very mean and unkind. If you want to ban users go ahead, if someone is posting too fast let them know before you block them from posting for many hours (mobile browser makes waiting to post impossible at times, i waited so long I couldn't get back to the comment) this has happened many times. Be clear and direct with auto-moderation please. I will keep complaining like this when it happens unless it is against the rules (it isn't from what I can see). You can do what yoh want with me or this site, whether not I broke any rules (been in your shoes), I have no complaints about that and I keep posting with or without upvotes so I don't care about "karma" either but either I am allowed to participate here or I am not. This sucks!
andsoitis 4y ago
Human interaction mediated by high-leverage technology will always yield disaster.
valeg 4y ago
remember Flock?
thrwawy74 4y ago
I wish Mozilla would explore paying its CEO less and putting Rust, Servo, and embedding Firefox through the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) at the forefront of their projects. We can do social experiments when your org and its projects aren't fading into niche communities and disuse. Wasteful organization with terrible leadership.
- eitland 4y ago
  As far as I can see it the single most important thing about Mozilla today is that they keep alive one of two mainstream renderers that aren't owned by Google. I think everyone who has followed the industry for long enough knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. For now at least there exist two other teams outside of Google that knows how to create browsers and two working codebases so one doesn't have to start from scratch.
  - qball 4y ago
    >knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. It doesn't even need to be the only option; Manifest V3 (making adblockers impossible) already exists.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - SquareWheel 4y ago
      Are you familiar with declarativeNetRequest? It's already in use by tools like AdGuard and uBlock Origin Lite. I've tested both and they work very well. I think it's very clear that adblockers are still possible in MV3, despite concerns. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-mv3-exp/apjcbfpjihpedihablmalmbbhjpklbdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite...
rvz 4y ago
Maybe Mozilla should focus on building a better browser for the masses and making money by themselves and not relying on Google's money as they once promised 14 years ago [0], rather than chasing costly distractions and fantasies like this with their already shrinking market share. [1][2][3] Firefox (really) has nothing to offer, and the chronic decrease in users shows that it is only going down as Edge has already over taken it and Mozilla did that by themselves. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu... [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... [3] https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
isaacremuant 4y ago
Mozilla Firefox as a tool is awesome and I'll continue supporting it but as an organisation, Mozilla has clearly signalled more than once that they don't want healthy, they want agreement with their own brand of US partisan politics. They will run opposite to their old values of freedom and push the new and tired "censorship of ideas we dislike in the name of safety". It's all very tribal and it all leaves little room for disagreement. It's specially funny for people coming from outside the US/Europe when we get told how we are represented and to "stfu" if we actually have an opinion that is not welcome.
bawolff 4y ago
This feels about as likely as a beauty contest winner actually creating world peace. Humans are hard. If all it took to create a healthy community was vauge sentiment, we would have solved the world's problems already. Its not like toxic group dynamics is a new thing, people have been trying and failing to solve this problem since the dawn of time. If mozilla had some actual ideas to test out that'd be one thing, but i don't see that they are actually proposing anything.
drdrek 4y ago
Its wishful thinking, or just some feelgood morality piece.. I don't know, any way its just fluff. This idea is flawed from the start, if you make a less addicting cigarettes its never going to replace cigarettes in an open market, because it will have less demand. If you make a social service that promotes you living a healthy life it will not generate the same demand, its just the dynamic of the system.
lloydatkinson 4y ago
After firing so many of their browser, browser engine, and docs employees to ensure their CEO got a bonus I don't really trust either the motive or the longevity of this.
klipklop 4y ago
With how political Mozilla is I highly doubt they will make a non-toxic platform.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
hoseja 4y ago
winReInstall 4y ago
Social media should push people, but not towards face, towards social status, instead more towards the self-proclaimed goals and towards creations. Example: I want to become good at wood working.Social media should reward me looking at courses, buying tools, getting started and posting even initial steps. It should encourage me when i fail, coax me back towards my endavour and prevent procrastination, even invite people to look at the results and find me mentors. The ideal social media, is the one that is not needed after its done.
helloworld11 4y ago
The main problem with Mozilla's initiative is that it presupposes a definition of what's "healthy". This won't be popular with some of the progressive set here, but for many people, being exposed to a freewheeling landscape of ideas that aren't censored or controlled based on their "correctness" or evidence base is a wonderful thing. The simple knowledge that even the crazy and unfounded can be allowed to express itself so that really interesting notions, connections and concepts can filter their way forward can be satisfying for many reasons, aside from moral questions of free expression. Prima facie, nobody can easily know what good ideas vs- bad ideas are, or where exactly good will evolve from crazy notions. The freedom to express is a fundamental step in discovering that. I consider a place that allows it to be much less "toxic" than some stultifying, taboo-ridden supposedly healthy social landscape in which you get canceled or burned for going against some dominant grain of thought or any tangent of it, or for violating the dictates of some vocal minority that can't stand divergent thought but shields itself in labels of being "tolerant and diverse" or rational. Often, as we've all seen in recent years and since long before, such people are none of those things, but suffocate the real expression of many unique arguments. Sure, many people in such an openly permissive and genuinely tolerant environment will engage in flame wars, bad faith argument, drama and all kinds of stupid bullshit and terrible thinking, but it will open room for interesting thinking to filter forward to those who can make better sense of it, without censoring others. Many of history's best breeding grounds for incredibly creative thinking were places where free expression was raucously, tacitly cultivated in all its sometimes supposedly toxic glory of the stupid and mean sharing space with the thoughtful.
throwawayJA1820 4y ago
These initiatives, even in the best case are only likely to subset people with "healthy" interests as opposed to changing what the discourse on twitter or facebook is. A lot of the online conflicts are downstream of the socio/economic/cultural realities that people deal with.
hnarn 4y ago
> In private hands our choice is limited, toxicity is rewarded, rage is called engagement, public trust is corroded, and basic human decency is often an afterthought. Sure. But why is it so? Have these "private hands" somehow made people into toxic, rage-filled robots lacking "human decency"? Or, were people already like this before they started using social media, and these "private hands" really did nothing but follow what people craved and rewarded with their attention? It's easy to paint Big Social Corp as evil, and yeah, of course they are to some extent. They literally just do what makes them the most revenue in ads, without any regard for how that affects their users. But I think we're missing something when we absolve individual human beings from responsibility, and paint them out to be mere victims of the siren song of social media. There's an old web comic that I'm sure a lot of you have seen, that simply makes the claim that: > Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad I am a fierce proponent of the right to anonymity online -- BUT -- social media is but a subset of "the Internet". There is nothing saying that anonymity must be, or even should, be the norm on any web platform regardless of its purpose. I have no concrete suggestion on how to do it, but personally I'm quite confident that if you remove "anonymity" out of the fuckwad equation, you don't eliminate the problem, but you decimate it to a degree where it's barely a problem anymore. I very much doubt this is the road Mozilla will choose to take, since it seems completely opposed to everything they stand for, but I'd like to reiterate that you can be a privacy proponent without demanding privacy everywhere, just like you can be a proponent of free speech without being a proponent for "the right to be heard".
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  I think LinkedIn is a good example of what you would get without anonymity… and it’s a pretty bleak and boring landscape. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a middle ground for public forums. Humans seem to be hardwired to be awful when given the opportunity. The days of cable TV and email list flamewars seem pretty quaint right about now.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    > I think LinkedIn is a good example of what you would get without anonymity I think that would be true if the only characteristic of LinkedIn was that it's "not anonymous", but that's not true. LinkedIn is very explicitly a "professional network" which means that the implicit expectation is that you modify your behavior in the same way as you would in a professional setting. At least in theory, I think that a social network similar to Twitter or Facebook that contained only verified profiles of real people is something that would make me interested in signing up. Whether that's true for people in general though, I have no idea.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phendrenad2 4y ago
Mozilla is trying to stay relevant, and they're trying to gain some relevance by making a big announcement that they're opening their own mastodon instance (1), and also brag about how much of a "big deal" Mozilla is (2). The "healthy social media alternative" is vaporware and just an excuse for all of this. [1] "In early 2023, Mozilla will stand up and test a publicly accessible instance in the Fediverse at Mozilla.Social" [2] "Mozilla has a quarter-century track record of world-class open development"

396 points by cpeterso 4y ago

I hope they work on a less-toxic gpt-chat alternative next. And a positive replacement for whatever SBF's company did. Anything I'm missing?

wkat4242 4y ago

I wonder if I could join the fediverse with my own mastodon (Or diaspora or whatever) on my own domain, just like a personal email server. Or would that be much more complicated? Never looked into it but if I do I I'd like to be totally self-managed.

last_responder 4y ago
Yes you can. That’s one of the main ideas of it
0x6c6f6c 4y ago
Plenty of people do exactly this. I think one side effect is you wouldn't be as discoverable, if you cared about that. No less than just hosting a blog site of your own, but even that has SEO possibilities.
trickjarrett 4y ago
Yes, you definitely can, however running your own instance is not an out of the box process currently.
post-factum 4y ago
For sure you can, and also you really should if you are able to. If you are going to use the server by yourself only, you may also consider going with something easier on resources like GoToSocial instead of the fully-fledged Mastodon server.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Thanks for the heads-up on GoToSocial! I'll try it.
- psic4t 4y ago
  Thanks for mentioning GoToSocial! I didn't know this one.
libraryatnight 4y ago
I just setup a mastodon instance on a vps with my own domain. It was a fun evening project, I just followed mastodon's documentation along with a few supplemental searches. I'd say initial setup is pretty simple, tbd on upkeep ;)
tpush 4y ago
I just wish you could have you own domain while not hosting an instance, like just pointing your DNS records at an email server hosted by somebody else.
- mrd3v0 4y ago
  Unless I'm reading your reply incorrectly, you absolutely could do the same thing. (You are referring to managed hosting solutions, right?) https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps/ https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server... This website has some instructions and pointers that might be helpful.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    The way I read it it's more like wanting to be able to present as user@mycustomdomain.com without having to have your own instance and retaining the ability to move between providers. Sorta like pointing your domain at Google Workplace for a few bucks a month.
hobo_mark 4y ago
Absolutely doable and it's a fun exercise. Mastodon is probably overkill for a single-user instance, there are other ActivityPub services that do not need Postgres+Redis+Ruby etc (pleroma, microblog...). ps: as I found out while setting up my own server, diaspora is its own thing, it can't federate with ActivityPub services.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Oh I thought diaspora was part of fediverse. It's listed on https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party so I assumed it could do ActivityPub. Guessed wrong, thanks for correcting me!

goalieca 4y ago

What makes social media unhealthy is a the fact the whole thing is a giant marketing exercise. Every company and every individual has their own brands to maintain. Even sites like Reddit have a brand and image to maintain.. with the right memes (whether political talking points or dank images). Decentralizing has nothing at all to do with these core issues.

hecanjog 4y ago
Companies are different from individuals.
Taywee 4y ago
I wonder if a large part of what makes social media unhealthy is exposing human nature to mass communication. I hate Facebook and Twitter as much as the next person, but maybe humans haven't evolved to be able to instantly reach an audience of thousands or millions without any personal or social risk. People have been dangerous and inhuman for many years in the past on a grand scale, but now every human can exist on a grand scale, and maybe the results of that alone are often unsavory.
- JellyBeanThief 4y ago
  One direction we could go in to deepen this conversation is to bring in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction. It potentially explains some of why mass social media communication is so problematic.
- yaomtc 4y ago
  Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
- pontilanda 4y ago
  > I wonder if a large part of what makes social media unhealthy is exposing human nature to mass communication. Bingo. I do not believe for a moment that social media company A or B is worsening society. Heck, Facebook links your presumably real identity to your content and people are still disgusting online. No company will win by not rewarding “interesting content”. We tried that, it was called forums, and they lost out to more “rewarding” communities.

neopw 4y ago

pipeline_peak 4y ago

I’d like to see federated platforms do to Social media companies, what streaming has done to the entertainment industry. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter are nothing more than ML driven data collectors at this point. Obviously content is king, the average user wants their Instagram stars or whatever, they aren’t concerned with politics. But I’m optimistic to a major schism in ALL these mediocre platforms. I want to see more corporations hosting their own, Chik Fil A, BestBuy, anything to break the tide.

WatchDog 4y ago

wwweston 4y ago
Whatever social media’s problems have been, they absolutely have not included making political opinions unavailable — there is no platform on which every political identity hasn’t been represented.
- Alupis 4y ago
  > they absolutely have not included making political opinions unavailable This is quite an odd take... especially given one of the largest social media companies was recently bought in part because of overtly unbalanced political censorship on the platform. Are there various political ideas on all social platforms? Sure... I guess if you look hard enough. You won't find everyone equally stifled in reach, however, which is the problem.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-algorithm-right-leaning/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-a...
    - Alupis 4y ago
      I don't know what point you are trying to make by simply posting links. Whatever it is, these links don't support your argument - that we can be certain of.
      - wwweston 4y ago
        Imagine complaining about people posting links as a response on the internet. If carefully taking in their contents is an inconvenience for you, I’ll spell it out: the general narrative you’re invoking about twitter was always paired with specific pretense that it was conservative views that were somehow being unfairly squashed in discourse on twitter. To the surprise of no one who actually observed discourse on twitter (or understands certain frequent flaws in conservative psychology) it actually turns out that’s not true; they were plenty well represented and even arguably overamplified. Does this mean progressives were oppressed on twitter? You tell me — if you want to tell the story that even progressive representation is the real problem to be solved on social media, be my guest. But it ain’t gonna stop it from being obvious that the story of twitter’s purchase as a virtuous crusade to bring balance to discourse where conservatives just couldn’t get fair treatment doesn’t hold water — in addition, of course, to the ways the ensuing circus has made it clear that balance not the new owner’s motivation.

thebetatester 4y ago

As if I needed yet another place to have information tied to me out on the public searchable internet.

timbit42 4y ago
Have you looked at Aether?

Kukumber 4y ago

The sad fate of mozilla, they are reaching new lows trying to find room by surfing on the buzz

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

vouaobrasil 4y ago

I think the best social media experience is just to participate a little here, and little there, use email, have your own website, have a separate place for photos, a separate place for discussions, use relatively back-water like this, etc. The reason is that without a massive, centralized network, no company can benefit from it in a mass-production advertising/factory sort of way like Facebook. That's exactly why I refuse to use Facebook and I've never had an account. Spread it around, and don't put all your eggs in one basket. In fact, I don't think we even need huge social media companies and we'd do just fine without them.

jancsika 4y ago

Ok, so suppose I've got a spare RPI sitting around. Let's say I want to post text for a few people who follow me, and follow a handful of other accounts on mastodon or whatever. What is the absolute minimum I'd need to connect to "the fediverse?" Is there a CLI thingy I can just run to fetch posts, or to create posts?

fanso99 4y ago
You need an always online instance that can be federated if you want to own your identity and social graph. If you don't care about that, then you can just create an account in your instance of choice and then use a wide range of tools to post and retrieve content (including a CLI I believe).

sedivy94 4y ago

One word: MySpace

culi 4y ago
JustBecauseYouUsePascalCaseDoesntMakeItASingleWord

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago

You know what would be even healthier? Browser competition.

fanso99 4y ago
Why does a browser company need to own a social media space? I am an avid Firefox user but don't see any pragmatic point in this "exploration". Maybe they want to own their instance and therefore control their identity? That kind of makes sense—we might see more of that from individual businesses in the future. But this announcement is not about that.
- culi 4y ago
  > Why does a browser company need to own a social media space? Mozilla isn't a browser company, and did you read the post? All the examples cited where decentralized/federalized alternatives. They specifically DON'T wanna own anything
  - fanso99 4y ago
    They literally say in the first sentence that they will run a public instance on Mozilla.Social. This means they will own that instance. You could argue that no one owns anything exclusively in today's federalized world but that is not true in practical terms. They will own the identities/social graphs/content created locally. "Own" meaning they have total control over that instance and can, for example, enforce Mozilla-friendly policies, remove content, ban users (without the ability to export one's identity and social graph).
    - culi 4y ago
      But Mastodon is specifically built against that. Users can freely migrate their accounts and all posts are still accessible on other instances (up to a point). The whole point of Mastodon is that users and their content have "exit". If Mozilla does some weird shit with their instance, people can just... use a different instance. That's kinda the point. And Mozilla's instance will surely take the Mastodon Server Covenant which, among other things, requires users be notified at least 3 months ahead of time before a server gets shut down

dmitrygr 4y ago

How about exploring how ignoring users causes rapid losses in browser market share? It feels like Mozilla does EVERYTHING except improving Firefox.

ciupicri 4y ago
Just this evening I was complaining to a friend that top show 150% CPU usage for Firefox and I don't know the reason because both about:performance and about:processes are useless. They weren't telling me look this horrible site is using up your CPU. My friend's response? Use Chromium.
- kbrosnan 4y ago
  Try the profiler. https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./guide-getting-started?id=capture-a-profile https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./guide-getting-started?...
  - ciupicri 4y ago
    If I'm not mistaking that's for investigating a single tab, while I have thousands of tabs with various websites.
    - kbrosnan 4y ago
      That can profile the whole browser as a unit. It does try to record only active threads. There are ways to set it to record everything. https://chat.mozilla.org/?#/room/#perfteam:mozilla.org https://chat.mozilla.org/?#/room/#perfteam:mozilla.org is good place to access the people who know more about the profiler than I.
tpush 4y ago
Do we need this same type of comment on every single post about Mozilla/Firefox? Does it not get tiring after a while? Because they are definitely tiring to read.

lern_too_spel 4y ago

Here we all are, talking on a heavily moderated forum that is meant to increase civility and reduce noise. If you think Mozilla's idea is bad, why are you here?

groffee 4y ago
Because they're supposed to be working on their browser, not dicking around with social media.
- culi 4y ago
  Seems like they've been doing a lot of work on their browser. Definitely kept up with Chrome and Safari at least: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable What exactly is the issue? I don't think just throwing more money or people at that specific work would increase velocity. At a certain point you get too many cooks in the kitchen
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    I think a lot of people are still disappointed that for example servo didn't make it to it's endgoal and the team behind it mostly got fired whilst the CEO increases her compensation, the board expands and money is given to things like letting artists examine ai impact. They want it to outperform chromium browsers instead of implementing 3 separate ways to save tabs across devices. They want firefox to keep up in marketshare because it can keep as much as you want on your scoreboard... If it isn't used it ends up useless, dead and without a hand in webstandards. I still remember how many users it lost because google could switch video compression standards last second because ff could just be ignored leading to countless peers blaming firefox for being laggy with youtube open. It's worse now.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Presumably, they are planning to get revenue from this instead of having it be a charity.
lmm 4y ago

klabb3 4y ago

Interesting project, although in all likelihood vast amounts of people crave toxicity, popularity contests and flamewars. Kinda like how school bullying appears everywhere, independent of culture. That doesn’t mean that healthy places cannot exist or thrive, but it means that there will always be demand for the unhealthy. Tech impacts society, but we’re mistaken if we think we can change human nature. I’d expect the outcome of the research to reach a different conclusion than people expect. For instance, I don’t think the typical system of likes and followers will ever be healthy. Beware of early results though, because it always takes a while for a platform to mature enough to see if it withstands the test of millions of users, socially speaking. My WIP theory is: people-oriented public broadcast mediums always deteriorate towards the unhealthy with massive scale. You can have one or the other, but not both. (People oriented means that there is a strong focus on the people, usually with real name and face, or emphasizing the user/display name) Anecdotally, to illustrate the point: - LinkedIn became a cesspool despite having a professional boring focus. My theory: because it’s people-oriented and public. - Group chats have thrived and are very rarely problematic, despite likes and reacts everywhere. My theory: private groups with implicit trust. No need to build your personal brand. - GitHub has not deteriorated (a bit perhaps, but very much usable still), despite having likes, being a public broadcast medium. My take: it’s because it is mostly content oriented.

fanso99 4y ago
I think a big part (if not the most critical one) of this deterioration is the addition of algorithmic feeds. As soon as a company starts prioritizing content, it breaks the natural flow of a conversation we have in real life. This leads to group mixing, polarization, emotionally-charged content prevalence, etc. I have never really used Twitter until very recently. It was shocking to me how much the algorithmic content insertion drives the conversation. E.g. I click on a link to read an individual thread: right in the middle of it, with almost no visual indication Twitter is inserting completely unrelated but "high engagement" content. It's brutal. Edit: imagine group chats sorted by engagement... a pile of responses in a disconnected sequence. Someone said something funny that got 10 likes? Push it to the top for the next 2 hours! (I am tempted to build this as an experiment just to see how awful—or effective?—this would be like.)

nequo 4y ago

Critically reflecting on the harms of social media is a commendable effort. But I think this analysis and the implied conclusion is superficial and misguided: In private hands our choice is limited, toxicity is rewarded, rage is called engagement, public trust is corroded, and basic human decency is often an afterthought. On a platform that is not centralized but consists of smaller competing providers, the incentives are the same for each provider: to maximize engagement. And given our current experience, the most effective way to do it is to incite anger and fear. Decentralization does nothing to address the core problem.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
First, that's then not a platform, and second, this doesn't seem to have happened with the known examples like usenet, e-mail, IRC..?
- nequo 4y ago
  That is true but I think that was not because they were decentralized but because they were not run to raise revenue.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    To my knowledge there isn't any one fediverse server that is being run to raise revenue. If there's any money involved it's usually for running the servers.
emaro 4y ago
Why are the incentives for each provider to drive engagement? If I host a small server in the Fediverse, maybe I don't want/need engagement but happy users who appreciate a healthy community and are willing to pay a dollar a month to keep it running. I can compete with other providers, but I don't need to out-compete them.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Mozilla comes to this equation with their totally out of touch bullshit approach. Just like they fucked up their browser market share, now they are the missionaries of privacy and the people and the trees and world peace. While 99% of people do not know jackshit about all this. Therefore they DON'T CARE. Imagine how successful will this become.

karaterobot 4y ago

What about federation makes social media healthy? From what I've seen, the problems that keep coming up are not related to the network architecture, they're more about how people cannot relate to each other in a healthy way. If Mozilla has a solution to this, they should get a Nobel Peace Prize. On the other hand, if their idea is "this time it'll work, because it's us doing it" then I'm pretty skeptical.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TeeMassive 4y ago

Wonder if they'll let a backdoor access to intelligence agencies like the other did.

kajaktum 4y ago

I am pretty sure all form of public social media is toxic. If you give people: 1. a platform to speak their mind (basically can type anything) 2. is public (as opposed to private like Discord servers) then you will get everything bad about social media even without the for-profit incentives.

fanso99 4y ago
Yes, with one caveat: without algorithmic feeds users tend to form natural circles just like in real life. This dramatically reduces toxicity. Just let people post whatever they want and follow whoever they want. If a social media company will not attempt to mix and promote random high engagement content, users will far less likely discover it by themselves and engage in toxic behavior.

2devnull 4y ago

I don’t use Firefox much, but when I do the first thing I do is go to settings and uncheck “let Firefox install and run studies.” It’s good they have that option. Even though they are to good guys, I find it creepy they would run studies on people without consent. Hopefully they don’t do creepy stuff like that on the fediverse, but honestly the whole thing with pocket makes me doubt their intentions. They seem to talk the talk, but then do creepy stuff in the background.

vfclists 4y ago

That's Mozilla for you. Elon Musk bought Twitter so a "healthy social media alternative" is needed, one in which you should get "cancelled" if you disagree with the notion that "vociferous minorities" should be able to change the generally accepted meanings of words. OMG that's Steve Texeira!! How did he go from being an evangelist and writing excellent books on the unmatched RAD IDE known as Delphi, to indulging in "Wokespeak" on behalf of Mozilla?

userbinator 4y ago
I wonder if Mozilla needs to be given the Elon treatment too. Getting rid of everyone except those responsible for the core browser functionality might be a good start.

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tamrix 4y ago

At some point everyone just has to learn to be better people and focus their attention on positive content online. It took humans thousands of years just to be civilised in a physical society. Hopefully it's faster online.

wcarron 4y ago

I find this disappointing. The world does not need alternative social media. Everything in our society is geared towards "Bigger, Faster, Broader === Better!". But it has completely ignored humanity and quality. The world needs less social media, full stop. Devoting resources to this is is a waste of time. In my opinion (and I recognize the irony of posting this online) fewer people deserve an audience. Fewer people (and companies) should be given a platform. Fewer hours should be drowned in the cesspools that are online communities. Fewer eyeballs on the internet is what we should be aiming for. The internet, and especially social media, is a great disruptor. A disruptor of community. Sure, it creates fluidity and eases the ability to interact. This is not really a positive, as a whole. Neutral at best. Efforts should instead be focused on fostering actual, face-to-face interactions. Online 'communities' are a disgustingly poor facsimile of interactions in the flesh. I mean, seriously, look what we've sacrificed. All for what? Phones that bombard us with notifications that someone said the content we posted was shit? Ads being shoved down our throats to try to monetize the activity of simply existing? Having the ability to leave racist comments on Youtube while you're taking a shit? I'm an atheist, but I have remarked to my dad that I somewhat mourn both the loss of religious centers and offices. They formed critical venues for actually meeting people, humanizing and understanding them, building relationships and friendships, discussing differences with immediate realization of consequence for ones words/actions. The internet is a fucking disgrace compared to that. Mozilla should build a series of cafes or something, in small-to-medium towns and cities. Foster actual, face-to-face, unscalable human connection. An unrealistic expectation, for sure. But goddamn could the world use some of that these days.

boplicity 4y ago

Two things are required for healthy social media: 1. A system of incentives that align with positive behavior. 2. Leadership that corrects both behavior and systemic issues, to encourage healthy behavior. The largest social media companies now largely ignore both of those issues. They systematically encourage negative behavior, while abdicating any real leadership, in terms of ensuring a positive environment for participants.

patientplatypus 4y ago

mdaniel 4y ago

Good, maybe they'll use their deep rust experience to pick up https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon#readme https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon#readme and drive it forward, or make their own if AGPL is incompatible with the Mozilla licensing infrastructure (I don't know)

encryptluks2 4y ago
The only thing Mozilla has deep experience in is creating a cult of people that believe they are still trying to do good.

dmitryminkovsky 4y ago

I really wish Mozilla would focus on Firefox.

monzool 4y ago
This! Yes. Please

kovac 4y ago

There's no healthy social media. Please focus your resources on Firefox.

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omoikane 4y ago
> There's no healthy social media. I am a bit more optimistic than that. Social media depends on how we use them, but because technology is advancing so fast, a lot of people have yet to settle on a usage pattern that is healthy for them. But I do agree on Mozilla should focus more on Firefox.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  Technology isn't going to advance at a slower rate in the future, which means that even with your "optimistic" take people wont settle on a more healthy usage pattern. But the whole point is moot anyways. As long as SM is designed to drive engagement by exploiting the most base instincts in us, we will keep seeing unhealthy behaviour.
- intended 4y ago
  There is no healthy social media. Until number of emotionally unhealthy people is <<<< mature healthy people, with time, SM will always be unhealthy.
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gfodor 4y ago

For years people with contrarian political views were rushing to mastodon after getting deplatformed from Twitter (sometimes, as we now know, via reports by the FBI for violating “disinformation” rules.) Mozilla was not promoting decentralized social media then, but should have been. It’s too bad they are only taking this position once it is appealing to those who now want to leave Twitter because it’s no longer permabanning people due to their political views.

greggarious 4y ago

Mozilla needs to get their shit together. I had my internship offer signed by Brendan Eich. At the time I was a closeted first generation PhD student who only did a PhD because it paid about the same as being a pizza delivery driver with slightly better hours and benefits, but I nearly turned it down because I was on the verge of dropping out and travelling the world like I'd dreamed for a long time, and I wish I had, they ratfucked me. By the time I got there, they had cancelled the project I was going to work on. I designed a UX research study all on my own, and my main feedback from my managers (plural -- one who oversaw the project and another who oversaw the day to day in the SF office since they didn't trust the interns to not just smoke trees on the roof all day and run roughshod over the Castro all night, which had happened enough times they had to institute "A Policy") Imagine every day, going into work desperate to stay in California, as your "manager" takes everyone but you out to lunch, and your other "manager" often shows up to meetings an hour plus late with excuses like they "went jogging" as he casually mentions he doesn't even use Firefox outside work. Apparently I pissed off a bunch of senior people by loudly declaring rather than waste money on the doomed venture that was FireOS, they should focus on the memory leaks that were driving people to Chrome. (Which in turn, would give Google leverage to reduce the money given via the search bar placement they paid for, which was pretty much the sole source of income for the company.) What I'd hoped would happen is I'd get hired at Mozilla or somewhere else in the Bay that summer. Instead, it was the beginning of the end, and not just for my dreams of Californication or whatever -- Google moved into the same building around that time and started poaching people with cutesey social media posts about cakes and shit to cover inviting the engineers over. Within one CFAA expiration of that summer, I'd be sitting on K Street with a letter opener on my desk because they were too cheap to have anything but a short conversation about the exits after Charlie Hebdo. (You haven't truly lived until you tell some powerful person's kid who just made a transphobic comment that this isn't a stepping stone to Google or a high school and they need to watch their fucking mouth, then watched their eyes go wide and hands shake as they try to stand between you and your desk because they know in that moment how few fucks you have left to give.) Anyways, sorry to ramble -- I studied English Lit as one of my minors, so sometimes I post too hard when I have an all day migraine like the one I've had today, after I hit "add comment" on this I'm probably gonna go puke in the bathroom. Mozilla is great, on a technical level, but anything in the realm of social informatics should be left to others, the company is dying because of their repeated failures on these issues stemming back to when they killed Persona[1]. Companies like Google and Facebook have abused their access to knowing whose nyms are whom, and not just to target them with bullshit advertising that induces psychic harms and delivers malvertising, but Mozilla is rotting from the inside out and has been for some time. I met some great people that Summer after Snowden, but the good ones have almost all... moved on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona

marricks 4y ago

We really missed the boat on having something like “Craigslist for talking to friends and neighbors” launch decades ago. Just something unsexy that works and can stick around in the same form because the owner is a curmudgeon with out any dreams of grandeur. Perhaps the could never have happened to social media though because it was too hot a space. Everything else seems doomed to get caught up in this race to capture a billion eyeballs and wallets.

acdha 4y ago
I think the problem was that listserves soaked that up early on and when people moved it was either go Facebook or even worse places like Nextdoor. There are other services - groups.io is popular around here - but the trick is bootstrapping a community when the ad company is right there with so much free stuff.
midoridensha 4y ago
>We really missed the boat on having something like “Craigslist for talking to friends and neighbors” launch decades ago. This sounds a lot like Nextdoor. The results haven't been pretty.
mrweasel 4y ago
All the bits and pieces have been around for decades. Usenet could easily have functioned as a marketplace, local gossip and information board, with proper segmentation. It's decentralized, there where numerous clients available, there just weren't enough users. It worked reasonably well for my university when I started 25 years ago, but it deteriorated quickly during the yearly 2000s. We also had forums, blogs and RSS. All technologies when combined provide a decentralized social media like experience. I think it was a healthier approach, but more segmented. Modern social media attempts to fit everything into a framework. From a financial perspective, it seems to work, but socially I'm not convinced. One of the thing that have impressed me is how willing people are to express repulsive behaviour, under their real name. You'd think that Facebooks real name policy would make help regulate behaviour, but it truly doesn't.

QuadrupleA 4y ago

I'm hopeful some nonprofit Signal/wikipedia-esque alternatives spring up to eventually replace the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc. The incentives are just too messed up in the ad-driven model. Some of the collective insanity of the last decade or so was no doubt just human nature, but these companies pushed all the levers they could to maximize it. A platform with a little human goodness that finds ways to encourage our best qualities could be a powerful force.

brigandish 4y ago

English culture (and hence, modern social media) is adversarial in nature, what we need is people to become better at arguing, not have less of it.

indymike 4y ago

When the model switched from giving people a way to share ideas, thoughts, photos, videos to corporate news and content distribution, social media lost its way. Just give me a way to quickly get rid of people I don't want to hear from. Stop force feeding me content. I'm here to share.

patrick451 4y ago

I'm old enough to remember when Mozilla installed malware into browsers across the world just so they could show ads. That's as creepy or worse than what facebook has done. I'm not credulous enough to think that a company will violate user trust that way knows the first thing about creating healthy communities.

denysvitali 4y ago

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rufusroflpunch 4y ago

I have to say, I think nostr shows a lot of promise. I think there is something special there.

janandonly 4y ago
Agree. Furthermore, the fact that basically anyone can run their own relay makes it very decentralized. See also: https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr

dibt 4y ago

Unfortunately, Mozilla has become too politicized in the past several years for them to be productive in this area. They also have a habit of shutting down projects that aren't immediately as successful as Firefox.

braingenious 4y ago

“Healthy social media” is a hilarious contradiction in terms. The entire internet became wholly unhealthy once people stopped fragmenting into little silos like chatrooms and interest-specific forums. “Social media” is just a concept for aspiring ad companies to figure out how to drive engagement. Everyone that attempts it eventually figures out the same thing: To drive traffic you’ll need culture wars, porn, shock images, and hate speech. People love interacting with all of that and there is no un-ringing that bell.

footlose_3815 4y ago

[dead]

fanso99 4y ago

I imagine the reason they are so keen to be a player in social media is because someone at Mozilla really pushes the idea that there is a community around Firefox (sure, Thunderbird, MDN, etc). There is no community. People who use a browser are not a community: we don't need a place to "hang out" because we all use Firefox. It's a ridiculous aspirational thinking that only moves Mozilla further into irrelevancy.

gorgoiler 4y ago

Hasn’t social media moved on from publicly posting with strangers? Of the 2bn people who engage with each other on a regular basis, surely almost all of this is done in private (WhatsApp, Insta, Slack, FB Groups)? While I don’t need an “open global fediverse” I do need tools to construct my own private spaces to which I can invite others: company chat, neighbours, family, friends. I guess the old problem of who gets to be admin is even thornier when “being admin” doesn’t just mean being able to choose a new background image, but also managing the actual software instance. Hopefully these are the problems Mozilla will tackle. Twitter v2 isn’t going to be useful to anyone but the 1% of the 1% that engage in public.

top_post 4y ago

Mozilla to explore healthy cigarette smoking..

tbrownaw 4y ago

> One that elevates critical thinking and reasoned argument, that honors shared experience and individual expression and brings together diverse and global communities to work together for the common good. That sounds like how the Rationalists do things (stuff like TheMotte and "effective altruism"). I don't think it's really caught on with the wider population.

chinathrow 4y ago

User since ancient times here: just make a good browser and a good mail client. Figure out a sustainable business model. Skip the rest.

eitland 4y ago

So are we finally getting Google+ back? Or another Twitter clone? That said, when it comes to Mozilla I'd prefer if they fix some long standing issues on the browser, from the top of my head: - fix the API so I can use Tree Style Tabs without crazy hacks again. - fix the dev tools so it copies the full token even if it has been shortened in the UI.

_8j50 4y ago

I just wanted to say, I spent time and thought in composing a comment only to for HN to tell me I am posting too fast (2 comments within 10 min and I spent 10min or so composing the comment). @dang, this sucks, it is very mean and unkind. If you want to ban users go ahead, if someone is posting too fast let them know before you block them from posting for many hours (mobile browser makes waiting to post impossible at times, i waited so long I couldn't get back to the comment) this has happened many times. Be clear and direct with auto-moderation please. I will keep complaining like this when it happens unless it is against the rules (it isn't from what I can see). You can do what yoh want with me or this site, whether not I broke any rules (been in your shoes), I have no complaints about that and I keep posting with or without upvotes so I don't care about "karma" either but either I am allowed to participate here or I am not. This sucks!

andsoitis 4y ago

Human interaction mediated by high-leverage technology will always yield disaster.

valeg 4y ago

remember Flock?

thrwawy74 4y ago

I wish Mozilla would explore paying its CEO less and putting Rust, Servo, and embedding Firefox through the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) at the forefront of their projects. We can do social experiments when your org and its projects aren't fading into niche communities and disuse. Wasteful organization with terrible leadership.

eitland 4y ago
As far as I can see it the single most important thing about Mozilla today is that they keep alive one of two mainstream renderers that aren't owned by Google. I think everyone who has followed the industry for long enough knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. For now at least there exist two other teams outside of Google that knows how to create browsers and two working codebases so one doesn't have to start from scratch.
- qball 4y ago
  >knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. It doesn't even need to be the only option; Manifest V3 (making adblockers impossible) already exists.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    Are you familiar with declarativeNetRequest? It's already in use by tools like AdGuard and uBlock Origin Lite. I've tested both and they work very well. I think it's very clear that adblockers are still possible in MV3, despite concerns. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-mv3-exp/apjcbfpjihpedihablmalmbbhjpklbdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite...

rvz 4y ago

Maybe Mozilla should focus on building a better browser for the masses and making money by themselves and not relying on Google's money as they once promised 14 years ago [0], rather than chasing costly distractions and fantasies like this with their already shrinking market share. [1][2][3] Firefox (really) has nothing to offer, and the chronic decrease in users shows that it is only going down as Edge has already over taken it and Mozilla did that by themselves. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu... [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... [3] https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

isaacremuant 4y ago

Mozilla Firefox as a tool is awesome and I'll continue supporting it but as an organisation, Mozilla has clearly signalled more than once that they don't want healthy, they want agreement with their own brand of US partisan politics. They will run opposite to their old values of freedom and push the new and tired "censorship of ideas we dislike in the name of safety". It's all very tribal and it all leaves little room for disagreement. It's specially funny for people coming from outside the US/Europe when we get told how we are represented and to "stfu" if we actually have an opinion that is not welcome.

bawolff 4y ago

This feels about as likely as a beauty contest winner actually creating world peace. Humans are hard. If all it took to create a healthy community was vauge sentiment, we would have solved the world's problems already. Its not like toxic group dynamics is a new thing, people have been trying and failing to solve this problem since the dawn of time. If mozilla had some actual ideas to test out that'd be one thing, but i don't see that they are actually proposing anything.

drdrek 4y ago

Its wishful thinking, or just some feelgood morality piece.. I don't know, any way its just fluff. This idea is flawed from the start, if you make a less addicting cigarettes its never going to replace cigarettes in an open market, because it will have less demand. If you make a social service that promotes you living a healthy life it will not generate the same demand, its just the dynamic of the system.

lloydatkinson 4y ago

After firing so many of their browser, browser engine, and docs employees to ensure their CEO got a bonus I don't really trust either the motive or the longevity of this.

klipklop 4y ago

With how political Mozilla is I highly doubt they will make a non-toxic platform.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago

winReInstall 4y ago

Social media should push people, but not towards face, towards social status, instead more towards the self-proclaimed goals and towards creations. Example: I want to become good at wood working.Social media should reward me looking at courses, buying tools, getting started and posting even initial steps. It should encourage me when i fail, coax me back towards my endavour and prevent procrastination, even invite people to look at the results and find me mentors. The ideal social media, is the one that is not needed after its done.

helloworld11 4y ago

The main problem with Mozilla's initiative is that it presupposes a definition of what's "healthy". This won't be popular with some of the progressive set here, but for many people, being exposed to a freewheeling landscape of ideas that aren't censored or controlled based on their "correctness" or evidence base is a wonderful thing. The simple knowledge that even the crazy and unfounded can be allowed to express itself so that really interesting notions, connections and concepts can filter their way forward can be satisfying for many reasons, aside from moral questions of free expression. Prima facie, nobody can easily know what good ideas vs- bad ideas are, or where exactly good will evolve from crazy notions. The freedom to express is a fundamental step in discovering that. I consider a place that allows it to be much less "toxic" than some stultifying, taboo-ridden supposedly healthy social landscape in which you get canceled or burned for going against some dominant grain of thought or any tangent of it, or for violating the dictates of some vocal minority that can't stand divergent thought but shields itself in labels of being "tolerant and diverse" or rational. Often, as we've all seen in recent years and since long before, such people are none of those things, but suffocate the real expression of many unique arguments. Sure, many people in such an openly permissive and genuinely tolerant environment will engage in flame wars, bad faith argument, drama and all kinds of stupid bullshit and terrible thinking, but it will open room for interesting thinking to filter forward to those who can make better sense of it, without censoring others. Many of history's best breeding grounds for incredibly creative thinking were places where free expression was raucously, tacitly cultivated in all its sometimes supposedly toxic glory of the stupid and mean sharing space with the thoughtful.

throwawayJA1820 4y ago

These initiatives, even in the best case are only likely to subset people with "healthy" interests as opposed to changing what the discourse on twitter or facebook is. A lot of the online conflicts are downstream of the socio/economic/cultural realities that people deal with.

hnarn 4y ago

> In private hands our choice is limited, toxicity is rewarded, rage is called engagement, public trust is corroded, and basic human decency is often an afterthought. Sure. But why is it so? Have these "private hands" somehow made people into toxic, rage-filled robots lacking "human decency"? Or, were people already like this before they started using social media, and these "private hands" really did nothing but follow what people craved and rewarded with their attention? It's easy to paint Big Social Corp as evil, and yeah, of course they are to some extent. They literally just do what makes them the most revenue in ads, without any regard for how that affects their users. But I think we're missing something when we absolve individual human beings from responsibility, and paint them out to be mere victims of the siren song of social media. There's an old web comic that I'm sure a lot of you have seen, that simply makes the claim that: > Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad I am a fierce proponent of the right to anonymity online -- BUT -- social media is but a subset of "the Internet". There is nothing saying that anonymity must be, or even should, be the norm on any web platform regardless of its purpose. I have no concrete suggestion on how to do it, but personally I'm quite confident that if you remove "anonymity" out of the fuckwad equation, you don't eliminate the problem, but you decimate it to a degree where it's barely a problem anymore. I very much doubt this is the road Mozilla will choose to take, since it seems completely opposed to everything they stand for, but I'd like to reiterate that you can be a privacy proponent without demanding privacy everywhere, just like you can be a proponent of free speech without being a proponent for "the right to be heard".

berniedurfee 4y ago
I think LinkedIn is a good example of what you would get without anonymity… and it’s a pretty bleak and boring landscape. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a middle ground for public forums. Humans seem to be hardwired to be awful when given the opportunity. The days of cable TV and email list flamewars seem pretty quaint right about now.
- hnarn 4y ago
  > I think LinkedIn is a good example of what you would get without anonymity I think that would be true if the only characteristic of LinkedIn was that it's "not anonymous", but that's not true. LinkedIn is very explicitly a "professional network" which means that the implicit expectation is that you modify your behavior in the same way as you would in a professional setting. At least in theory, I think that a social network similar to Twitter or Facebook that contained only verified profiles of real people is something that would make me interested in signing up. Whether that's true for people in general though, I have no idea.

deleted 4y ago

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phendrenad2 4y ago

Mozilla is trying to stay relevant, and they're trying to gain some relevance by making a big announcement that they're opening their own mastodon instance (1), and also brag about how much of a "big deal" Mozilla is (2). The "healthy social media alternative" is vaporware and just an excuse for all of this. [1] "In early 2023, Mozilla will stand up and test a publicly accessible instance in the Fediverse at Mozilla.Social" [2] "Mozilla has a quarter-century track record of world-class open development"