4 ms·

Mozilla gave plenty of time for this instance to do something spectacular but perhaps, this experiment never made sense in the first place. > Mozilla.social wa

by rvz 2y ago

Mozilla gave plenty of time for this instance to do something spectacular but perhaps, this experiment never made sense in the first place. > Mozilla.social was a small instance, having only 270 active users as of the time of Tuesday’s announcement. There is just no financial benefit for Mozilla in spinning up a Mastodon instance only to be used by what <300 active users? > By comparison, the most popular Mastodon instance, Mastodon.social, has over 247,500 monthly active users. That's Threads remember? They are now part of the 'fediverse' and interoperate with Mastodon with over ~180M+ monthly active users which is >150x bigger than the monthly active users of the entire fediverse! We already have the results after witnessing a live experiment [0] when Brazil banned Twitter / X and with lots of alternatives to sign up to; the majority of Brazilians signed up to either Bluesky or Threads. Maybe Mozilla looked at an actual migration from X to BlueSky or Threads and realized that there was really no point in running a Mastodon instance when Threads was the biggest one. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408985

rglullis 2y ago
Threads is not fully open. If they looked at Threads and thought "that's a lot of people", then it would be *one more* reason to have their own instance. But anyway, I do agree that having their own instance is kind of pointless. We need to get rid of "servers" and get back to an Open Social Web. I wrote in May what I thought would be a smarter approach for them (https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi-more-webby/ https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi...). Instead of yet-another mastodon server, they would be better off if they started building something like https://browser.pub https://browser.pub inside of Firefox.
CaptainOfCoit 2y ago
> There is just no financial benefit for Mozilla in spinning up a Mastodon instance only to be used by what <300 active users? Was the instance every actually open to the public? Seems to have been invite-only for the entire duration.
- jeromegv 2y ago
  Yeah that’s the biggest issue. I remember when it launched and it was invite only. If they indeed opened the registration at some point nobody knew about it. So they really failed at promoting whatever they were trying to do.
Vinnl 2y ago
Only a subset of Threads users are currently exposed to the Fediverse, and I believe only partially (not sure if replies have been enabled yet, and if they are, if they're visible as regular replies, or under a separate heading?). I'd also note that social media use differs hugely per country. See, for example, WhatsApp vs iMessage use in the US and outside, or how Brazil used to be big on Orkut. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from Brazilian usage patterns vs the rest of the world.
winwang 2y ago
I think the vast majority of users just want a good experience. UI fluidity, timeliness of notifications, DMs, image/video quality, etc. Decentralization is near the last of their concerns.
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
As a side note, just remember that Threads is currently in the Embrace (an open protocol) part of the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish sequence. Whether in 2 years or 10, the extend part will eventually come, followed soon after by Extinguish.
- criddell 2y ago
  And in 2 or 10 years, a new federated system will probably launch, learning from the mistakes of systems of the past. Maybe that one will be the one that takes root?
- rglullis 2y ago
  This is pointless FUD. Facebook did not extinguished XMPP by adopting from Messenger, did it?
  - timeon 2y ago
    They also bought Instagram and turned it to Ad broadcaster.
  - st3fan 2y ago
    Bad example. Probably not intentional, but of course they did kill XMPP usage in the end. Messenger (and all the other big tech non-XMPP platforms) is where the users are now. Nobody recently said "i need to get on XMPP to connect to my community, friends & family". You can probably give an example that you actively use it, but you are probably one in a million. Lets hope Meta is not going to steamroll over the fediverse in a similar way.
    - redserk 2y ago
      They didn’t do federation with XMPP. At best you could use Pidgin or other XMPP clients. That doesn’t count as any form of embrace. XMPP is a needlessly complex protocol with very poor organization and planning that, in the process of trying to cater to everyone, catered to nobody except a vocal aspirational group online. Simply put, XMPP killed XMPP.
Groxx 2y ago
To perhaps give context here and to others: 270 users on an instance is 100% fine. There are tons of instances with ~1 person. It's a federated system, it's like them running their own email domain: it costs little and they can interact with everyone, and it provides a measure of provable identity beyond just "@mozilla on totally.real.mastodon.xyz". It does come with maintenance and moderation needs though, e.g. picking which users and instances you want(/need) to block. And some... quirks... that mean joining a mega-instance actually does behave better than a small instance. Kinda like email. So far I haven't seen any reasons given why they're shutting it down. Just "it's shutting down". "Only 270 users" is almost certainly not related to it though, closed-registration official hosts is completely normal. Kinda like email.
bachmeier 2y ago
They've got Mozilla and Firefox accounts on Threads, and they've chosen not to federate them. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explain how that's consistent with Mozilla's mission.

by rvz 2y ago

rglullis 2y ago

Threads is not fully open. If they looked at Threads and thought "that's a lot of people", then it would be *one more* reason to have their own instance. But anyway, I do agree that having their own instance is kind of pointless. We need to get rid of "servers" and get back to an Open Social Web. I wrote in May what I thought would be a smarter approach for them (https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi-more-webby/ https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi...). Instead of yet-another mastodon server, they would be better off if they started building something like https://browser.pub https://browser.pub inside of Firefox.

CaptainOfCoit 2y ago

> There is just no financial benefit for Mozilla in spinning up a Mastodon instance only to be used by what <300 active users? Was the instance every actually open to the public? Seems to have been invite-only for the entire duration.

jeromegv 2y ago
Yeah that’s the biggest issue. I remember when it launched and it was invite only. If they indeed opened the registration at some point nobody knew about it. So they really failed at promoting whatever they were trying to do.

Vinnl 2y ago

Only a subset of Threads users are currently exposed to the Fediverse, and I believe only partially (not sure if replies have been enabled yet, and if they are, if they're visible as regular replies, or under a separate heading?). I'd also note that social media use differs hugely per country. See, for example, WhatsApp vs iMessage use in the US and outside, or how Brazil used to be big on Orkut. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from Brazilian usage patterns vs the rest of the world.

winwang 2y ago

I think the vast majority of users just want a good experience. UI fluidity, timeliness of notifications, DMs, image/video quality, etc. Decentralization is near the last of their concerns.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

As a side note, just remember that Threads is currently in the Embrace (an open protocol) part of the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish sequence. Whether in 2 years or 10, the extend part will eventually come, followed soon after by Extinguish.

criddell 2y ago
And in 2 or 10 years, a new federated system will probably launch, learning from the mistakes of systems of the past. Maybe that one will be the one that takes root?
rglullis 2y ago
This is pointless FUD. Facebook did not extinguished XMPP by adopting from Messenger, did it?
- timeon 2y ago
  They also bought Instagram and turned it to Ad broadcaster.
- st3fan 2y ago
  Bad example. Probably not intentional, but of course they did kill XMPP usage in the end. Messenger (and all the other big tech non-XMPP platforms) is where the users are now. Nobody recently said "i need to get on XMPP to connect to my community, friends & family". You can probably give an example that you actively use it, but you are probably one in a million. Lets hope Meta is not going to steamroll over the fediverse in a similar way.
  - redserk 2y ago
    They didn’t do federation with XMPP. At best you could use Pidgin or other XMPP clients. That doesn’t count as any form of embrace. XMPP is a needlessly complex protocol with very poor organization and planning that, in the process of trying to cater to everyone, catered to nobody except a vocal aspirational group online. Simply put, XMPP killed XMPP.

Groxx 2y ago

To perhaps give context here and to others: 270 users on an instance is 100% fine. There are tons of instances with ~1 person. It's a federated system, it's like them running their own email domain: it costs little and they can interact with everyone, and it provides a measure of provable identity beyond just "@mozilla on totally.real.mastodon.xyz". It does come with maintenance and moderation needs though, e.g. picking which users and instances you want(/need) to block. And some... quirks... that mean joining a mega-instance actually does behave better than a small instance. Kinda like email. So far I haven't seen any reasons given why they're shutting it down. Just "it's shutting down". "Only 270 users" is almost certainly not related to it though, closed-registration official hosts is completely normal. Kinda like email.

bachmeier 2y ago

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