this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[–] Vipsu 92 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Lemmy support would be much more fitting for Mozilla. They could add plugin or lemmy integration to their browser that could show discussions from subscribed communities matching the current url.

Effectively acting as a "comment section" but for any page. One would only need lemmy account to comment on youtube videos, news articles, blogs etc.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I didn't want to rain on your parade, but:

  • Firefox has hundreds of millions of users.
  • Lemmy has less than half a million total users, and YTD MAU peaked at 52k.

Even putting aside technical details, I fail to see how "Lemmy integration in the browser" could be a good product strategy. A plugin/extension can also be developed by independent developers, which seems much more fitting for the size of the target demographic. Maybe I'm missing something.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, something like 50k users is a drop in the bucket. It's a nice size for a community, but not big enough to warrant a browser feature.

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[–] SendMePhotos 20 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Wow that might actually be amazing. A comment section for every page?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I swear Lemmy comments for YouTube had a feature that let you open it for any page, but it seems the GitHub and Firefox page been deleted.

Edit: Looks like I've still got a fork: https://github.com/Steve-Tech/Reddit-Comments-for-YouTube (it says Reddit, but works for Lemmy too)

[–] postmateDumbass 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Think of all the tracking data!

[–] SendMePhotos 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] postmateDumbass 3 points 3 weeks ago

Im on your side, just need a way to protect the users.

Putting a frame under every url you browse to needs to be done right™️

[–] Clbull 9 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Gab tried to pull the same thing with their Dissenter plugin. It was such a bad idea that Mozilla and Google banded together to remove the extensions from their stores for ToS violations.

Now imagine what a nightmare it would be to moderate the ability to comment on anything online with actual standards and decency.

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[–] tabular 84 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I didn't use it but the lack of an explanation is a frustrating response. Give feedback to the feedback??

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They're a small indie company and they need the server power to run the AI in Firefox

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think Firefox has any AI that they need to run for you. The language thing (if that counts) is local thing.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It was a joke about how it seems they're putting most, if not all, efforts into their AI

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, okay. I just know about the translating thing and the sidebar

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Good. Stop fucking around, focus on the browser. If they can make it provide value that Google can't, they are succeeding. Google cant compete in privacy.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

They are dropping it to focus on the important shit. Forcing bullshit genai stuff into their browser and working on adtech.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago

Forcing bullshit genai stuff into their browser

It's an opt-in feature that just opens whatever AI service you picked, their website in a sidebar. You can even use your own local AI if you want to. Or not use it at all. But the AI isn't actually in your browser any more than it is in your browser when you open their website in a tab.

If the translation thing counts as AI then that's actually a really cool and more private use of it compared to querying a server. It can do the translation completely locally. Works pretty well too in my experience, though it does think for a moment when you tell it to translate.

[–] douglasg14b 3 points 3 weeks ago

Got to love ignorant hot tapes based on article headings.

[–] ZephyrXero 44 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Sigh, so is Mozilla just like Google now? Can't trust any services to stick around?

[–] almar_quigley 71 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s a mastodon server. I don’t want them spending money on that anyways. They should be focusing on the browser, not social media infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Exactly. They should be dropping anything that isn't revenue positive or isn't furthering the goals of browser. Rust is a great project because it's being used directly in the browser. Mastodon isn't, because it has no relationship to their browser efforts. I'm on the fence about the VPN, but if it's revenue positive, it should probably stick around, and it sort of benefits the browser as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The VPN is really not much more than white labelled mullvad + the browser extension with separate VPN servers per container.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Right, and if it's not profitable, it should be scrapped, but if it pays for itself, I see no harm in keeping it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

The majority of those are nothing burgers. They shut down their dedicated password app when they integrated its features into the browser, they shut down their encrypted file sharing tool when they realized it was being used for very nefarious uses, they shut down Positron and it's affiliated projects because nobody started using it over Electron... and a lot of the rest are extremely niche (like viewing websites in 3d, cool but not all that useful).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The same now with mozilla.social. nobody is using it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Was it even a goal? Mastodon can be used for internal communication, e.g. https://social.kernel.org is only for linux developers, and I know a local university where they have a defederated mastodon instance where every student automatically got registered.

If they just needed it for posting news maybe simply having a profile on one of the big instances would be enough. I see they had only 270 users.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Always has been

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

It is again beginning to feel rather dysfunctional..

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[–] xenoclast 33 points 3 weeks ago

Until they change CEOs again. I wonder what it'd be like to not have corporate parasites everywhere

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

They're still on Xitter, though.

[–] TheGrandNagus 54 points 3 weeks ago

I mean, maintaining an instance is a larger job than having a twitter account. I don't think they're all that comparable.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yes, I think that's natural. A large segment of their market is still there. Throwing away years of work when the accounts cost relatively little to maintain would be wasteful. I don't see how their presence there is relevant to this discussion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

Sorta. Only as a discussion starter, if you wanted. I was unsure how to frame my thoughts without being rude, but it seems I ended up being confusing instead. I'll edit my comment to try again, please try to read it in its intended spirit.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

Do they at least have an account on someone else's instance then? If they do, it's fine for them to not have to spend resources on maintaining their own.

[–] meliante 6 points 3 weeks ago

You either die the hero

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 3 points 3 weeks ago

Oh no! Anyway…

[–] testtchncs 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

what else does Mozilla have? matrix ? @[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

It seems like there is no user named "Mozilla" on the lemmy.world instance. However, Mozilla does have a variety of other projects and services apart from Firefox and Thunderbird, such as:

  1. Mozilla Matrix: Mozilla operates an instance of the Matrix chat protocol. You can join and communicate on their Matrix channels.
  2. Mozilla VPN: A virtual private network service.
  3. Pocket: An application for managing a reading list of articles from the web.
  4. Common Voice: A project to help make voice recognition open and accessible to everyone.
  5. MDN Web Docs: Documentation for web technologies, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

For more detailed information, you might want to visit the Mozilla website or their GitHub repository.

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