this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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"the company looked at the history of social media over the past decade and didn’t like what it saw.... existing companies that are only model motivated by profit and just insane user growth, and are willing to tolerate and amplify really toxic content because it looks like engagement... "

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[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

We desperately need a company like Mozilla to take the reigns of something like Lemmy. The original developers are far too biased and short sighted to see the bigger picture, it needs to be an independent group that promotes more open source development.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's open source, anyone can fork the repo any time they want. The original devs won't like it but also there is bugger all they can do about it. It's just that it would be a full time job to take on and no one has the time.

[–] art@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The solution for capitalism-out-of-control is not more capitalism. The less big money players in the fediverse the better.

[–] Midnight@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mozilla is a non profit. The most "capitalist" they get is the Mozilla Corp a company owned by the foundation which is basically just for tax purposes. Having a big player in the fediverse helps.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They are funded by Google. I much prefer the "some random guys or whoever will fork their code" model of software for this sort of thing.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google pays them to be the default search engine, they're not funded by Google.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't that their main source of revenue?

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The rights to search sure are, but it's more like Google happens to be the one paying it right now. It could be Microsoft or Yahoo or anyone.

Mozilla definitely needs to diversity better here, but the implication that they're "funded by google" is completely misleading.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

The rights to search sure are, but it’s more like Google happens to be the one paying it right now. It could be Microsoft or Yahoo or anyone.

I don't buy that what they are paid reflects the value of their search rights. Google has antitrust interest in the continued existence of Firefox, that's why they would pay them, doesn't matter what they say it's for.

[–] Fungah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Amen. Everything google touches turns to shit. Everything.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

What we need is a bunch of small groups and companies. It isn't a problem if there isn't a giant centralization of power.

You don't see Salsa companies ruining tomatoes

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

lemmy and reddit are too niche. mozilla getting into mastodon or friendica is far better

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

God someone needs to help friendica. Mastodon and lemmy both have pretty decent ux. Friendica looks like it's from 2006.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

One of those half-billion user niches, eh.

[–] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 5 points 1 year ago

What do you mean? I haven't followed the development directly, I've just been a user and so far things seem to be going pretty well. Curious what shortsightedness you are talking about?

[–] AdmiralShat@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah I've considered leaving Lemmy because of who is in charge of development right now. They were not ready for its sudden burst in popularity and are not handling it well.

[–] copylefty@lemmy.fosshost.com 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Could you expand? How aren't they handling it well?

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The biggest issues that have come up so far are moderation and database optimization. The moderation issue is significant enough that large instances have considered shutting down, but the database optimization thing is what really drives me crazy. It is absurdly expensive for hosts considering we only have 35k MAU (just one of our midsized instances should be able to host the whole userbase for the cost they currently pay) and it has been largely deprioritized to the point that contributors who have tried to fix it have been told off.

It’s one thing if it’s just a couple of devs working on the project and trying their best, it’s an entirely different thing when a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues. At this point a significant number of users have been lost because the devs have been largely unable to capitalize on previous waves on growth due to slow development.

Not to mention things like authorized fetch, which if fixed would ensure Lemmy/Mastodon interoperability and would effectively make Lemmy the go to place for groups on the fediverse. This would constitute a huge boost in engagement from the broader fediverse.

Because of all this Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute. A fork would probably be a significant improvement as far as brand perception goes.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)
[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago

Definitely seen arguments on bugzilla, should disqualify Mozilla too.

[–] ericjmorey@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That post seems like an overreaction. Which makes me think that the linked GitHub issue is just the straw that broke the patience of the developer that has moved on. Which is fair, but their action to post an emotional and negative public announcement is as immature as the thing they're complaining about.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I am a dev, but not a Rust dev.

Rust, Go, and C# look like the future to me. Everyone is moving to strongly typed, explicitly typed languages for a reason.

Rust is as fast as it gets, and much much safer and easier than C or C++ at the cost of slightly odder syntax than higher level languages.

Microsoft has done great things with C# and open source and multi-platforming. It's the easiest, quickest, safest way to develop business applications. The performance is really pretty good until you compare it to Rust.

Go is between the two, but probably a little closer to Rust.

Other languages will stick around the same way Fortran has still been in use despite being deprecated for 30 years. But really nobody should be developing anything new in PHP.

[–] AdmiralShat@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol, this was what I was going to link to

[–] TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's a major fuckup from Snowe.

[–] itmike@fikaverse.club 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@AdmiralShat @Kushan It's federated right? so you don't need to leave, just move on to a different federated server in the network.. or am I missing something?

[–] AdmiralShat@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

It's the developers of the software itself, not the hosts of any particular instanve.

[–] tehbilly@le.ptr.is 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh snap, as someone who's recently joined, do you have some information you could point me to?

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You can have as many forks as you want, but that's a software engineer's solution to a social problem. Lemmy is the "name brand" now for ActivityPub based federated content aggregation, and it will be orders of magnitudes more difficult to get support for forks, both from a contributor and from a user perspective.

Just look at last year's Twitter migration, and the sea of people complaining about Mastodon not having features they felt were a requirement for adoption, while also ignoring every other Mastodon alternative on the Fediverse that had everything they were looking for.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Lemmy is the “name brand” now for ActivityPub based federated content aggregation

Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute. A fork would probably be a significant improvement as far as brand perception goes.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago

I think Mozilla has poor judgment and bad leadership. I don't mind if they participate but they shouldn't be in charge

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Where do you get that from? I have no love for tankies, but from what I've seen, they've built a product that's free of their biases, opensourced it and thrown it over the wall with no strings attached.

If you want to make a rooten-tooten white supremacist nazi instance with Lemmy, you can do exactly that. Nobody has to federate with you, and you don't have to federate with them.

Strange take.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Strange take.

Not for folks who have been following the development. It’s one thing if it’s just a couple of devs working on the project and trying their best, it’s an entirely different thing when a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues. It's become a pattern and will almost certainly continue. At this point a significant number of users have been lost because the devs have been largely unable to capitalize on previous waves on growth due to slow development. Because of all this Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute. A fork would probably be a significant improvement as far as brand perception goes.

[–] deus@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems to me they're saying Lemmy needs corporate backing to grow? Cause if they were so bothered by the opinions of the Lemmy devs they could simply use Kbin instead.

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well that or use an instance that isn't theirs, or doesn't even federate with theirs, or simply block theirs.🤔 I mean this is really throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I have no strong love for leninists/stalinists, and think they accomplish little other than making actual socialists look bad while not being socialist themselves. But I'm not that put off by them. They're generally fairly intellectually weak, and easy to maneuver around. Should you choose to interact with them.

[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are talking about the people developing lemmy, not some petty fight with the admins of one specific instance.

[–] deus@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Lemmy devs have no power over instances they do not run themselves.

[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Other than writing the software that all of those instances use to stay up to date and in contact with each other, regardless of their federation status.

[–] unnecessarygoat@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can't people just take the lemmy source code and make their own version of the lemmy api?