Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future
Consumers are hungry for a new way of social networking, where trust and safety are paramount and power isn't centralized with a Big Tech CEO in charge...
What do you think?
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Mozilla expanding into social media feels like it will be walking a very delicate line regarding privacy. Things like Pocket have already been contentious enough.
They are putting a lot of emphasis on recommendation feeds and helping content publishers "build audiences", and of course there will ultimately be some form of (so far unspoken) monetisation. Mozilla are only going get so far with that until they start wanting user data, data which will be so temptingly convenient when it's tied to Mozilla accounts.
Chrome has already demonstrated the negative consequences of web browsers and web platforms becoming too intertwined. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but even with the best of intentions I'm not sure Mozilla can avoid the same fate here.
I think Mozilla sees the writing on the wall, and they're trying to find some sort of corporate revenue stream that isn't based entirely on Google, which is a healthy exercise for them.
Unfortunately the core kernel of browser users, who are only hanging on by their fingernails, are very security conscious, FOSS supporters, opinionated users.. which is a difficult audience to market to different business revenue streams.
Expanding their user base to more " normal " users would give them a larger marketable user base for their alternative revenue efforts. Building that increased user base though, it's tricky.
Frankly, Mozilla ought to give up on trying to "monetize" the user base in the typical Silicon Valley abusive marketing way, and instead just resign themselves to soliciting donations.
Yup, Wikipedia banners not out of the question imo. But they need to ditch google to do it
