0x1C3B00DA

consequence of the terminally-online brain rot

Disagree. Its a consequence of corporations loudly proclaiming their support for groups when it cost nothing (think Black History Month here in the US). Corporations like to use a lot of empty marketing talk about societal issues when they can get away with it and ppl have decided to fight that by pushing companies to actually takes stands. Also, corporations here in the US have much larger voices than individual (and again this is because of the corporations' own actions), so some ppl see it as a way they can actually have an influence on their govt.

Web 1.0 means no interactivity outside of forms (client to server request<-> response cycle). Web 2.0 was the label used when sites started gaining interactivity, using Javascript.

Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox

Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization

This is from the Mozilla release. The second quote does say "Firefox Organization" and not "Firefox", but it seems clear they are planning on integrating AI into Firefox.

But, I've reread @NotSteve_'s comment and they were saying the funding earned from AI could be put into Firefox, not AI itself. NotSteve wasn't claiming that putting AI into Firefox would bring in more funding, only that AI could be a separate source of revenue. So my question is moot.

how will putting AI in Firefox get them funding?

Again, both of those are older, more established instances so its more likely they are already aware of any given user.

And a lemmy user probably isn't the best test for this, because of how lemmy works. If anybody on the instances follows a lemmy community, all posts and comments in that community will make it to the instance. Which means lemmy users are probably spread around the fediverse more than users of other software.

If your instance is already aware of that user, you don't need the domain. Mastodon.social is the oldest mastodon instance and probably the biggest, so it is aware of a large majority of the fediverse.

If you know the person's twitter handle, its simple to search for them. People coming from centralized systems, don't realize that you have to include the domain for fediverse searches to work. I couldn't just find you by searching for p03locke, I'd have to search for @[email protected].

Also, if my instance has never interacted with you, your profile probably won't show posts when I find you (though this is a choice and I don't know why implementations won't fix it.)

Again, instance blocks makes this more complicated because my instance could block yours or yours could block mine and that would prevent this search from working but the user wouldn't know that.

Most people are pointed to joinmastodon.org first and have to pick an instance. And since they're not familiar with decentralization, they don't understand what that means. It's especially weird that they can't directly join mastodon on the site called "joinmastodon" but have to go to another site.

Then once you get past that to make an account, you have to find people and discovery has always been one of the worst aspects of the fediverse. And the graph of instance blocks means a new user may not even be able to find the people they care about and they won't know why.

If you know all this, its easy to understand. But for people used to a centralized system and unaware of all the intricacies of the network, there's a lot of snags here.

It's definitely possible. There are quite a few self hosting solutions that have UIs for installing/managing applications. The author is saying we need to make those better.

They are different because most users weren't aware of XMPP. They weren't making a conscious choice to use an open standard. The fediverse, on the other hand, has grown specifically because people are seeing the value of an open ecosystem.

When google started removing XMPP support, users weren't aware and didn't care (other than losing contact with a few holdouts). If Meta implements AP support and then removes that support or modifies it so that it breaks some of expectations of the fediverse, most users will move to instances that don't use Meta extensions. Meta can not take your instance or make it use their extensions, so an open fediverse will always exist.

People who say that are generally talking about the signup where you have to pick an instance. And then there's the worry over which other servers yours federates with. If you isolate your attention to a single instance, then all those worries go away.

The same already happens on the fediverse in regards to mastodon itself. A lot of people discuss the fediverse almost wholly in terms of mastodon.

They used it in a perfectly acceptable and understandable way. The definition you're describing as sarcastic is an official meaning of the word. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patronize