Werd I/O

Like many of you, I received a survey today with the title: “What is your dream for Mozilla?” I filled it in, but the potential for Mozilla is so expansive and critical to the future of the internet that I wanted to address my thoughts in greater depth here.

Mozilla describes its mission as follows:

Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

I believe Mozilla is best placed to achieve this goal by explicitly fostering an ecosystem of open, accessible software that promotes user independence, privacy, and safety. It should be a facilitator, supporter, and convener through which projects that promote these values thrive.

What should its next chapter look like in an internet increasingly dominated by corporate interests? Mozilla has the tools, the history, and the mission to reclaim its role as a pioneer of the open web. But doing so requires bold steps and a renewed focus on impact and innovation.

A mission focus on impact

Its success should be determined through impact. It should publish an impact report that shows how it has spread usable, private, open software worldwide, and solicit donations based on that activity. How has Mozilla prevented a monopoly of ad-driven surveillance technology in different markets? How has Mozilla helped people keep themselves safe online while seeking reproductive healthcare? How has Mozilla tech been used in authoritarian regions to support community well-being? It should clarify its roadmap for turning its mission into measurable outcomes, and then be unashamed about fundraising based on this directed mission. These focused impact reports would guide internal strategy, demonstrate accountability, and inspire public and donor trust.

Conversely, I believe Mozilla is not a media company. That means it should not attempt to be Consumer Reports; we don’t need it to navigate the world of AI for us or tell us what to buy for Christmas. Those are valuable pursuits, but Mozilla should leave them to existing technology media companies.

Impact-focused products that bring something new to the table

I believe this impact focus means that it should not seek to charge consumers for its products. If the mission is to make the internet open, accessible, private, and safe for individuals, as much friction towards achieving that goal should be removed as possible.

Many of Mozilla’s efforts already fall in line with this mission. The Firefox browser itself is an open, anti-surveillance alternative to corporate-driven browsers like Chrome, although it has fallen behind. This is in part because of anti-competitive activity from companies like Google, and in part because some of the most interesting innovations in the browser space have happened elsewhere: for example, Arc’s radical changes to browser user experience are really compelling, and should probably have been a Mozilla experiment.

Firefox Relay — which makes it easy to hide your email address when dealing with a third party — and Mozilla VPN are similarly in line at first glance. But because the VPN is little more than a wrapped Mullvad VPN, with revenue splitting between the two organizations, it isn’t really adding anything new. In a similar vein, Relay is very similar to DuckDuckGo’s email protection, among others. And why is one branded as Firefox and one as Mozilla? I’m sure the organization itself has an answer to this, but I couldn’t begin to tell you. (For what it’s worth, Mozilla seems to agree about the distraction and has scaled back support for these services.)

AI is a new, hot technology, but there’s nothing really new for Mozilla to do here, either. Many vendors are working on AI privacy, because that’s where a lot of the real revenue is: organizations with privacy needs that relate to sensitive information. There is no reason why Mozilla will be the best at creating these solutions, or differentiated in doing so.

Instead, to paraphrase Bill Clinton: it’s the web, stupid.

If Firefox is the biggest, most impactful software product in Mozilla’s arsenal today, how can it bring it back to prominence? One interesting route might be to use it as a way for third parties to explore the future of the browser. Mozilla can ship its own Firefox user experience, but what if it was incredibly simple for other people to also build wildly remixed browsers? Could Mozilla build unique features, like privacy layers tailored for vulnerable users, that competitors don’t offer?

Projects like Zen Browser already use core Firefox to build new experiences, but there’s a lot of coding involved, and they’re not discoverable from within Firefox itself. What if they were? One can imagine Firefox browsers optimized for everything from artists and activists to salespeople and investors, all available from a browser marketplace. The authors of those experiences would, by sharing their unique browser remixes, help spread the Firefox browser overall. While browsers like Chrome serve corporate goals around ads and analytics, the Mozilla mission gives Firefox a mandate to be a playground for innovation. It should be that. (And, yes, AI can play a supporting role here too.)

Note that while I think products should be made available to consumers free of charge, that doesn’t mean that Mozilla shouldn’t make money. For example, if there’s revenue in specific experiences for certain enterprise or partner use cases, why not explore that? Enterprise offerings could directly fund Mozilla’s open-source projects, reinforcing its mission.

Truly supporting a vibrant open web

While Mozilla’s products are key to advancing its mission, its influence can extend far beyond the browser. Mozilla has the potential to be a home base for similar projects that have the potential to create a more open, private, safe and self-directed web.

While that might mean support technically — developer resources, libraries, and guides — the most burning needs for user-centric open source projects are often unrelated to code. These include:

• Experience design. Most open source projects lean towards coding as a core competency and aren’t able to provide the same polished user experiences as commercial software. Mozilla could bridge the gap by providing training and direct resources to elevate the design of user-centric open source projects, and to prepare these projects to work well with designers.
• Legal help. Some projects need help with boilerplate documents like privacy policies, terms of service agreements, and contributor license agreements; others need assistance figuring out licensing; some will have more individual legal needs. It’s highly unlikely that most projects have the ability to produce this in-house, meaning they either leave themselves open to liabilities by not getting legal advice, or have to retain legal help at a high cost to themselves. Mozilla can help.
• Policy assistance. Mozilla could help projects navigate complex regulatory environments, such as GDPR or CCPA compliance or lobbying for user-first policies globally.
• Funding. Offering grants or investments for vetted open source projects could amplify Mozilla’s impact. It’s done this in the past a little bit through its defunct WebFWD accelerator and specific grants, and it’s doing a version of this today with its accelerator for advancing open source AI. There’s room for a wider scope here, and a little bit of a carrot-and-stick approach: for example, funding could be contingent on a project demonstrating its human-centered approach and being willing to work with designers.
• Go-to-market strategy. Mozilla could provide guidance on launching and scaling projects, including identifying its first users, building community, and targeting messaging to them. Mozilla could host workshops on community engagement and messaging, enabling projects to scale effectively.
• Regional impact. Different geographic communities have different needs. Regional accelerators could deliver it as a curriculum to local cohorts of open source teams. Regional accelerators could support open-source teams with tailored workshops and local mentorship, building capacity while addressing regional challenges.

A centralized Mozilla hub could provide templates, guides, and access to expert mentorship for projects to tackle legal, design, and policy hurdles. One-to-one help could be provided for the projects with the most potential to meaningfully fulfill Mozilla’s impact goals. And through it all, Mozilla can act as a connector: between the projects themselves, and to people and organizations in the tech industry who want to help mission-driven projects.

By creating a thriving ecosystem of user-centric open-source projects, Mozilla can ensure its mission outlasts individual products.

The dream of the nineties is alive in Mozilla

Mozilla has the tools, the history, and the mission to make the internet better for everyone. By fostering innovation and empowering communities, it can reclaim its role as a leader in the fight for an open web. Now is the time for bold action — and a strong focus on its mission.

That’s my dream for Mozilla. Now, what’s yours?

I care a lot about the future of social media. It’s how many of us learn about the world and connect to each other; putting something so important in the hands of a handful of centralized corporations has repeatedly proven itself to be harmful. That’s why I’m so excited about the growth of federated and decentralized social media in the wake of Elon Musk’s disastrous acquisition of X. These platforms give more control to communities and individuals, reducing the risks of a central corporation manipulating the global conversation through algorithms or other means.

Although a lot of my focus has been on Fediverse platforms like Mastodon, from time to time I’ve mentioned that I’m really impressed with what the Bluesky team has achieved. The Bluesky platform is growing very quickly and seems to be the go-to choice for less-technical users like journalists, politicians, and so on who want to leave X. Bluesky offers valuable insights for anyone interested in the future of social media and how to build a vibrant alternative platform.

• Easy to understand onboarding: You register at the Bluesky site. To get you started, you can access “starter packs” of users to follow around various topics, so your feed is never empty. Here’s a starter pack of ProPublica journalists, for example, or people in tech from underrepresented communities.
• It feels alive: The posts are both timely and engaging. This is in contrast to Mastodon, where they’re purely chronologically-ordered, or Threads, where I was still seeing hopeful posts from before the election a week later (because they piggybacked on the Instagram algorithm, which is optimized for a different kind of content). News can actually break here — and so can memes. Find an old-timer and ask them about ALF: an inside joke that I absolutely refuse to log an explanation for here.
• Search works universally: It simply doesn’t on Mastodon, and I can only describe the search engine on Threads as weird.
• It’s moderated and facilitated: The site has easy-to-understand moderation. More than that, the team seems to have invested in the culture of the community they’re creating. Particularly in the beginning, they did a lot of community facilitation work that set the tone of the place. The result — so far — is a palpable sense of fun in contrast to a seriousness that pervades both Threads and Mastodon.

At the same time, Bluesky benefits from an open mindset, an open-source codebase, and a permissionless protocol that allows anyone to build tools on top of it. Critics will note that it isn’t really decentralized yet: there’s one dominant personal data store that basically everyone is attached to. In contrast to Mastodon’s model of co-operative communities anchored by a non-profit, Bluesky is a venture funded startup that grew out of Twitter.

Other critics complain about the involvement of Jack Dorsey, who created Twitter and therefore a lot of the problems that we’re all trying to get away from. I don’t think that’s a valid complaint: he famously both established Bluesky because he felt that Twitter should have been a protocol rather than a company, and both left the board and closed his account after becoming dissatisfied with the way Bluesky was run as a moderated community. He has since described X as “freedom technology” and put a ton of his own money behind Nostr. I’ve personally found Nostr to be a particularly toxic decentralized network dominated by Bitcoin-loving libertarians. This may indicate where his priorities lie.

I’ll be honest: on paper, I like Mastodon’s model better. It’s a community-driven effort paid for transparently by donations, much like any non-profit. (Much like any non-profit, the bulk of the funding comes from larger entities, but these are advertised on the Mastodon website alongside smaller-dollar donors.) I also like the co-operative model where smaller communities can dictate their own norms but interoperate with the larger network, which means that, for example, communities for trans posters or journalists can provide more directed support.

But this model faces a much harder road. It means, firstly, that there is less money to go around (Bluesky has raised $36M so far; Mastodon raised €326K in 2022), and secondly, that it’s harder to understand for a new user who wants to join in. It’s also clear that CEO Jay Graber has established a cohesive team that by all accounts is a lot of fun to work in. That counts for a lot and has helped to establish a healthy community.

Even with its hurdles, Mastodon’s model embodies a rare, user-first ethos, and I believe it’s worth supporting. In the end, the future of social media may depend on which values we choose to uphold.

I suspect both will continue to exist side by side. If I had to guess, Bluesky might become a mainstream platform for people who want something very close to pre-acquisition Twitter (which it is rapidly becoming right now), and the Fediverse might become the default glue between any social platform. For example, I post my book reading activity on Bookwyrm, which I find more useful in its own right than Goodreads. Other people can follow and interact with my book reviews there, or they can follow from other Fediverse-compatible platforms like Mastodon. (Right now, my followers are about half and half). Mastodon itself will allow niche supportive communities to grow, and of course, the fact that Threads is building Fediverse support means that any of its hundreds of millions of users will be able to interact with anyone on any other Fediverse platform.

Bluesky may evolve into a streamlined alternative to Twitter, while the Fediverse could serve as a decentralized, cross-platform connector among diverse networks. This dynamic offers a promising future for users, with both worlds learning from one another in a productive tension that has the potential to strengthen the open social web. That’s good news for everyone who values an open, user-driven future for social media.

I’ve noticed a few mistaken assumptions circulating on social media lately, so I thought it was worth clarifying a few things around privacy and surveillance.

Much of this depends on the idea of a threat model: a term that refers to the potential risks you face based on who you think might try to access your information and why.

Making a social media profile private does not make it safe from surveillance.

While it may make you safe from harassment by preventing drive-by comments from outside attackers, its content is still accessible by the platform owner.

For centralized services like Threads and X, this is hopefully obvious: the platform owner can see your content. However, it’s also true on other platforms. For example, the owner of your Mastodon instance could theoretically view your non-public posts.

If your main concern is harassment, setting your account to private can be a helpful step. If your threat model is a state actor or other large entity accessing your information and using it to incriminate you in some way, it does not prevent that from happening if the social media platform co-operates. For example, if X was compelled (or chose to) provide information about users posting about receiving reproductive healthcare, it could do that regardless of an account’s privacy settings. Threads or a Mastodon instance could similarly be subpoenaed for the same information.

Remember, even with privacy settings in place, your data belongs to the platform owner, not you. This is a critical point to understand in any digital space, regardless of ownership or whether it is centralized or decentralized. Even if a platform is decentralized, privacy still depends on who runs your instance, their stance on co-operating with outside requests for information, and the legal demands of the region they reside in.

If a platform chooses to co-operate, a warrant is not necessarily required for this information, and you may never find out that it has happened.

Decentralized/federated social networks are not free from surveillance.

These platforms are based on permissionless protocols, which allow anyone to join the network and interact without needing special permissions from anyone. This is great for accessibility but can also make it easier for bad actors to watch public posts.

In some ways, that makes them easier to surveil than centralized services. For an actor to surveil X or Threads, they would need to work with the platform owner. For an actor to do the same thing with Mastodon or Bluesky, they simply need to implement the protocol and go looking.

This is where making your account private can help, as long as the platform owner is not directly co-operating. (As described above, if a platform owner does co-operate, all data stored with them is potentially accessible.) If your account is public, your information can be freely indexed with no limitations.

Social media is not suitable for sensitive conversations.

As we’ve seen, privacy settings are helpful but limited. Given the limitations of privacy settings on social media, for truly sensitive conversations, it’s wise to switch to encrypted channels. You should also be mindful of what you share on any social platform, even with privacy settings enabled.

I always recommend Signal for sensitive conversations, and suggest using it to replace DMs entirely. You’re much more likely to use it for a sensitive conversation if you’re already using it for everyconversation. Unlike the alternatives, it’s open source and auditable, not owned by a large corporation, end-to-end encrypted, works on every platform, and is very easy to use.

You should also consider using Block Party, which is the most user-friendly tool I’ve seen for locking down your social media privacy settings.

In the end, privacy settings can only go so far. Using a platform like Signal can make a meaningful difference in safeguarding your most sensitive information. It’s a free, simple choice. But even more than that, it’s worth remembering: the point of social media is that someone is always watching. Act accordingly.

If you’re looking for signal, here are some non-profit newsrooms that speak truth to power on a national scale. You can follow all of them for free; all of them could also use your support.

ProPublica

ProPublica investigates abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.

Website | Mastodon | Flipboard | Threads | Bluesky | Newsletters | RSS

The 19th

The 19th exists to empower women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those from underrepresented communities — with the information, resources and tools they need to be equal participants in our democracy.

Website | Flipboard | Threads | Bluesky | Newsletters | RSS

Grist

Grist is dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices.

Website | Flipboard | Threads | Bluesky | Newsletters | RSS

The Marshall Project

The Marshall Project seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.

Website | Threads | Newsletters | RSS

The Markup

The Markup investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society.

Website | Mastodon | Flipboard | Threads | Newsletters | RSS

Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting

Reveal is an investigative radio show and podcast that holds the powerful accountable by reporting about everything from racial and social injustices to threats to public safety and democracy.

Website | Flipboard | Threads | Newsletter | RSS

Bellingcat

Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research.

Website | Mastodon | Threads | Bluesky | RSS

What a morning.

I know this quote has been shared and reshared ad infinitum, but it gives me hope today, and I hope it will do the same for you:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Fred Rogers

You will always find people who are helping.

Some slightly disconnected thoughts:

Going forward, I don’t know that I want my private conversations to be accessible by any third party. Privacy and security were always important, but feel like even more of a necessity today. If you want to contact me, going forward the best option is Signal, the open source end-to-end encrypted chat app. I’ve been using it for years, but now I’d like to convince more of you to join me. My username is benwerd.01. There’s a Signal link at the bottom of every page on my website; if you have Signal, you can click here to contact me. I’d love to chat.

The first thing I posted this morning was a call to action for journalists: “your job, now more than ever, is to speak truth to power”. On every platform, I received replies that indicate a lack of trust in journalism that I think is well-earned. People believe that journalism has generally served to preserve the status quo rather than illuminate the needs and lives of the people who need it. At its worst, it’s carried water for nationalist movements in the false pursuit of balance. While I think there are exceptions — I’m proud to work for ProPublica, which I believe is one, and I think fondly of The 19th, Grist, The Marshall Project, Rest of World and others — I also think this is largely true. Many news institutions have fully abdicated their responsibility. The others (perhaps all of them?) need to listen to their non-managerial workforces and make cultural changes to make themselves truly representative of the communities they want to reach and serve.

I’ve been thinking about pulling down my whole website and scrubbing it from the Internet Archive. I no longer know if what I’m saying here is helpful or if it’s additive in any way. I’m wondering about refocusing on more proactive rather than reactive modes of communication. I also don’t know — for all the talk about freedom of speech — that there won’t be retaliation for advocating for certain values or for working where I do. I wouldn’t truly go away if I did this, but I’d publish in a different way. I floated this idea on Mastodon, and I think I’ve been convinced not to, at least for now; publishing is an act of protest.

For many people in America — women, trans people, immigrants, people of color, people who are gay, anyone who is not in the in-group — there are safe regions and unsafe regions. It’s not even about states, but local state rules obviously do matter (for example, Austin might feel safer than Dallas, but Texan reproductive health rules still apply). As of this morning, I find myself living in a red state for the first time in my life. As I walked to daycare this morning, past the local elementary school, I passed a woman in a camo MAGA hat; someone who was willing to vote against the interests of at least half of the children in the building she was outside. She voted for a politician who said school shootings were a fact of life. We need to protect the safe spaces. We need more spaces to be safe. I need to be able to create safe spaces for others.

I love my friends and I want them to be safe.

The stock market rose this morning. I understand what that means and I don’t know what to do with it.

I saw a number of comments this morning (particularly in local Facebook groups) along the lines of, “I’m grateful we stopped the communist invasion”. The idea that the Democrats are anything close to communist is ludicrous, but I don’t know how we deal with this perception that what people are asking for — healthcare, civil rights, welfare — is some kind of extremist position. These things would simply bring America in line with the benefits citizens of every other developed nation enjoy. You can intellectually interrogate it, but I don’t think that’s helpful. How do you actually swing people around? Can you? Is it a pipe dream to make America a tolerable democratic nation?

I used to work at a startup accelerator, Matter, where we’d start our demo days with a speech that said: “stories define us”. I think that’s right. (It went on to say “technology empowers us” and, to be frank with you, I’m no longer sure about that line.) Stories teach us what it means to be human and elevate lived experiences. Some are simply the stories of real peoples’ lived experiences; that is journalism, which continues to be incredibly integral to democracy, despite the abdications of its management. Other stories are art that is crafted to shine a light. Camus said, “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth,” and I truly believe it. Every story, every heartfelt piece of fiction, is a real thing that can’t be taken away from us. Stories define us. They are rebellion. We should tell more stories.

All that we have is each other. We rise together or we fall together. Today feels like a fall. But we can still rise.