[ianbicking]

Unfortunately I believe Mozilla lacks the willpower and constitution to host user content. Hosting user content is messy and operational and forces the host to engage with the user content itself, and Mozilla will never be able to bring itself to do that. I'm sure they'll try again like they have tried before, but half-heartedly and once they realize what's involved they'll shut down the next experiment too.

My only actual hope would be if they could partner with someone who didn't find user content so distasteful and was willing to put in the work. There have always been dreams that crypto could literally hide all the hard work that's required, but it's just a cop out.

[rwl]

But my whole point was that they wouldn't be hosting content. The users would be hosting it themselves, on their local computers, serving it via their browser. Mozilla would just have to provide a way to give users a stable base URL (linked maybe to Firefox accounts) that they could give to other people.

[ianbicking]

Ah... I see, but I don't think it will help that much.

Actually making it work requires proxies and other complexities to cover any reasonable number of users. Those hosted tools take on a lot of the liabilities of user content even if the content isn't directly served.

The limitations will be hard to explain, content disappearing when your computer goes to sleep, or when your browser restarts for an update, or your firewall rules update, etc.

It's also open to abuse without the user's consent, and so Mozilla could become the conduit for hackers, phishing, etc.

Like crypto, I think this is just a dodge. Shifting responsibility to users who don't understand the responsibility they are given isn't an answer. This is hard work.