Mozilla to shut down Persona on November 30, 2016
When Mozilla introduced the then-called BrowserID system as a new authentication system for the web in 2011, it had big plans for it.
Designed to be a privacy-focused "one login to rule them all" services, it offered pretty much what similar authentication systems offered by the likes of Facebook or Google offered but without the privacy implications.
Things became complicated quickly when Mozilla decided to rename BrowserID to Persona, and the main reason for that the term Personas was already being used to describe lightweight themes for the Firefox browser.
So, when BrowserID became Persona, Personas became "themes" (which caused confusion as well as Mozilla made a distinction between themes and full themes then).
Persona did not really take off, which can be largely attributed to a lack of dedicated resources on Mozilla's part.
Then in 2014, the organization made Persona a community project and dedicated resources to it to keep it alive.
Persona shut down
Mozilla announced today that it made the decision to shut down Persona in November 2016 citing "low, declining usage" as the main reason for the decision.
Due to low, declining usage, we are reallocating the project’s dedicated, ongoing resources and will shut down the persona.org services that we run.
The decision has implications for websites that use Persona for authentication as the system cannot be used after November 30, 2016 anymore for that. This means that websites and services will have to remove Persona and replace it with a suitable alternative.
Mozilla plans to support Persona on a maintenance level to the day of the shut down of the system. Security issues will be dealt with "in a timely manner", services will be kept online, and support is offered on a mailing list and an IRC channel.
On November 30, 2016, the following will happen:
- Persona.org, and all services hosted on the domain and other domains related to the project will be shut down.
- Mozilla will remain the owner of the domain for security reasons.
- All user data stored by the authentication service will be destroyed.
Mozilla created a Wiki page that acts as a shutdown guideline for reliers. It explains the reasoning behind the shutdown (low usage), explains what is happening and offers mitigation suggestions.
Interestingly enough, self-hosting Persona is one of the suggestions. Since Persona code is open source, it is possible to do that but Mozilla does not really recommend it to most reliers because of the complexity of the code and lack of significant development in recent years.
Closing Words
Mozilla is making dramatic changes to the products and services it maintains. Products get shut down left and right, or removed from the organization, or changed in significant ways.
It is too early to tell if this is for the better. As far as Persona is concerned, it felt as if the service never had a fair chance and that seems to be mostly Mozilla's fault.
Now You: What's your take on the shutdown?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.