I like Jason but he completely missed the boat on this one.
The active migration away from social media networks that are owned, controlled by, and distorted by the richest men and most powerful companies in the world to a decentralized platform that is not owned and controlled by billionaires is one of the more hopeful things to happen in what has largely been a bleak year for the human internet as AI slop infects everything and billionaires put their thumbs on the scale of what we see on social media.
He says this and yet jumps to Bluesky, a platform created by Jack Dorsey and now owned and managed by a crypto bro? You don’t need powers of prophecy to see where Bluesky is headed.
Honestly I don’t know what’s up with the mass delusion about Bluesky being oligarch-free. It’s understandable that most don’t know or haven’t looked into it, but then some folks that should know better are displaying the same ignorance.
It’s very telling that all across lemmy this is being celebrated. Looks like most people completely missed the point.
I don’t myself like mastodon very much, but if you came to lemmy to stick it to the man it’s a bit silly to cheer on the next man, which is what bluesky is.
Twitter will remain a place for the Right and nut job grifters , probably absorb truth social and the others. bluesky will become the place for liberals and centrists who jerk each other off because they have a degree and gay friends and think they are enlightened.
People aren’t going to be convinced of social/communism overnight.
I celebrate the move to BlueSky as positive in that they are no longer propping up an apartheid tech bro who’s now running a meme branch of US Government, and also because many of them are doing the thing they were scared to do before: leave. They now know how that feels and what it will be like rebuilding friend groups and such.
It’s not the anti-corpo step many are deluding themselves to believe it is, but getting out of the muck and learning how to take the step to change something are both things I see as positives that can be guided to better things in the future.
musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him, and while musk might have comprehended how shitty a deal it was (i mean he tried to back out of the contract and all); he doesn’t seem like the guy who would be smart enough to avoid cost sunk fallacy and might want to buy bluesky to keep digging that hole. and jack wouldn’t turn him down for a bid on bluesky for the same reason he didn’t turn him down before - money. heck, if the rightwing shittards were ready to really destroy the “liberal web” they’d make sure musk could buy and convert bluesky too. nowhere for “liberals” to run after that, because they already had the option for mastodon and choose fucking bluesky like months to a flame.
musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him,
Yeah, certainly, or some other billionaire. I think it goes without saying that most of us here understand the flaws with centralized services.
I’m not saying it’s the best choice ever, but I’m hopeful that the choice to leave Xitter might do positive things to people’s mentality when BlueSky almost certainly repeats history. It’s not likely to happen right away, as even an offer to buy would take time to approve, so for now, I’m taking it as a net positive.
The Fediverse will continue to grow and change in the meantime, and we’ll all still be here to help them migrate to better things in the future.
Yea, it would seem the embrace from those “who should maybe know better” is based on it being the appropriate compromise to make progress in this field.
BlueSky is not just another centralised platform. It’s open source (or mostly), based on an open protocol and an architecture that’s hybrid-decentralised. The “billionaire” security, AFAICT, is that we can rebuild it with our own data should it go to shit.
He worked on scuttlebut/manyverse for a long while before moving on a year or so ago. Along with Paul Frazee, a core dev with bsky who’d previously done decentralisation, I think there’s a hunger to just make it work for people and not fail on idealistic grounds.
The interesting dynamic is that it seems like they’re making things that could lay lots of foundations for a lot of independent decentralised stuff, but people and devs need to actually pick that up and make it happen, and many users just want something that works.
So somewhat like lemmy-world and mastodon-social, they get stuck holding a centralised service whose success is holding hostage the decentralised system/protocol they actually care about.
For me, the thing I’ve noticed and that bothers me is that much of the focus and excitement and interest from the independent devs working in the space don’t seem too interested in the purely decentralised and fail-safe-rebuilding aspects of the system. Instead, they’re quite happy to build on top of a centralised service.
Which is fine but ignores what to me is the greatest promise of their system: to combine centralised and decentralised components into a single network. EG, AFAICT, running ActivityPub or similar within ATProto is plausible. But the independent devs don’t seem to be on that wavelength.
we’re on lemmy, yet over the past few days there has been probably 100+ posts and so many more pro-bluesky comments written. so i’d say most of us here apparently do not understand it.
the worst part about all this isn’t that bluesky is getting traction, i really couldn’t care less about it since i’m happy with Mastodon as it is. the worst part is that a critical mass is moving somewhere else than the fediverse which indirectly let’s facebook groups maintain their dominance over the hobby space. it may sound contrived, but i firmly believe that if the fediverse gains critical mass. regardless of service. then the hobby space could actually, finally, move off that shitty platform, but for the third time, Mastodon devs didn’t care to cease the moment, so it’s never going to happen, and probably not even when the flagship (Mastodon) finally launches groups (which was promised a 2020 release, 4 years behind schedule and absolutely no updates, feels like vapor ware at this point and facebook will always be king because of it). but, maybe bluesky will offer a good groups feature, and then the hobby space will happily move from one dumpster fire to another, yay. i guess, the devil you know, and all that, has never been more appropriate.
And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to.
That’s up to us. Convincing people to join the Fediverse and showing them better alternatives to their favorite platforms (and teaching them how to use them) is our collective job, not some group of hobbyist devs.
Plus I think explosive growth would change the vibe of the Fediverse in a negative way, since most people expect it to be free (i.e. “I am the product”) and shitty (so always taking offense). I’m fine peeling people away over time.
For groups, I don’t know if Mastodon will ever get that or not. Friendica exists, it’s more analogous to Facebook than Mastodon, and it already has groups and public/private forums. I’m not really sure if that would be a great addition to the microblog format of Mastodon, anyway, so I don’t really care if it never comes.
musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him, and while musk might have comprehended how shitty a deal it was (i mean he tried to back out of the contract and all); he doesn’t seem like the guy who would be smart enough to avoid cost sunk fallacy and might want to buy bluesky to keep digging that hole. and jack wouldn’t turn him down for a bid on bluesky for the same reason he didn’t turn him down before - money.
That’s actually not as easy with Bluesky. It’s decentralized enough that buying it doesn’t help control it that well. The previous owners or someone else could easily go set up another shop and compete using the same network and protocol.
Do I wish Mastodon were coming out on top? Sure. But Bluesky is still a significant improvement.
There are already smaller appviews that use the existing hosting/authentication infra, but bypassing the bsky appview aggregation. Nothing with any real scale but for example there is a barebones reddit/hackernews equivalent https://frontpage.fyi/
I like Jason but he completely missed the boat on this one.
He says this and yet jumps to Bluesky, a platform created by Jack Dorsey and now owned and managed by a crypto bro? You don’t need powers of prophecy to see where Bluesky is headed.
Honestly I don’t know what’s up with the mass delusion about Bluesky being oligarch-free. It’s understandable that most don’t know or haven’t looked into it, but then some folks that should know better are displaying the same ignorance.
At least maybe some more regular people will learn about decentralization (and alternative ways there) from this mass adoption?
It’s very telling that all across lemmy this is being celebrated. Looks like most people completely missed the point.
I don’t myself like mastodon very much, but if you came to lemmy to stick it to the man it’s a bit silly to cheer on the next man, which is what bluesky is.
Twitter will remain a place for the Right and nut job grifters , probably absorb truth social and the others. bluesky will become the place for liberals and centrists who jerk each other off because they have a degree and gay friends and think they are enlightened.
Sorry , nobody asked for that rant .
Your rant is very much appreciated.
People aren’t going to be convinced of social/communism overnight.
I celebrate the move to BlueSky as positive in that they are no longer propping up an apartheid tech bro who’s now running a meme branch of US Government, and also because many of them are doing the thing they were scared to do before: leave. They now know how that feels and what it will be like rebuilding friend groups and such.
It’s not the anti-corpo step many are deluding themselves to believe it is, but getting out of the muck and learning how to take the step to change something are both things I see as positives that can be guided to better things in the future.
musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him, and while musk might have comprehended how shitty a deal it was (i mean he tried to back out of the contract and all); he doesn’t seem like the guy who would be smart enough to avoid cost sunk fallacy and might want to buy bluesky to keep digging that hole. and jack wouldn’t turn him down for a bid on bluesky for the same reason he didn’t turn him down before - money. heck, if the rightwing shittards were ready to really destroy the “liberal web” they’d make sure musk could buy and convert bluesky too. nowhere for “liberals” to run after that, because they already had the option for mastodon and choose fucking bluesky like months to a flame.
Yeah, certainly, or some other billionaire. I think it goes without saying that most of us here understand the flaws with centralized services.
I’m not saying it’s the best choice ever, but I’m hopeful that the choice to leave Xitter might do positive things to people’s mentality when BlueSky almost certainly repeats history. It’s not likely to happen right away, as even an offer to buy would take time to approve, so for now, I’m taking it as a net positive.
The Fediverse will continue to grow and change in the meantime, and we’ll all still be here to help them migrate to better things in the future.
Yea, it would seem the embrace from those “who should maybe know better” is based on it being the appropriate compromise to make progress in this field.
BlueSky is not just another centralised platform. It’s open source (or mostly), based on an open protocol and an architecture that’s hybrid-decentralised. The “billionaire” security, AFAICT, is that we can rebuild it with our own data should it go to shit.
This thread from Andre Staltz is indicative I think: https://bsky.app/profile/staltz.com/post/3lawesmv6ik2d
He worked on scuttlebut/manyverse for a long while before moving on a year or so ago. Along with Paul Frazee, a core dev with bsky who’d previously done decentralisation, I think there’s a hunger to just make it work for people and not fail on idealistic grounds.
That’s cool. Well, I wish them well. Hopefully they can make something that’s good for people and not just chase profits.
The interesting dynamic is that it seems like they’re making things that could lay lots of foundations for a lot of independent decentralised stuff, but people and devs need to actually pick that up and make it happen, and many users just want something that works.
So somewhat like lemmy-world and mastodon-social, they get stuck holding a centralised service whose success is holding hostage the decentralised system/protocol they actually care about.
For me, the thing I’ve noticed and that bothers me is that much of the focus and excitement and interest from the independent devs working in the space don’t seem too interested in the purely decentralised and fail-safe-rebuilding aspects of the system. Instead, they’re quite happy to build on top of a centralised service.
Which is fine but ignores what to me is the greatest promise of their system: to combine centralised and decentralised components into a single network. EG, AFAICT, running ActivityPub or similar within ATProto is plausible. But the independent devs don’t seem to be on that wavelength.
we’re on lemmy, yet over the past few days there has been probably 100+ posts and so many more pro-bluesky comments written. so i’d say most of us here apparently do not understand it.
the worst part about all this isn’t that bluesky is getting traction, i really couldn’t care less about it since i’m happy with Mastodon as it is. the worst part is that a critical mass is moving somewhere else than the fediverse which indirectly let’s facebook groups maintain their dominance over the hobby space. it may sound contrived, but i firmly believe that if the fediverse gains critical mass. regardless of service. then the hobby space could actually, finally, move off that shitty platform, but for the third time, Mastodon devs didn’t care to cease the moment, so it’s never going to happen, and probably not even when the flagship (Mastodon) finally launches groups (which was promised a 2020 release, 4 years behind schedule and absolutely no updates, feels like vapor ware at this point and facebook will always be king because of it). but, maybe bluesky will offer a good groups feature, and then the hobby space will happily move from one dumpster fire to another, yay. i guess, the devil you know, and all that, has never been more appropriate.
And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to.
That’s up to us. Convincing people to join the Fediverse and showing them better alternatives to their favorite platforms (and teaching them how to use them) is our collective job, not some group of hobbyist devs.
Plus I think explosive growth would change the vibe of the Fediverse in a negative way, since most people expect it to be free (i.e. “I am the product”) and shitty (so always taking offense). I’m fine peeling people away over time.
For groups, I don’t know if Mastodon will ever get that or not. Friendica exists, it’s more analogous to Facebook than Mastodon, and it already has groups and public/private forums. I’m not really sure if that would be a great addition to the microblog format of Mastodon, anyway, so I don’t really care if it never comes.
That’s actually not as easy with Bluesky. It’s decentralized enough that buying it doesn’t help control it that well. The previous owners or someone else could easily go set up another shop and compete using the same network and protocol.
Do I wish Mastodon were coming out on top? Sure. But Bluesky is still a significant improvement.
Small steps
Whether it soon becomes possible to self host an AppView, the one remaining centralized component will tell us a lot about where it’s headed.
There are already smaller appviews that use the existing hosting/authentication infra, but bypassing the bsky appview aggregation. Nothing with any real scale but for example there is a barebones reddit/hackernews equivalent https://frontpage.fyi/