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Cory Doctorow answers this well: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
That BluSky is under an MIT license is fantastic, and it has the potential to federate to non-corporate owned servers, which is also great.
But the lack of actually doing that federation is the problem that puts the audience under control of the corporation, not the content creator.
For me, the biggest red flag is that they decided to create their own protocol when the Fediverse is well on its way with the ActivityPub protocol. They claimed, they decided against ActivityPub, because they expect to be able to come up with something technologically better.
I don't doubt for a second that some of their techies might have wet dreams about that, but it wouldn't get financed, if their management and investors didn't see an angle for making money off of it.
Which is ultimately what this is. Yet another venture-capital-backed company trying to get enough users on board, to the point where network effects prevent the users from leaving, and then the investors will want their money back manifold.
If they open up the protocol too much, the network isn't under their exclusive control anymore and they lose the ability to squeeze users for money, so I cannot see them following through with their promises of actually making it decentralized.
To start, let's verify that Bluesky the app is indeed open-source. Yep, it is. But that's not the same as having all the machinery be open-source, where anyone could spin up their own, compatible service; maybe named ExampleSky. To be compatible, ExampleSky would need to use the same backend interface -- aka protocol -- as Bluesky, which is known as ATProto. The equivalent (and older) protocol behind Mastodon and Lemmy is ActivityPub.
ATProto is ostensibly open-source, but some argue that it's more akin to "source available" because only the Bluesky parent company makes changes or extensions to the protocol. Any alternative implementation would be playing a game of chase, for future versions of the protocol. History shows that this is a real risk.
On the flip side, Mike Masnick -- founder of Techdirt, author of the 2019 paper advocating for "protocols, not platforms" that inspired Bluesky, and recently added member of the board of Bluesky, replacing Jack Dorsey -- argues that the core ability to create a separate "Bluesky2" is where the strength of the protocol lays. My understanding is that this would act as a hedge to prevent Bluesky1 from becoming so undesirable that forking to Bluesky2 is more agreeable. To me, this is no different than a FOSS project (eg OpenOffice) being so disagreeable that all the devs and users fork the project and leave (eg LibreOffice).
But why a common protocol? As Masnick's paper argues, and IMO in full agreement with what ActivityPub has been aiming towards for years, is that protocols allow for being platform-agnostic. Mastodon users are keenly aware that if they don't like their home instance, they can switch. Sure, you'll have to link to your new location, but it's identical to changing email providers. In fact, email is one of the few protocol-agnostic systems in the Internet still in continued use. Imagine if somehow Gmail users couldn't send mail to Outlook users. It'd be awful.
Necessarily, both ActivityPub and ATProto incorporate decentralization in their designs, but in different fashions. ActivityPub can be described as coarse decentralization, as every instance is a standalone island that can choose to -- and usually does -- federate with other instances. But at the moment, core features like registration, login, or rate limiting, or spam monitoring, are all per-instance. And as it stands, much of those involve a human, meaning that scaling is harder. But the ActivityPub design suggests that instances shouldn't be large anyway, so perhaps that's not too big an issue.
ATProto takes the fine-grained design approach where each feature is modular, and thus can be centralized, farmed out, or outright decentralized. Now, at this moment, that's a design goal rather than reality, as ATProto has only existed for so many years. I think it's correct to say for now that Bluesky is potentially decentralizable, in the coarse sense like how Mastodon and Lemmy are.
There are parts of the Bluesky platform -- as in, the one the Bluesky organization runs -- which definitely have humans involved, like the Trust and Safety team. Though compared to the total dismantlement of the Twitter T&S team and the resulting chaos, it may be refreshing to know that Bluesky has a functional team.
A long term goal for Bluesky is the "farming out" of things like blocklists or algorithms. That is to say, imagine if you wanted to automatically duplicate the blocks that your friend uses, because what she finds objectionable (eg Nazis) probably matches your own sensibilities, then you can. In fact, at this very moment, I'm informed that Bluesky users can subscribe to a List and implement a block against all members of the List. A List need not be just users, but can also include keywords, hashtags, or any other conceivable characteristic. Lists can also be user-curated, curated by crowd sourcing, or algorithmically generated. The latter is the long goal, not entirely implemented yet. Another example of curation is "Starter Packs", a List of specific users grouped by some common interest, eg Lawsky (for lawyers). Unlike a blocklist which you'd want to be updated automatically, a Starter List is a one-time event to help fill your feed with interesting content, rather than algorithmic random garbage.
So what's wrong with Bluesky then? It sounds quite nice so far. And I'm poised to agree, but there's some history to unpack. In very recent news, Bluesky the organization received more venture capital money, which means it's worth mentioning what their long term business plan is. In a lot of ways, the stated business plan matches what Discord has been doing: higher quality media uploads and customizations to one's profile. The same statement immediately ruled out any sort of algorithmic upranking or "blue checks"; basically all the ails of modern Twitter. You might choose to take them at their word, or not. Personally, I see it as a race between: 1) ATProto and the Bluesky infra being fully decentralized to allow anyone to spin up ExampleSky, and 2) a potential future enshittification of Bluesky in service of the venture capitalists wanting some ROI.
If scenario 1 happens first, then everyone wins, as bridging between ActivityPub and ATProto would make leaps and bounds, and anyone who wants their own ATProto instance can do so, choosing whether they want to rely on Bluesky for any/all features or none at all. Composability of features is something that ATProto can meaningfully contribute to the protocol space, as it's a tough nut to crack. Imagine running your own ATProto instance but still falling back on the T&S team at Bluesky, or leveraging their spam filters.
But if scenario 2 happen first, then we basically have a Twitter2 cesspool. And users will once again have to jump ship. I'm cautiously hopeful that the smart cookies at Bluesky can avoid this fate. I don't personally use Bluesky, being perfectly comfortable in the Fediverse. But I can't deny that for a non-tech oriented audience, Bluesky is probably what I'd recommend, and to opt-in to bridging with the Fediverse. Supposed episodes of "hyping" don't really ring true to me, but like I said, I'm not currently an invested user of Bluesky.
What I do want to see is the end result of Masnick's paper, where the Internet hews closer to its roots where interoperability was the paramount goal, and the walled gardens of yore waste away. If ATProto and ActivityPub both find their place in the future, then IMO, it'll be no different than IMAP vs POP3.
I did not know Mike Masnick was on the board of directors. That alone makes me interested in following what's going on with bluesky. I use to read techdirt religiously, but haven't been keeping up lately.
This is an incredible write up and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I've used both platforms, and had fun with both. I barely use either for posting though, and more for trying to follow topics I like, as I do on Lemmy.
Anything to stop ending my Google searches in "reddit".
I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. This was basically an invitation to brain-dump my thoughts from this past week, in light of Bluesky's recent record user-counts, and also because I just finished reading the recently-published book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, a multi-faceted chronicle of how and why it happened and who knew what and when. Check your local library if they already have it.
I also follow Mike Masnick on Mastodon via Bluesky bridging, and listen to his podcast on the topic of Trust & Safety. He's also the one who coined the term Streisand Effect, which I think makes him fairly well qualified to write banger articles like Speedrunning The Moderation Curve, which are examples of unintended consequences running amok.
It has an owner who can do with it whatever he wants. When you participate in that, you give value to another's property. Matodon, lemmy and the rest of the fediverse are collective, they do not have a single owner, giving value to the platform only gives value to its users.
I don't know about the rest, but for me that is an insurmountable problem.
Isn't Eugen Rochko the owner of Mastodon? Isn't he and his company responsible for what happens to it?
Mastodon is non-proprietary software. So one person or company cannot own it in a meaningful sense.
His foundation might own the copyright on the name and logo, so that bad actors can't pretend to be them. That's pretty much it.
No, he is not the owner of Mastodon. No, his company is not responsible for what happens there, because there is no company or similar. A non-profit foundation (chaired by Eugen Rochko) develops the software and launches it on mastodon.social, and that foundation does not even participate in what the rest of the instances do. They could go crazy tomorrow, sell the domain or change the software to make it more invasive, the rest of the instances would be sent to hell and the network would continue as if nothing had happened
Yes. Mastodon is a product of Mastodon gGmbH. He is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) of the software. Anyone can fork the software if they so choose and make their own.
What I think @Foni@lemm.ee is trying to get at is that Mastodon is a non-profit and doesn't have investors looking to make a return like Bluesky does. Mastodon is driven entirely by donations.
Maybe, but the thing about Mastodon, is that it works even without "Mastodon". There are a slew of other platforms that work seamlessly with Mastodon. So if Rochko decides to do something you don't like, you can move to Misskey or Pleroma or any number of other Mastodon-adjacent platforms while losing zero functionality.
What makes this work is ActivityPub as the backbone, as the protocol is open to anybody. ATProto, which Bluesky uses, is basically only used for Bluesky and nothing else. And Bluesky controls both their platform, and the protocol, whereas Mastodon controls only their own platform; the ActivityPub protocol is not owned or controlled by Mastodon in any way.
The VC money will require recoup on investment at some point. It might feel good now, but enshittification comes for them all. https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/
Its "federation" is complete shit that makes small independent instances almost untennable.
(not a tech expert, but I've been following it for a while, so I hope this is mostly correct)
Bluesky the app is currently the only (major) app running on the ATProtocol. The protocol itself is open source, and it is technically possible to run your own "federated" version (it's not called that in the ATProto ecosystem, but that's the rough equivalent in activitypub-speak). The protocol is still being developed, so it's not as feature-complete as some people are hoping for, but it's getting there.
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/29/some-slightly-biased-thoughts-on-the-state-of-decentralized-social-media/ for a more professional write-up on the differences, similarities, and criticisms of the major twitter alternatives.
Are you talking about the app specifically, or about Bluesky as a platform?
What should be wrong with it? Seems it's MIT licensed and has 1 tracking library according to Exodus... That's way better than their proprietary competition, and worse than a Free Software solution.
Though, it's just an app. The logic and complicated computations all happen on their servers.
In ten years when Jack Dorsey bankrupts yet another business or just wants a payday, Elon Musk can also buy it.
Dorsey has nothing to do with the Bluesky anymore. https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/5/24149543/jack-dorsey-gone-bluesky-board
Fair enough - replace Dorsey with "current owners".
The issue with Twitter and Blue Sky is that they're privately owned and can fuck over users however they want.
True, but like, not all private companies are like that?
Valve comes to mind.
He left Bluesky a while ago, and I believe he went back to Twitter, or something. He didn't like the moderation tools that they created. He wanted a completely unmoderated site.
He went to Nostr the cryptobro libertarian block chain social media network.
seems right. I like how nostr is gathering all the cryptobros, keeping them away from the fediverse