A lot of "centralization is good actually" and "federation is inherently discriminatory to <group I don't belong to but am speaking for>" around here at the moment
How much of this is FUD generated by Bluesky, Twitter and others? I'll wager a lot.
@matthiasott@heydon I mean, the big current beta version of Bluesky is doing that. They talk of composite, shareable moderation going forward, which sounds interesting.
It might be a whole load of hot air, and if it all falls flat on its face then fine - but it's interesting to watch. The devs are literally discussing what they're up to on main.
Arguably they let too many people in at once so they've had to concentrate on moderation so it doesn't just explode - which is slowing federation.
@sarajw@matthiasott@heydon I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt with the time they had and the funding they have. It's IMHO dangerous that the tech scene falls for this in droves and pretends that this is now the new safe space for marginalized groups when we all know the red flags. Non-tech people don't know better, but we do and we can drag those down with us who don't.
Bluesky hasn't even touched the hard parts yet and everything they did so far screams caution.
@sarajw@matthiasott@heydon The problem here really is that Mastodon has not proven to be a safe space either and that's terrible and can now be used against it. But the Fediverse is still a far more promising construct for online safety. When we talk about Twitter or Facebook, everyone knows who they are. You can deal with that risk. There's even more honesty in that in my opinion. Bluesky so far is a wolf in a sheep costume. They might turn out to be fine, but that's russian roulette.
@sarajw@matthiasott@heydon I have zero problems using some sillicon valley thing as long as I make that decision deliberately. I use Youtube, Insta, Discord and Github daily. Who am I to judge Bluesky for their A.I stuff? But I am pissed about tech people telling others that Bluesky is now the new safe space for those who have been burnt on Mastodon. And I'm pissed about them using federation as a marketing tool with a single server. This is just the most dishonest shit ever.
I do find that BS right now, at a totally surface subjective level, just feels like the right place for the people who want a non-Elon twitter, but who for whatever reason just don't get on with Mastodon, or had bad experiences here.
You're right that as things stand now, they're only safer because it's not open yet.
@bastianallgeier@sarajw@heydon I agree. I don’t know why I should trust them. Design is the rendering of intent. Writing your TOS so that you own all the content ever and implementing an AI moderation service, for example, are what they are doing at the moment, on purpose. They have 30 (?) million in funding for which some day someone wants to see some ROI. All I see currently is just another Silicon Valley startup, but this time, they also want to own the protocol. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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