Who owns Bluesky? What’s the role of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey? What’s Bluesky’s business model? And what prevents another Elon Musk from buying and destroying it 10 years down the line?
When #Bluesky says "Protocols, not platforms", they intent two things:
Grabbing people's attention by telling them what they want to hear.
Presenting the AT Protocol as an alternative to #ActivityPub to capitalize on the current hype around #Mastodon, the #Fediverse and decentralized social media in general.
The two protocols are not equal solutions for the same problem and, in fact, AT is not even a (communication) protocol to begin with.
I wonder if people threatening to block Facebook's/Meta's new ActivityPub-compatible social media network also automatically block emails coming from gmail.com.
My $10 take on this #Mastodon vs #Bluesky dustup is: Maybe algorithms are a net good?
I've always scrolled chronologically—maniac that I am—so this isn't the issue I'm getting at. Looking at the unintended consequences of how design influences practice: I think I waste more time on Mastodon than I did on #Twitter because I'm seeing the same couple dozen popular (unarguably relevant) posts reboosted x10000.
And this seems to be a consequence of "People are the algorithm" design.
@csgordon The tricky thing about traditional engagement algorithms is that it typically involves giving the algorithm writer as much of your data as possible. On most of Big Social that includes things like "likes", comments, and shares but also lots of "soft data." Like on TikTok, for example, where the amount of time you watch a video is taken into consideration of how much you may have liked that video.
From everything I've been able to tell, #BlueSky intends there to be an algorithmic layer where all sorts of algorithms can access data on any of the instances. Some of these algorithms may be nice and fun, and others may be intentionally rage-baiting people. And I don't think they have controls for users to say "hey don't include my stuff in the rage-bait algorithm but do include it in the cute puppies algorithm."
From my perspective, the #ATProtocol gives way too much of users' data to algorithm writers. It does not feel like much of an improvement on Big Social.
@BrianJohnson@codesmith The term that pops out to me when I read about #ATProtocol is some notion of a "marketplace for algorithms." Despite the homo economicus logic-jargon, if they can eventually enable users to make choices on how or which algorithms effect their feeds, they'll have design advantage.
I decided to split out the #Lexicon parsing into a separate library. It needs some clean-up, better error handling, and tests, but it works. @activitypubblueskybridge
What will be the tangible difference between the BGS that #Bluesky is making for AT protocol and a really well-connected relay operated with #ActivityPub?
@atomicpoet Is it me, or does #ATProtocol appear unnecessarily complex‽ At least for the foundational aspect of what #BlueSky is trying to do‽ #ActivityPub might not be advanced, but it’s simple enough for the average non-tech person to understand (even if they do not understand the “how” of the #Fediverse).
I've been doing some research on #bluesky, nothing too deep. It piques my interest that they're trying to stand up an entire new federated protocol rather than just use (or even extend) ActivityPub. Not only does this make them incompatible with the Fediverse, it stands them in opposition to it with their own Fediverse-of-one. Remains to be seen if they'll be the VHS or the Betamax of this war.
Yes, they want more control. I personally think portability is just an excuse. I'm not holding my breath about them allowing people to 100% install BlueSky on their server, it's against their business model.
About the meta discussion, he's right about #Fediverse being "suspicious of Bluesky". They haven't given much reason not to be.
...since starting @ClimateMigration yesterday, the vast majority of Followers are from outside the US. Understand this is not a fun subject, but the disparity in attention to this topic is pretty striking.
From what I've read of it, "controlling your algorithms" is you getting to choose radio buttons from a list of canned topics or you get a couple fields to enter keywords into, give it a name, save it, and it's "yours"
If I am ever feeling imposter syndrome and start doubting my ability to write a protocol, I can always take a look at #Nostr , whose protocol is just this, a vague example of some JSON message object, and then a zillion nonbinding "enhancement possibilities" with no pretense at consistency.
idk why people are excited about this (ok, i do, everything in cryptobro universe is like this), it's literally just a traditional client-server architecture with the phrase "censorship resilient" stapled on top of it.
i think it's very funny when ppl are like 'this thing is very decentralized' but the governance of that thing is literally a git repository with completely undefined processes for how and who gets to make a change to the thing.
like i know decentralization is basically meaningless but one would hope that it could still mean "not centralized to a single point" but i guess as I learned yesterday with #ATProtocol 's placeholder DID method that resolves by quering a single domain, i guess not.
@jalcine I have zero interest in another profit-driven (1) platform with questionable terms of service (2) and lenient attitude towards moderation (3), and one that uses the term "decentralized" very generously, considering its single instance is invite-only.
The only difference is that #Jack and #Bluesky and the #ATProtocol seem to be farming out algo content and legal liabilities to unknown/unnamed third parties
While #Musk and #Twitter are still trapped with it in-house
lmao taking a look at #ATProtocol / #Bluesky's implementation of #DID, and I think they missed the "decentralized" part in their "placeholder" DID method.
Your domain's DNS entries just contain a (truncated) hash that then has to be resolved at plc.directory
recall that the DID method (plc) is part of the DID, so a different method (eg. web) is a different DID. to switch, you'd need to set an alsoKnownAs entry. plc only supports AT handles for alsoKnownAs.
#Bluesky / #ATProtocol is an extremely funny protocol that is explicitly designed to ensure that there are still powerful entities that own your attention. Sure! you can host your own personal data store, but everyone else will be getting your posts through a Big Graph Service that necessarily crawl all posts on the network, so it's actually mostly irrelevant.
Will we get adapters / relays for #ATProtocol and #ActivityPub maybe in the future? Anyone working on it? Sure Bluesky is VC backed etc but once they start down the journey of federation it feels like it could help reduce the “oh you’re oh BlueSky, sorry I can’t see your chat on Masto”
@mattjbones there’s already SkyBridge that is doing the Mastodon API translation to enable cross-posting, I think. I’m unsure about the appetite it at the federation level. Potentially worth checking in on the #fedidevs efforts to see if #ATProtocol is part of their thinking.
Whether it's #BlueSky or #Meta, I just do not understand how anyone can possibly give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their intentions with federated networking. Like, it's not like the internet is new. We have countless examples of what billionaires do with their power. They never try to make things better for us. They always try to accumulate profit for them at the expense of anyone else. How many times do people need to be fucked over before they learn?
I know the #Bluesky /AT devs & Dorsey (mostly Dorsey) keep saying that “Bluesky” is essentially a proof of concept and will (if all works according to plan) cease to exist once #federation blossoms.
But…
I don’t believe that. I feel the OG server & native clients will be cemented and always be somewhat of a default.
If #BlueSky is FOSS, can't we just start running our own servers? If #ATprotocol works, can't somebody design a bridge? Is anybody working on this? What's broken about what they're doing that's preventing this? As a noob who thinks he understands open source and decentralization generally, I don't get how/why they're limiting invites.
As I’m observing conversations and efforts to build tomorrow’s technology related to #activitypub and #atprotocol, I have concerns regarding how many non-white folx from marginalized and vulnerable communities will show up and for those who do, will they be welcomed?
Because tech development has a long history of the most privileged making decisions that maintain the status quo while inflicting harm on “others”