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“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse
this is why they focus on blockchains, a technology basically always used at the expense of its users”
i do think the degree to which bluesky is stressing that they do not use blockchains really underscores how toxic even a faint whiff of blockchain has become to any normal platform
“in conclusion, we truly believe these leopards won’t eat our face.
love, bluesky”
@molly0xfff the only good thing I find in this AI frenzy is how much less I have heard about blockchain.
Ooooh, fertile time to launch my AI generated NFT cryptocurrency, wherein each Coin is nonfungible/unspendable but utterly secure!
@caesarologia @molly0xfff It's the same people doing the same scams. Just rebranded and using the more traditional financial markets.
@molly0xfff I've said before that for the fediverse to "win", we just have to wait until the "competition" gets enshittified.
I'm relieved to see that it might not actually take that long!
@stefan @molly0xfff I believe this too.
@Lazarou @molly0xfff Hah, well I simplified a bit, so I do want to add that we still have a lot of work to do to make the fediverse a truly diverse and safe space.
And that's really what I want to us to focus on, as a community, while we wait for the inevitable cycle of enshittification of corporate social media.
@stefan @molly0xfff and, for the one time in history, the concept of AI existing actually does us good
if time-to-enshittification-rate (whatever that term at this point even means) is correlated to funding rate, Bluesky's much lower funding rate compared to Twitter in the same stage of the platform's life, it would suggest that it would take quite a while for bluesky to get enshittified. 15milion usd is a pretty low amount of money, and Im guessing they couldve raised a lot more if they wanted to, considering the MAU graphs they can show
(source: https://bsky.app/profile/ripperoni.com/post/3l7brn5wero2j)
(sorry broke the reply chain because I accidentally replied from the wrong account first)
yeah true. My vibe is that Jay has a big network in the crypto world, and is selling atproto as embodying the ideals of the crypto world related to decentralisation and selfownership of digital identity, without the major drawbacks of what she seems to call hyperfinancialisation
@laurenshof @molly0xfff Interesting, thank you for the analysis!
@laurenshof It is mind-boggling to me that Farcaster as raised over $150 million. I'm still puzzled about what role they are going to have if the fediverse and atmosphere have most of everyone's attention.
@laurenshof @stefan @molly0xfff yeah, fwiw I think the dollar amount here is probably the least concerning thing. they're easily on track to generate more than enough value to justify that. it's the everything else about vc that is more of an issue.
@stefan @molly0xfff bold take considering most workers wouldn't dream of doing things differently; they love their masters.
@molly0xfff @stefan why would we want some to win over the other? Their premises are different. I think there's room for both.
@Moke @molly0xfff It's not as much about what we want, though, rather about all these Twitter competitors being able to pay back their investors.
So far, the track record hasn't been so good.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/19/post-news-the-a16z-funded-twitter-alternative-is-shutting-down/
The difference from those to Bluesky, is that Bluesky is not only a social media but a steward for this open protocol called ATProto (as Mastodon is for ActivityPub).
In case Bluesky turns out bad in the future, anyone can host the infrastructure themselves, and people can move their whole existing data to this other provider (obviously this is easier said than done, but it's possible).
"anyone can host the infrastructure themselves"
Can they though?
There are nearly 30,000 fediverse servers*, each standalone, working independently. You can host one for $5-$10/month **.
* As per https://fedidb.org.
** https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-running-a-single-person-mastodon-instance/#hosting
@Moke @molly0xfff Compare that to Bluesky, from their own blog:
"The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service. In all likelihood, there may be a few large full-network providers, and then a long tail of partial-network providers."
https://bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture
If you want to host 13 million people of course this will have a huge cost. But you can if you have the resources for it. As here, if you have a big server you will have big costs. Also, the ATProto allows for people to host only part of the network, so different parts of it could be maintained by different people, different from ActivityPub.
Like in this image: each part of the infrastructure could have a different provider (or multiple ones).
"If you want to host 13 million people of course this will have a huge cost"
Right, same as hosting 13 million people on a fediverse server.
My point is more about this: If mastodon.social disappears one day, I can host my own single-user server for $6/month. That's the whole infrastructure.
"In case Bluesky turns out bad in the future"
Yes, how much would it cost me to run all the necessary infrastructure just for myself?
"I can host my own single user server for $6/month".
Right. That's nice, but that comes with other limitations. Like, you are seeing someone's post and the replies that you see might be different from the replies that people from other server see.
This would not happen on ATProto because the way it works is different. And that's why, coming back to my first reply, that I think there's room for both and we don't need to root for one to win over another.
@Moke Fair enough.
I guess I am just feeling more optimistic about the fediverse. I like that it's grassroots, scrappy, and DIY.
I am confident that I will still be running my little personal server 5-10 years from now, no matter what happens to larger servers, or even Mastodon as a platform, as there will still likely be other fediverse software around to switch to.
@Moke It just seems like Bluesky has to succeed both as a service and as a software platform, or it will take down a huge portion of the ATProto network down. But who knows, we'll see.
@stefan Today, that would be the case, yes. They say that they want people to build on top of the protocol and that they want to make this easier in the future. Let's see.
@molly0xfff in b4 they make the AT protocol only able to handle 7 posts per second worlwide.
@tclark @molly0xfff "put a higher transaction fee on your post and it'll go through faster"
I think to normal people (even semi-tech-savvy folks like myself), the whole blockchain concept is so complicated and obtuse that we've dismissed it as merely some form of technological ponzi scheme and buzzword that tech people use in an effort to impress or out-do each other (and dupe investors) because nobody understands what it is, so they think if they use the term it makes them seem "smart".
So those of us with functioning brains and zero patience for buffoonery or chicanery close our eyes and ears whenever we hear the word "blockchain".
when even very cryptography-savvy folks agree it’s a tech Ponzi scheme:
> “… it’s not secure, it’s not safe, it’s not reliable, it’s not trustworthy, it’s not even decentralized, it’s not anonymous, it’s helping destroy the planet. I haven’t found one positive use for blockchain. It has nothing that couldn’t be done better without it.”
—Bruce Schneier, *Bruce Schneier on the Crypto/Blockchain Disaster*
I had to look him up... I LOVE that he's also a squid enthusiast:
>He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast.
I love this guy!!
haxadecimal @cerement @GuyDudeman @molly0xfff
A solution in search of an apocalypse.
@molly0xfff funding-model eats culture and strategy for breakfast
@molly0xfff Oh ffs, why??!
@Secret_Squirrel @molly0xfff turns out building things costs money
done differently Does this means there are / is now a bunch of hyper 13M+ ' active NFT users ' confirmed or ' user experience : chart not found '? 
@infosec_jcp @molly0xfff They (the Bluesky people) can always go get Thread-ed.
@molly0xfff Narrator: They did, in fact, eat their faces.
@molly0xfff
I mean, it's entirely possible it will all be fine, and everything will work out well
But they also just invested a nontrivial amount of cash in a business with literally no public plan for how to make money, and are going to expect a return on that investment. They also don't seem to have a track record of just hurling money at things because they want to be nice?
So, um...yeah. I have no idea what happens, I honestly hope for the best, but it's hard to image this is stringless
It worked for dorsey before...
@molly0xfff my guess is it’s eventually going to be bought by a billionaire with an agenda and they’re all going to have to flee again.
@OddDev @spinal @molly0xfff he has no more money to buy them.
blueskeleton is possible though.
@f4grx @OddDev @spinal @molly0xfff (am confuse: is Bluskelon / blueskeleton a person? An organization? A term for "Bluesky, but skeletonized"?
Genuine uncertainty, would appreciate any clarification
)
@GoodNewsGreyShoes @OddDev @spinal @molly0xfff bluskelon might have been a play on musk, elon ?
@f4grx @OddDev @spinal @molly0xfff (Ooo, that's clever - I think that's it!
Ty, I completely missed that! 
)
@f4grx @OddDev @molly0xfff oh not necessarily musk, could be any billionaire
@molly0xfff polite leopards, though, who don’t go on about retro computing and alt text, whatever that is
@molly0xfff I *promise* I won't pull the ball away this time, Charlie Brown!
@molly0xfff “and to make sure everyone benefits we’re adding the leopard to our board where they could theoretically vote to change our policy on eating faces”
@molly0xfff "You knew damn well I was a snake."
They need to publicize their charter. We don't even know what their "public benefit" goals are. We don't know the voting power breakdown of their ownership structure. We don't know what their plans for profitability are (other than obviously selling your data and ads eventually).
AT Protocol is a centralized system masquerading as a decentralized platform simply because they give you the option of running the entire infrastructure yourself (which nobody ever will).
Everything about this company is geared to make you believe its something that it isn't. They're all frauds and people using Bluesky are marks at best.
@bflipp @molly0xfff Nobody gives a fuck about "centralized" or "decentralized" except a bunch of old-timey internet nerds (I include myself in that group). The users want a platform that lets them chat with their friends and acquaintances and parasocial crushes (and yell at the media) with as little friction as possible. They Do Not Care who owns it, so long as they're not assaulted with nazi propaganda every time they log in.
Mask up @molly0xfff That's it. That's the toot.
Also, they are using the present tense rather than the future. It's factual that they don't use blockchain right now, and that's all they were sure about. They didn't say "we will never use it" and didn't even say anything more wiggleroom-ish either such as "we have no intention of using it".
All they said about their future plans was they wouldn't "hyperfinancialize" the "social experience". This is so vague as to be meaningless in practice. What does that actually rule out?
@molly0xfff or the last 10 years I have consistently voted for the party that claims to want to prevent leopards eating faces, and each time I've been disappointed by the lack of progress.
I've had enough. This year, I'm voting for the other guy.
@talin @molly0xfff and guess who is getting blocked