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Be Wary of Bluesky (kevinak.se)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I'm not the author, just sharing.

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[–] 6 points 7 months ago (9 children)

IMO this is unfair and conspiratorial. The people behind Bluesky have been quite clear about where they are trying to go (i.e. not simply replace Twitter), some of those people have a lot of credibility in this area, built up over years. Maybe they make different assumptions about tech and user preferences but I see no reason to assume evil intentions.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    It not necessarily about evil intentions, instead that without an easy off-ramp for users, a platform is eventually guaranteed to get enshittified, especially if they rely on investor money (which Bluesky does, see their post 1, post 2).

    Cory Doctorow wrote a few pieces about the topic:

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago*

    From the second article:

    But I'm not on Bluesky and I don't have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Fair enough. But, as you know already, AT Protocol is not chained to Bluesky. Other things are already being built on it (Blacksky for instance). Sure, the startup costs of federation are high, but that was a technical choice. To insist that it's all a plot to become the next evil Twitter continues to feel a bit swivel-eyed to me.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    This is yet another version of the ridiculous "we're decentralized in theory so it doesn't matter that we aren't in practice" argument which the article does address. In practice it is chained because they are in complete control of the real-world use of it.

    People are even worried about Google's control over Android recently and Google has much less power over AOSP than Bluesky Corp. has over ATproto.

    What is swivel-eyed is believing that Venture Capitalists won't do the thing they've historically always done in the past when they're in control.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    they are in complete control of the real-world use of it

    They're not. I mentioned Blacksky.

    As I understand it, their endgame is that Bluesky will be a big fish in a pond of other fish, and that the best way to get that fishpond is to make Bluesky as good a product as possible, hence the (limited) VC money.

    As a strategy it has risks but so does the alternative. To make the obvious comparison, UX on the fediverse is rubbish, with an incomprehensible onboarding funnel, amateurish design, servers that keep disappearing. There's a reason Bluesky has eaten the fediverse's lunch.

    With respect, I think people here are making this into a sterile religious war when really it's a disagreement about strategy. Some of the people who vouch for Bluesky I have been following for years. They want exactly the same things as most people here. Personally, I see no reason to question their intentions.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Blacksky does not fundamentally change the situation. They've got a yearly budget in excess of $100,000 and roughly 0.01% of the users. Bluesky can make all those users completely disappear from the other 99.99% with the press of a button and in the case of Link they did exactly that.

    As for the "let's trust the Bluesky team" idea, that's of course exactly what got everyone into this mess with Twitter. The leadership can change. The investors can push them to do what they want no matter how great people the public facing team may seem to be (and honestly some of the things they've done has not inspired trust).

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    OK I get all that and it's not to be dismissed. But their product is better than what we have here. That's why Blacksky built upon it and not upon this, despite the cost. The excessive centralization seems to be more of a human problem than a technical one. Humans take the path of least resistance and Bluesky's resources have allowed it to make a product that the fediverse will never be able to compete with.

    Personally, I get what I want here (I don't use Bluesky) but it's pretty clear to me that I'm not representative (in caring about the principle of decentralization) and neither are you. I'm a pragmatist by nature. Bluesky and AT Proto are an obvious improvement on Twitter. If they have the potential to be a version of decentralization that actually takes off and goes mainstream (because let's be serious, the fediverse is not doing that), then personally I would take that win. It hasn't happened yet but personally I'm not going to spit on it in advance like everyone here is doing.

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