I recently finished the episode of The Verge’s podcast #Decoder with the interview to Bluesky’s CEO and it seems a quite interesting project. At the beginning I wasn’t looking really into it because of their choice of using a new protocol instead of the existing ActivityPub, but after listening to her and the reasons behind this choice maybe I’ll give them a chance.
What do you think? Do you use it alongside with the fediverse?
So far my take is: Yet another microblogging platform?
But I’d like to read/hear something about the details… How does the protocol compare to other existing solutions? Are there free server implementations? How do they handle federation, would I be able to just connect to them and do whatever I want? Or do they retain tight control over the network?
It’s still funded by ads and governed by algorithm recommendations, right? Even if they had perfect moderation, which is difficult to decide on anyway, it’s still got the same incentives as Twitter, which means it will inevitably become Twitter. They want you to spend more time on it to make more money, so they show you things most likely to get a reaction out of you, which means they’re showing you things designed to get you angry and respond. Mastodon is much nicer for giving everyone equal billing and allowing you to modify that by following people you want to hear from most.
Bluesky has no ads, and a chronological feed.
No ads … Yet.
It was funded by venture capitalists that demand payback.
They are currently in enshittification stage 1 where everything is wonderful and free. The users have not been monetized yet.
That’s not their business plan.
I read their posted business plan, and there is no way on God’s green earth that what they have in their business plan will raise the money they need.
It is worth noting that what they posted in their business plan in July 23 (1) differs quite a bit from what Jay Graber mentioned as their business plan in an interview with The Verge in Feb 24 (2), which again differs on quite a few points from what Jay Graber mentioned in a podcast with The Verge in March 24 (3).
(1): https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan(2): https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/6/24062837/bluesky-drops-invite-system-begins-federation-at-protocol(3): https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-graber-federation-social-media-decoder-interview
Thanks for the links!
Just FYI, Lemmy markdown for numbered lists is as follows:
- First line
- Second line
- Third line
Is PieFed markdown different?
Huh, interesting. What’s their business model then, and how do they plan to scale?
As a normie replacement for Twitter, from what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t seem that bad, especially in comparison to Threads. I’m somewhat reserving judgement until it’s more clear what the platform’s long-term trajectory is. It definitely seems to have way less alt-right shit on it than Twitter these days, which is a big mark in its favor tbh.
But as a primary platform, it’s not for me. I’ve come to love lemmy and the extremely strong community-driven OSS aspect. I’ll be sticking around here for sure. I only interact peripherally with Bluesky.
