@raphael I didn't mean profit seeking in general, but profit seeking in social media.

Do you maybe know of a magic business plan for making social media* profitable but not by taking advantage of your users? I feel like you might be more qualified than most to answer this...

* since we're talking about a comparison between BlueSky and the fediverse, I'm thinking of "free" social media also.

@openrisk

@UlrikeHahn just yesterday I noticed somebody is trying to build a linkedin type service on atproto. It may work, or not. Some things will be natural given the design, some will be challenging (maybe at some point we will be able to edit posts ).

Ultimately I suspect some people are negative because its hard to deploy the stack as a single person and "own it". But if the objective is to get many more people off Meta etc. maybe thats not a viable constraint and larger teams and orgs are needed.

@mariusor @openrisk

There is no magic about the business plan: provide a hosting service, charge something that people see value, hopefully get enough people to the point where I could make a living out of it.

Not that this plan has been successful. Quite the opposite.

@mariusor @openrisk

> I'm thinking of "free" social media also.

TANSTAAFL. I am absolutely convinced that we will be forever doomed to be small and irrelevant (relative to the other mass social communication channels) if we keep refusing.to accept this reality.

@raphael I agree with you on this one, but a "for pay" service will never really compete on the same level as a free one... I hope you agree with me on this one.

So we're back to what I was saying earlier with a little more clarity: the incentives for "**free** social media" are not aligned to the well being of its users.

So, my conclusion is that BlueSky the company has no real path to staying free and not taking advantage of their users. I surely hope they find a way, but, like I said, I'm skeptical.

@openrisk

@mariusor

There are ethical paths that don't require major social engineering . Applies not just to social networks, but all the essential digital tech that has been confiscated by surveillance capitalism, email, msg, browser, maps..

1) free public good, paid collectively by our taxes (local or central)

2) paid directly by users (like all economic relations)

Some services could fall under 1) others could be a subscription addon to any internet/phone package etc.

There are ways.

@raphael

@stefan @mariusor @openrisk not too sure about this one. If the scale grows it can also get more expensive and a bit like with blockchains.

If you want to have fully independent everything the requirements probably will keep just growing and growing if there's any success.

It seems rather similar to how a full bitcoin node keeps being more and more difficult to run and more and more workarounds with compromises get introduced as the "lightweight" alternative.

@ikuturso @stefan @mariusor This is a question I think people working in this area should have a clear handle on. It may help design or adapt the architectures so that "success" doesn't become a dead-end exactly when needed.

On paper its not a complex exercise to define: take the current reported numbers of people and content in all the different Meta, TikTok, Youtube etc. and show different patterns by which they can be "decentralized" and the feasibility and cost implications of each.

@openrisk I've always thought sports leagues would be ideal hosts for distributed social media. Rabid fanbases, a steady stream of content, famous athletes, etc. Imagine if a big sports league got on a federated platform and enticed their fans and had their PR published there. It could be a model for whatever supercedes the current crop of social media corporations.

@sam there are so many possibilities. It's almost strange there aren't some important examples like this. As if people, organizations etc doggedly don't want to invalidate choices of the past... . Maybe all it would take is a single visible example?