I just think there's a lot of people genuinely trying to build independent infrastructure for social media not dependent on billionaires. And some of them think ATProto is more suitable for that.

And that includes Blacksky. Maybe if the fediverse was just a bit more friendly, they'd be trying to do that here.

@openrisk

They are de facto isolating any ActivityPub implementation that obeys the specification and uses features that Mastodon's does not support.

They are Embracing, Extending, and I'm afraid, on their way to Extinguishing the protocol as it was published by W3C in favour of the quirky Mastodon version.

@openrisk

Stefan Bohacek (@stefan@stefanbohacek.online)

Arguing whether Bluesky is "really" decentralized is increasingly becoming a moot point. "full-network atproto relay on a $4.20/mo VPS" https://bsky.app/profile/bad-example.com/post/3mfkrfvy3ok2u Running a PDS on a Raspberry Pi. https://justingarrison.com/blog/2024-12-02-run-a-bluesky-pds-from-home/ "A Bluesky appview focused on low resource consumption" https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite "full-scale indie atproto relay [...] $30 CAD/mo" https://bsky.app/profile/bad-example.com/post/3lne2wvr5hc2b #bluesky #fediverse

Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)

@openrisk

> I don't think BlueSky has, or will have, a business model...

To be fair, I don't think most people building on top of their protocol expect anything what. The way I look at it, they're racing to build up the independent infrastructure before the inevitable enshittification.

Maybe you've already seen https://atp.fyi/network?

With Bluesky's funding, the community still has years to figure this all out.

@openrisk

@openrisk I'm doing my best, my dude, I'm doing my best... And so are many others.

Anyways, been around the fediverse since 2014. It's stagnating while the cancer expands. I don't think much of purist ideology that doesn't deliver

I was trying to say that when profit is involved the incentives of the social media institution are antithetical to the ones of its users. "Scale" is something that a true open network does not need to the same extent as a centralized one does. Open and federated network nodes care little about the number of users they have individually because they can be explored in aggregate.

I don't think BlueSky has, or will have, a business model in which they can sustain themselves without taking advantage of their users, either through ads, selling their data, or other capitalist methods.

The dependence on how things originated *is* important (e.g., atproto does make different tradeoffs than activitypub) but this influence dilutes if other communities fund further evolution, different applications etc.

They're maybe another weapon, but one that will shoot us in the foot just as soon as their crypto investors demand it.

The real question is: what end state wins over bigtech? Decentralization does not mean everybody #selfhosting every possible service. While standing up the atproto machinery is more expensive, its another weapon, there could be thousands of orgs and communities that can do it.

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