Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Mark Zuckerberg in one day than it has in two years of selling custom domains
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
As much as I hate to be that guy, it's worth keeping in mind that BlueSky is not really practising what they preach here. The AT protocol formally allows for a kind of decentralization, but it is prohibitively expensive to run an instance, meaning that only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists will be capable of actually doing so.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible. The reason is simple: They are a company, and they have a profit motive. ActivityPub is too democratic, and therefore hard to monetize. By now they have a bunch of crypto bro investors who want their money back. It's better to leave your money elsewhere.
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I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says "a world without Caesars" in Latin.
wrote 29 days ago last edited by"The king is dead, long live the king".
Or: Same shit, different wrapping.
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As much as I hate to be that guy, it's worth keeping in mind that BlueSky is not really practising what they preach here. The AT protocol formally allows for a kind of decentralization, but it is prohibitively expensive to run an instance, meaning that only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists will be capable of actually doing so.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible. The reason is simple: They are a company, and they have a profit motive. ActivityPub is too democratic, and therefore hard to monetize. By now they have a bunch of crypto bro investors who want their money back. It's better to leave your money elsewhere.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byStill a cool shirt tho.
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As much as I hate to be that guy, it's worth keeping in mind that BlueSky is not really practising what they preach here. The AT protocol formally allows for a kind of decentralization, but it is prohibitively expensive to run an instance, meaning that only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists will be capable of actually doing so.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible. The reason is simple: They are a company, and they have a profit motive. ActivityPub is too democratic, and therefore hard to monetize. By now they have a bunch of crypto bro investors who want their money back. It's better to leave your money elsewhere.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byonly rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists
Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible.
Because AT protocol has features that are incompatible with ActivityPub, and those features are important to some users.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
Every Caesar should have his own Brutus. We can't rely upon a single Brutus!
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This is so fetch
wrote 29 days ago last edited byWhat does this mean? Am I old?
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only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists
Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible.
Because AT protocol has features that are incompatible with ActivityPub, and those features are important to some users.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byOr non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
The fact that we don't see this yet, and that Bluesky has accepted the amount of money they have from actors I would not want to be associated with, makes me doubt this is possible.
Even if a non-profit wanted to operate with good intentions, the expense of running an AT proto hub would eventually prove a challenge, and the non-profit would either go under or need to start looking around for money. Meanwhile people can self-host their Mastodon instance on a Raspberry Pi.
Regarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub, I have tried and failed to understand exactly which feature is the AT proto so desperately want that they found it impossible to achieve through ActivityPub. The whole thing with having a mobile identity or whatever seems like a nothing burger to me - at the end of the day it just means that your user name is your DID number, and that web addresses can redirect towards that one. It's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol.
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Still a cool shirt tho.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byWell, most people don't read Latin, so there's a high risk of ending up looking exactly as pretentious as the asshole one seeks to make fun of.
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Well, most people don't read Latin, so there's a high risk of ending up looking exactly as pretentious as the asshole one seeks to make fun of.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byThat's a fair point. If you're concerned about people judging you, you probably wouldn't want to be seen as a Fuckerburg fanboy.
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only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists
Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible.
Because AT protocol has features that are incompatible with ActivityPub, and those features are important to some users.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byWhich benefits does AT have in comparison to Activity pub? Except currently single point of entry/failure?
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What does this mean? Am I old?
wrote 29 days ago last edited byIts actually a pretty well aged reference, of legal drinking age in the US.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
If Brutus ain't around, we can count on Luigi
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Which benefits does AT have in comparison to Activity pub? Except currently single point of entry/failure?
wrote 29 days ago last edited by- The real user names (DIDs) are cryptic codes that are kept hidden most of the time, with your visible user name redirecting towards it. This gives the illusion that user names can be changed/transported, and that users are not locked down to one platform.
- Content is filtered rather than censored, so that a big monopolistic actor can allow bigots on their platform but keep them out of sight of regular users. Had Bluesky been an ActivityPub hub, it could easily end up being perceived as a nazi bar. This is a benefit for Bluesky who do not want to be responsible for moderating their platform.
They want decentralized moderation on a centralized platform. That's how on Bluesky, there's an understanding that the removal of hate speech "conflicts with Bluesky’s decentralized goals". On Mastodon, the decentralized nature is how we can give bigots the boots without them getting to whine about their freedom of expression. Bluesky manages to create a problem using the very same concept by which Mastodon solves it.
I guess this didn't really end up being a post about the benefits of AT. Oops.
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I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says "a world without Caesars" in Latin.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byIn way side, it seems like a win, on the other, Bluesky is capitalizing off of Meta hate?
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Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
The fact that we don't see this yet, and that Bluesky has accepted the amount of money they have from actors I would not want to be associated with, makes me doubt this is possible.
Even if a non-profit wanted to operate with good intentions, the expense of running an AT proto hub would eventually prove a challenge, and the non-profit would either go under or need to start looking around for money. Meanwhile people can self-host their Mastodon instance on a Raspberry Pi.
Regarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub, I have tried and failed to understand exactly which feature is the AT proto so desperately want that they found it impossible to achieve through ActivityPub. The whole thing with having a mobile identity or whatever seems like a nothing burger to me - at the end of the day it just means that your user name is your DID number, and that web addresses can redirect towards that one. It's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byRegarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub
There are significant differences in account portability. ActivityPub allows you to transfer your followers to a new server, but not your content.
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I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says "a world without Caesars" in Latin.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byIt's funny because if you read history you know that Caesar took down the republic on a wave of populism.
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Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
The fact that we don't see this yet, and that Bluesky has accepted the amount of money they have from actors I would not want to be associated with, makes me doubt this is possible.
Even if a non-profit wanted to operate with good intentions, the expense of running an AT proto hub would eventually prove a challenge, and the non-profit would either go under or need to start looking around for money. Meanwhile people can self-host their Mastodon instance on a Raspberry Pi.
Regarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub, I have tried and failed to understand exactly which feature is the AT proto so desperately want that they found it impossible to achieve through ActivityPub. The whole thing with having a mobile identity or whatever seems like a nothing burger to me - at the end of the day it just means that your user name is your DID number, and that web addresses can redirect towards that one. It's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byIt's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol
My one complaint about fediverse is I have half a dozen baronvonj@<service> accounts in order to get the features and UI experience of each. They are all separate, with the data for each spread out, and we all have to redundantly follow on each. If I could have one fediverse identity with all my data self-hosted, that would be the awesomesauce. But I can't with fedi and I can with AT.
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Regarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub
There are significant differences in account portability. ActivityPub allows you to transfer your followers to a new server, but not your content.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byNothing in ActivityPub says you can't move your content from one platform to another. It's just that Mastodon does not have this feature at the moment.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure whether Bluesky has this feature or not, but it's somewhat irrelevant considering the fact that there are no other platforms to move your content to. The only thing I've actually seen from this is that you can use an URL as your username in the front-end, though it just points towards the same DID in the backend. I struggle to see what the great achievement here is.
If this was the reasoning behind Bluesky, they could have developed a platform running on AP supporting the transfer of content between instances, and it would have been a whole lot easier than developing a whole new protocol.
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I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says "a world without Caesars" in Latin.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byHmm, yes, ads bad but that IS a good product
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I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says "a world without Caesars" in Latin.
wrote 29 days ago last edited byEvery little bit helps.
