“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse

Molly White

@i_understand the contents of a git commit can't be changed without changing the hash, if that's what you're referring to, but git is absolutely mutable. ask anyone who's accidentally checked in a private key.

Anil Dash

@laurenshof @stefan @molly0xfff yeah, fwiw I think the dollar amount here is probably the least concerning thing. they're easily on track to generate more than enough value to justify that. it's the everything else about vc that is more of an issue.

Moke :csharp:

@molly0xfff @stefan why would we want some to win over the other? Their premises are different. I think there's room for both.

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke @molly0xfff It's not as much about what we want, though, rather about all these Twitter competitors being able to pay back their investors.

So far, the track record hasn't been so good.

Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

The grip Twitter, now called X, has on the market may be stronger than some believed. Unfortunately, that's led to the first casualty among Twitter

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down | TechCrunch

Post was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, but the platform never disclosed how much it raised.

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

Moke :csharp:

@stefan @molly0xfff

The difference from those to Bluesky, is that Bluesky is not only a social media but a steward for this open protocol called ATProto (as Mastodon is for ActivityPub).

In case Bluesky turns out bad in the future, anyone can host the infrastructure themselves, and people can move their whole existing data to this other provider (obviously this is easier said than done, but it's possible).

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke @molly0xfff

"anyone can host the infrastructure themselves"

Can they though?

There are nearly 30,000 fediverse servers*, each standalone, working independently. You can host one for $5-$10/month **.

* As per https://fedidb.org.
** https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-running-a-single-person-mastodon-instance/#hosting

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke @molly0xfff Compare that to Bluesky, from their own blog:

"The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service. In all likelihood, there may be a few large full-network providers, and then a long tail of partial-network providers."

Federation Architecture Overview - Bluesky

Soon, we’re launching a sandbox environment for federation. In advance, we want to share some technical details about our design decisions.

Bluesky (bsky.social)

Moke :csharp:

@stefan @molly0xfff

If you want to host 13 million people of course this will have a huge cost. But you can if you have the resources for it. As here, if you have a big server you will have big costs. Also, the ATProto allows for people to host only part of the network, so different parts of it could be maintained by different people, different from ActivityPub.

Like in this image: each part of the infrastructure could have a different provider (or multiple ones).

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke

"If you want to host 13 million people of course this will have a huge cost"

Right, same as hosting 13 million people on a fediverse server.

My point is more about this: If mastodon.social disappears one day, I can host my own single-user server for $6/month. That's the whole infrastructure.

"In case Bluesky turns out bad in the future"

Yes, how much would it cost me to run all the necessary infrastructure just for myself?

Moke :csharp:

@stefan

"I can host my own single user server for $6/month".

Right. That's nice, but that comes with other limitations. Like, you are seeing someone's post and the replies that you see might be different from the replies that people from other server see.

This would not happen on ATProto because the way it works is different. And that's why, coming back to my first reply, that I think there's room for both and we don't need to root for one to win over another.

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke Fair enough.

I guess I am just feeling more optimistic about the fediverse. I like that it's grassroots, scrappy, and DIY.

I am confident that I will still be running my little personal server 5-10 years from now, no matter what happens to larger servers, or even Mastodon as a platform, as there will still likely be other fediverse software around to switch to.

Stefan Bohacek

@Moke It just seems like Bluesky has to succeed both as a service and as a software platform, or it will take down a huge portion of the ATProto network down. But who knows, we'll see.