What is hard to understand about the Feed Our Feeds BS is what Cory Doctorow @pluralistic, who normally is quite outspoken about these tech bro efforts to coopt legitimate social technology, is doing supporting it.

Cory Doctorow

@mastodonmigration Dude. I've replied to about ten of these. That's hardly being "silent."

I'm about to publish a long essay about it, but the long and the short of it is, "Scolding people for enjoying a popular technology is no way to build a popular movement. The only way to do that is to make the technology they use free."

CellularMoose

@mastodonmigration @pluralistic So because it's not perfect it shouldn't be done? Also, if you read the first two goals of the fundraiser it seems like the point is to give Bluesky/AT protocol users the same freedoms that ActivityPub users already have. In short, to bring AT up to par with ActivityPub. Which sounds like a really good thing to me.

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@pluralistic

Appreciate you responding here. Don't understand what you mean by the scolding comment. What we are talking about is an initiative that sucks money and energy away from real public platforms. Looking forward to the long response.

Cory Doctorow

@mastodonmigration

> Don't understand what you mean by the scolding comment.

"What gives Cory? Why are you lending your name to #freeourfeeds

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@pluralistic

Fair. Interested in your full rationale for supporting this initiative.

George Liquor, American

@mastodonmigration @pluralistic It's as though Cory was actually anticipating these questions:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/

Jubei

@cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @pluralistic I would love it if somebody could explain how AT is different from activitypub and if there is any chance for interoperability.

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@liquor_american @pluralistic

Thanks for the response. Will digest it and post some thoughts. Really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this matter as it is a critical time for public social media and what steps we take now will have far reaching implications.

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Cory Doctorow

@mastodonmigration @liquor_american Thanks.

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@liquor_american @pluralistic

Apologies if the tone of the initial post was too 'scoldy'. These are matters of great importance to the future of public social media and hopefully we can have a substantive discussion, which may include critical analysis and frank assessments, while staying focused on the facts of the matter.

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@pluralistic @liquor_american

Initial response begins here:

Mastodon Migration (@[email protected])

Initial response to @[email protected] regarding #FreeOurFeeds Want to thank Cory Doctorow for answering questions about his support for Free Our Feeds here: https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba What follows is a response in the form of a list of concerns about FOF. Cory rightly took exception to the "scolding" tone of some of the discussion so far. It is hoped that here, at least, we can keep it focused on the substance of this issue. So, here goes... 1/n #FreeOurFeeds

Mastodon (mastodon.online)

Grassroots Joe

@jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @pluralistic

I don't know that this very long and technical thread addresses the interoperability question, but it definitely talks about At vs activitypub.

Perhaps more importantly, it talks at length about the degree to which Bsky is not distributed and as likely as not never will be. Nit because it's not technically feasible, but because implementing the full stack costs way too much money.

Grassroots Joe

@mastodonmigration @pluralistic

I'm wondering if the Free Our Feeds project is flawed in concept because of what Christine Lemmer-Webber has written about the fundamental characteristics of deploying the full AT stack and the associated costs.

Christine Lemmer-Webber (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @eloquence My main thoughts about Free Our Feeds are I wonder if anyone launching this read my recent blogposts which analyzed ATProto and its ecosystem IN DEPTH and determined that it's quadratic to scale towards decentralization in its present form, which nobody has really disputed since https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/ So is Free Your Feeds hoping to move towards actual decentralization, or are they hoping to just set up a *second* major relay and appview

social.coop (social.coop)

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@joeinwynnewood @pluralistic

Agree that this is a real concern. Hopefully they are doing a real independent analysis of the feasibility and not basing their plans on Bluesky marketing hype.

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@mastodonmigration @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic Stepping in for a second here:

_This is the actual BlueSky theory in action_.

BlueSky is at best semi-decentralised; I do prefer ActivityPub's approach.

But semi- is better than not. And the theory ATProto people are following is that it's more realistic - more _stable_ - to have a smallish number of large-organisation-run Relays that people can choose between than it is to have every instance be a Relay.

If that's your theory, dedicated nonprofits getting Relays up _is_ a way to fight billionaire capture.

Is it going to be effective? I don't know. But it is the theory, being put into practice. If it's going to work at all, this is how.

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@moira @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic

Understand the theory. Don't understand why it falls to an independent publicly funded entity to prove the theory.

We would be at an entirely different point if Bsky had three working relays and a solid story about how all the code was safe in some sort of trusted open source regime. Further, that these Free Our Feeds folks had engineers on board who validated the feasibility of establishing and running the thing.

more...

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@moira @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic

But that's not what is being presented. The technical side of this pitch does not add up. Maybe Bsky can operate with more relays, but it is not at all clear, and it certainly should not be attempted by an outside group until the technology is proven and much more mature.

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@mastodonmigration @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic Wow hard disagree.

Setting up a nonprofit to be one of the feed providers is _the_ best way to keep it out of billionaire hands, _if_ you're going to work within their theory and their protocol.

The other options are very wealthy individuals (bad), for-profit corporations (bad), or government funding (right now in the US, _also bad_).

BlueSky right now is _pretty likely_ to have interop problems with a second relay. But... (1/2)

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@mastodonmigration @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic ...having more spec-compliant stacks trying (and often failing) to talk to each other is _literally_ the way that the internet has resolved protocol implementation incompatibilities for decades, from the InterOP days with duelling TCP stacks to SMTP to IMAP to ... well, ActivityPub. To everything not dominated by one (1) vendor.

Now is the _best_ remaining time to be doing this, because the later you go, the more deviations from spec you'll find and the more difficult it'll get - and the harder it'll be to get a less-friendly-talking BlueSky to bother listening to you.

In other words, waiting is _much worse_ if you want a standard to be a _standard_, and not a proprietary API.

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@moira @joeinwynnewood @pluralistic

Hmmm... sorry, but not understanding you. Unless the in house developers can prove multiple relays work in a loaded production environment with their technology, it is very hard to imagine an outside organization doing it.