Figure I should post this here as well.

Mike Masnick ✅

Figure I should post this here as well. How I view the wider decentralized social media ecosystem. A variety of necessary experiments to figure out what will actually bring value.

Some (Slightly Biased) Thoughts On The State Of Decentralized Social Media

Last week, Bluesky, where I am on the board (so feel free to consider this as biased as can be), announced that it had raised a $15 million seed round, and with it announced some plans for building out subscription plans and helping to make the site sustainable (some of which may be very cool…

Techdirt (www.techdirt.com)

Evan Prodromou

@mmasnick

I disagree strongly with your framing.

Protocols are not just technical specs. They are also governance agreements.

There is a difference in kind between AT Protocol, developed and implemented by one VC-funded startup, and ActivityPub, an open standard with patent protection, implemented by >100 projects.

On the Internet, we collaborate on standards and compete on products. Experiments happen within that open compatibility structure.

UPDATE: edited for tone. Apologies to Mike.

Evan Prodromou

@mmasnick I hope at least as board member you can get the company to commit to a patent pledge to prevent overreaching patents from affecting the entire space.

You need to do it now, while there is money in the bank. Investors in companies with a short runway are more powerful and are more likely to try to liquidate their patent portfolio, for example with an acquisition.

Mark Darbyshire

@evan @mmasnick This article talks about experiments in decentralised social media. Bluesky is the great experiment in fragmenting decentralised social media and splitting it into different siloes with different protocols. What we need now is a great experiment in unifying social media, preferably with a single protocol, but at the very least with seamless bridges or networks that support multiple protocols.

Mark Darbyshire

@evan @mmasnick Users need to seamlessly connect with all their friends and communities. That is the feature that is currently missing from the great decentralisation experiment, and Bluesky has made it worse.

Mike Masnick ✅

@evan I understand your hostility here and, but honestly, find it a bit off-putting.

Evan Prodromou

@mmasnick [deleted]

UPDATE: I said here that I don't care about hurting Mike's feelings. That's neither true nor kind, and I shouldn't have said it. I respect him a lot as a thinker and as a person.

Unfortunately I think we have some diametrically opposed ideas on this topic and there might not be an easy middle ground to find.

Mike Masnick ✅

@markdarb @evan bridges are great. Bluesky folks are happy with bridges. To date, the only community that seemed to get upset by bridges was... this one?

Mike Masnick ✅

@evan there are ways to disagree without being disagreeable. You know that I've supported your work and your mission.

I'm not asking you to support mine.

But it is a choice to be antagonistic. But, fair enough, you have made it clear I am not welcome here. I am out.

Evan Prodromou

@mmasnick @mmasnick.bsky.social

I do believe that you do good work and I think you have the best interests of the Internet at heart. I disagree with your conclusions but I believe in your intentions.

I think you should re-read my post, and see whether it’s actively hostile, or just telling you something you don’t want to hear.

Regardless, please take my request about patents to heart. I think you are in a unique position to do some good on that front.

Mark Darbyshire

@mmasnick I'm bridged, and even following your Bluesky account from here (thank you)! But the number of Bluesky users I can follow is miniscule. Asking people to follow a bridging account so I can follow them is hardly seamless. I have a similar frustration with Threads: having to contact friends and ask them to enable federation before I can follow them. I'm not sure what we do about the upset users you refer to, but siloes are currently trumping user experience across multiple platforms.

hallenbeck

@markdarb @mmasnick This. Unless it's opt-out by default, it's excruciatingly painful to get people to bridge. It's hard to explain, hard to make people trust what it is, hard to contact each and every person. It's a never ending battle to try and unfork the divided community, especially as waves of new folk join Bluesky and not Mastodon. Feels like in my community, Bluesky has very much been "winner takes all" and the bridge, while a useful band-aid, doesn't actually heal the rift.

hallenbeck

@markdarb @mmasnick If Bluesky folk are happy with the bridge, can you make it opt-out by default? I have found most people are happy to bridge. Problem is, they just don't know to in the first place. Discovery is the problem.

hallenbeck

@markdarb @mmasnick I've not met anyone on Mastodon actively hostile to the bridge either. People in my circles all welcome it. I don't buy this notion there's a homongenous "fediverse" community even though it gets painted that way because of a noisy minority (I'm guessing minority) with a particular point of view.

bryan newbold

@evan @mmasnick Evan, as you and I have discussed directly in the past, all of the atproto specifications and core implementations are under free and open licenses. Specifically, MIT and Apache 2.0 dual-licensing, with Apache 2.0 providing patent protection. Furthermore, Patents have public record, and anybody can confirm we have not filed for any.

Neither you nor I are lawyers, but I don't think there are any grounds to spread fear/uncertainty/doubt about atproto and patents.

damon

@markdarb @mmasnick you’ve made several claims that make little sense to me. ActivityPub isn’t seamless there’s plenty of interop issues for platforms supposedly using the same protocol. The fediverse has long since been made up of bridges and protocols that aren’t ActivityPub irrespective of AP stakeholders being disrespectful af of the work of devs that have long contributed to the space. There shouldn’t just be one protocol there damn sure shouldn’t be one platform either.

Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋

@hallenbeck @markdarb @mmasnick There was a thread here https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/835 back in February, when the bridge's author announced he was preparing to launch it, with some Mastodon users saying very, very nasty things to him there…

hallenbeck

@mackuba @markdarb @mmasnick

I know, I saw that. I also listened to the podcast where @mike interviewed @snarfed.org. Worth a listen: https://dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/ryan-barrett

I meant I've personally not met anyone actively hostile to it in my circles. It seems there's a quiet majority who are ok (or indifferent) with it.

But Mike (Masnick) said Bluesky users are fine with the bridge, so make it opt-out that side. Then explore with admins making it opt-out on selected, friendly fedi servers, too.

hallenbeck

@mackuba @markdarb @mmasnick @mike @snarfed.org

It seems logical on fedi, where different servers have different rules and governance, that some would be opt-out and some opt-in. I'd personally choose an opt-out server, but I can see why others would choose opt-in. That's kinda the point of being able to choose one's server, right?

damon

@hallenbeck your comments are dismissive. You clearly saw people were uncomfortable and upset yet you push forward for the own specific needs. There were people on Bluesky that didn’t want the bridge either as they don’t like the mastodon culture. Opt-in is respectful of consent not sure why you’re keen on going against that. If you care so much you can juggle multiple accounts on both platforms and or try to convince people to bridge their accounts