Bluesky has raised a $15m series A

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

where by “financed” they mean

“not paying market wages or in any way staffing up to meet the scale of challenge or complexity they face”

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113365319263963755

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

The ideological purity of constant near-insolvency is not a strategy, buds

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

Wild stuff.

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

Feel how you need to feel about VC, ~blockchain~, bsky

Mastodon remains:

- on shaky, financially unsustainable ground

- culturally moribund and quite stinky, lacking the multiracial, multicultural vibrancy it needs for relevance

- technically complex in ways that constantly leak up to the user experience

- squandering its early lead

- low velocity in its product execution

- indifferent to the needs of both users and admins

Free as in used mattress.

Tin Tvrtković

@danilo I'm also pretty frustrated with Mastodon - I thought Ruby was supposed to enable rapid development, but Masto progress seems slow as fuck?

That said, there's more nuance here. I see this as a three tiered thing:
* decentralized social networking
* Fedi itself
* Mastodon

I don't really care about Mastodon itself, I'm sure better servers are possible.
I semi-care about Fedi, it's a good idea but to me it seems like somewhat overly-complex.
Decentralized social networking is the big one.

Tin Tvrtković

@danilo So if you're crapping on Mastodon - agreed, and more power to you. But from what I know of the architecture of Bluesky, it's not a real decentralized social network (the ability to run your own PDS notwithstanding). Maybe I'm wrong though?

So to me the comparison isn't completely apples to apples.

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

@tintvrtkovic right but the number of people who care about these details is small enough to fit into a half-booked conference hotel

The technology that wins is the one that lets people have internet friends easily and reliably. Like it or not, Mastodon is pulling that cart for the fediverse and right now it’s pulling it into a ditch

Linux on the desktop for social media

Tin Tvrtković

@danilo Ok, so folks might not care about the details. But I had to leave Twitter and lost half of my friends. Moving to Bluesky doesn't fundamentally solve this issue, just punts it down the line again. Moving to a decentralized social network does.

I think folks do care about not losing a bunch of their friends in the future, or having their platform run by a fascist.

bsky: @daniloc.xyz

@tintvrtkovic I think if that were enough Mastodon would not have lost the lead to bsky so dramatically and quickly

UX and network benefits today will always trump speculative downside tomorrow

Tin Tvrtković

@danilo sure, Bluesky will probably win because money gets results really fast in the world we live in.

Still feels a lot like we're casually walking into a "... but it might work for us" meme.

Arvind Venkataramani

@tintvrtkovic @danilo money isn’t preventing Mastodon from being user-centred.

Ego, arrogance, and attachment to a vision that doesn’t match the needs of most people is.

I’m willing to bet they’ve never done a single usability test, and definitely have not tested core lifecycle journeys.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
Oh. I just saw a person complaining about Gargron recreating her pull request instead of accepting hers yesterday. It's ridiculous. (Mastodon team is, I mean)

https://hachyderm.io/@thisismissem/113465993207356999

Arvind Venkataramani

@Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem

Yeah, just because something is open source doesn’t mean it has values and practices that serve the people it claims to serve.

Arvind Venkataramani

@Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem

Also, real talk:
If the mastodon team is serious about making it easy to adopt, I will assemble a team of user researchers to donate their time.

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)

@Orca @arvindv @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem I haven’t purchased any stupid landfill-bound #Mastodon merch, but I *am* personally funding @thisismissem because she is the *only* #Fedi developer I have encountered who actually cares about building good software that works for real people. What little I have heard from this Gargron character hasn’t been very good. He doesn’t seem to be much concerned with anything that actually matters to the folks trying to build community here.

Emelia 👸🏻

@arvindv @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo I've already been trying to get more UX folks involved in the project, especially on the moderation & admin tools, though other areas do also need love too — the difficulty is generally not getting paid for open source work is the norm

Emelia 👸🏻

@suzannealdrich @Orca @arvindv @tintvrtkovic @danilo

He does care a great deal about Mastodon, but I think the years of leading it have taken a toll on him. It's incredibly hard to lead a large open source project with millions of users, a small team and not enough funding.

That said, he is also known for ignoring issues and poorly communicating things to others, these are areas I wish he'd do some self-improvement on to grow as a leader.

Arvind Venkataramani

@thisismissem @suzannealdrich @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo

Also: do you all have a usability testing program? Do you want help developing one? (It’s not as challenging as it might appear!)

Arvind Venkataramani

@thisismissem @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo

There are so many UX folk who are out of work and burned out right now that I think many would like to do something meaningful with their time.

(To be clear: not getting paid is a problem.)

Emelia 👸🏻

@arvindv I thibk that's likely a wonderful idea if such is possible in an open-source context? Maybe a question for @renchap