> However, I disagree with some of the analysis, and have a couple specific points to correct.

[cwebber@social.coop]

But more broadly I think *neither* the present-day fediverse nor Bluesky meet the needs of the future.

The "global town square" is a social media concept invented by centralized social media in the early web 2.0 era.

Social media by millenials, for millenials. What's the future?

[cwebber@social.coop]

So to some degree, I don't have a lot of interest in trying to figure out what the solution to this is, because I think these are the wrong designs. I don't like the context-collapse firehose much at all, I'm interested in "contextual communication", "secure collaboration", and "healthy communities"

[cwebber@social.coop]

That's the kind of direction we're trying to build towards with @spritely, but as said, I'm dropping the values discussion here, that's something we'll talk about later in the week. I would like to talk about that independently, focusing there on what to build, not on a critique.

[luis_in_brief@social.coop]

@cwebber I agree with this as first-principles, but I do note that every contextual/healthy/secure community that I'm a part of spends a pretty solid amount of time sharing and discussing stuff from the context-collapse firehoses (for many appropriate contextual reasons - laughter, learning, safety, etc.) I am not sure how we square those facts.

[cwebber@social.coop]

But I do think there's a big collision course ahead, and I don't know how it'll resolve. Investors and users who want quick resolution to real concerns on one side, a vision for public, highly replicated and indexed by anyone content on the other side.

It'll be a challenge.

[cwebber@social.coop]

There's opportunities for collaboration maybe. I've asserted pretty strongly that Bluesky isn't decentralized and as a system, it isn't. You can't tear the power dynamics out of the analysis. Otherwise what's the point?

But Bluesky uses decentralization techniques, there may be collab space there.

[cwebber@social.coop]

I'm not trying to be a mean, horrible person to Bluesky's devs. I'm really not. I actually think that they've provided something much *better* than X-Twitter to a lot of people.

But Bluesky has speedrun this whole thing so fast, Bluesky is already no longer the underdog. It's Twitter TNG.

[cwebber@social.coop]

And that means we can't pretend that decentralization is something that's some future possibility or goal, that it's gonna happen some day we promise.

I'd love to be proven wrong on everything I laid out.

Though I think the only way to do that without being worse than AP is serious rearchitecting.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Who's empowered and who has agency and how we can increase the agency of everyone is indeed, all I care about. It's what "decentralization" means to me and matters to me as a goal. You can't drop the power dynamics. It *is* about the power dynamics.

I want us to build a better future. A real one.

[cwebber@social.coop]

One thing I am confident about: it's not that Bluesky's engineering team doesn't care.

Actually I only really know two of Bluesky's main people well, Jay Graber and Bryan Newbold.

I know they do both care.

But so did Twitter's early devs. Twitter was supposed to be decentralized too.

[cwebber@social.coop]

It's easy to forget that Blaine Cook led a team at Twitter in early days to make Twitter decentralized and the team there was worried about the effects centralization can have.

Investors killed it anyway.

It has to be more than about caring, the work has to happen and be preserved.

[cwebber@social.coop]

I've said enough. I've said more than enough. I've said more than people probably thought could possibly happen on the subject on a blogpost or social media thread let alone *two*.

And that's with me dropping part of the second blogpost because I fell and hurt my hand.

It's time to wrap up.

[cwebber@social.coop]

I hope I haven't caused emotional strain on anyone. I spent a while walking back from brunch and was pretty depressed and was talking with my girlfriend: was I just *mean* about this whole thing?

She reassured me she didn't think I was, but I still feel like I was mean.

I tried not to be.

[raccoon@techhub.social]

@cwebber
Yeah you've said so much that I don't think I will ever be able to get through the entire thread. :V

I did like some of the points that I saw when I skimmed through it though. :3

[cwebber@social.coop]

But despite there being literally millions of people on both Bluesky and the fediverse, I haven't seen any other analysis that went comprehensively into architecture, terminology, and their implications at the level I did in terms of their *implications* and *impact*.

I think it needed to be done.

[raccoon@techhub.social]

@cwebber @3psboyd
Something I think is really important for people to understand about those programming problems before they post comics like this is that, even though they don't accurately mimic the day-to-day of professional programming work, they do teach a lot of skills in terms of solving the unique problems that people encounter, and tell potential employers that the person who solves them knows enough to solve a programming problem.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of applicants for programming jobs, including a large chunk of people with degrees in computer science, do not know how to do any programming in any language. Solving weird programming problems at least shows a degree of general competency.

[raccoon@techhub.social]

@cwebber
I love the figure.

The figure is love, the figure is life.

All hail FIG. 1.

[cwebber@social.coop]

So one more post after this one. Just one more post.

I have said so much, I feel like I am pumping the brakes on train of analysis and it's taking a while to come to a halt but it's time. I want to wrap it up, for everyone reading this, for myself.

So here we go.

[cwebber@social.coop]

We should build decentralized systems because we care about empowering people. We can't forget about power distribution.

Let's be clear about what our systems can and can't do.

And no matter where you are, if you're trying to build a healthier internet for everyone, keep it up.

Thanks.

[3psboyd@mastodon.social]

@Raccoon @cwebber In the past I've generally been able to tell if someone doesn't know how to program by speaking to them for a few minutes.