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

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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 at TechHub :mastodon:

@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

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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 at TechHub :mastodon:

@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 at TechHub :mastodon:

@cwebber
I love the figure.

The figure is love, the figure is life.

All hail FIG. 1.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

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.

Matt Boyd

@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.

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@3psboyd @cwebber
"Yes I had chat GPT write that block for me. It knows better than I do how to solve the Fizz Bin problem."

Josef Davies-Coates

@cwebber I'd like to make a smaller than $10/mo regular contribution - where can I do that please? Thanks!

Josef Davies-Coates

@cwebber I think you meant to write "centralized today, in practice" here, right?

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@OctaviaConAmore I think there *are* thoughts of expanding it, but also it's that Bluesky's character limit is even smaller, and I was crossposting to both at the same time!

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@flippac @shtrom There is also a "perimeter security/reputation" approach that people keep trying over and over again that keeps leading to re-centralization

OCapPub writes about this https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub/blob/master/README.org

And we are trying to design to prevent it too

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@viq it likes pets