In this searing investigative report on #Bluesky @davetroy asks how are the users flocking to there safe from EXACTLY THE SAME THING that happened at Twitter/X.
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to Mastodon Migration last edited by [email protected]
Folks, please read this article. It goes into great detail about how the current CEO may be pure of heart and sincere about the lofty goals she espouses, but that this won't matter a bit to the crypto bro owners and potential acquirers who could, at the drop of a hat, restrict and manipulate user's access to their audiences.
If we are not smart about who owns the social media networks we embrace, we are destined to repeat the cycle of corporate capture and marginalization.
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to Mastodon Migration last edited by
This story adds to a body of groundbreaking investigative work Dave has done on the subject of the risks associated with the ownership and structure of #Bluesky.
Check out, and boost his thread providing links to these articles here:
Thank you Dave for being the one reporter raising these important questions.
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A Slightly Orange Catreplied to Mastodon Migration last edited by
@mastodonmigration @davetroy This observation about Mastodon baffles me:
"But many users found the distributed model, which operates in a manner similar to email, confusing. They have become accustomed to centralized solutions ..."
Like email, Mastodon feels centralized to me. It doesn't matter what servers posts come from, I can interact like it's one central service.
Only recently has this become clumsier, thanks to the not-quite-federated Threads and Bluesky.
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to A Slightly Orange Cat last edited by [email protected]
Interesting point that rather than simplify things that the 'partial' federation of Threads and Bluesky has contributed to impressions of complexity and confusion. Had not thought about it this way.
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Dave Troy :toad:replied to A Slightly Orange Cat last edited by
@mbrailer @mastodonmigration I agree personally. But a popular narrative holds otherwise. I’m not sure why. Another factor may have been performance variations during growth spurts that varied across instances and thus shaping popular perception.
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to Dave Troy :toad: last edited by
Actually think 90% of the friction actually derives from how the Mastodon app doesn't look like Twitter, and not so much the distributed architecture.
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@davetroy @mbrailer @mastodonmigration People don't like a few things here. I've asked. They don't like instances, they find it confusing. I don't, but that's me.
They say they have less reach here, that fewer people read their posts. I find that to be the opposite, they need to put in minimal effort and they'll see results.
They say it's "unstable" here. Glitches, crashes, etc. during upgrades, etc. True, that happens, but to me, not a dealbreaker.
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@davetroy @mbrailer @mastodonmigration Oh, and by "they" I mean everyone from the average user to the huge accounts/newsies etc
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@GottaLaff @davetroy @mbrailer
Yup. Mastodon is an awkward elephant in many ways. But overall it works quite well, and it has the one thing that the corporate networks can never have, safety from being captured and marginalized. The frustration is that users don't prioritize safety over convenience. It's not a surprise, just very frustrating.
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@mastodonmigration @davetroy My experience of bsky is that it's (currently) largely inhabited by folks who are not going to stay there if a Musk (or other oligarch) buys it to spread rightist propaganda. He could buy it to kill it, perhaps. But then those interested in real communication would move on.
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"partial" is being generous. I've found if I follow someone on bluesky via the bridge I can only interact with posts they make. Not re-posts or any bluesky replies to their posts. It's extremely limited.
Don't know what the Threads experience is like, my instance doesn't federate.
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@mastodonmigration @davetroy
Another point worth making is that Bluesky's decentralization seems unfeasible to implement with a self-hosted instance. You'd basically carry a copy of the whole network on your server, according to this article I read earlier today. -
@mastodonmigration @davetroy I feel increasingly safer on Mastodon
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@peterbrown @mastodonmigration @davetroy
Un-co-optable by any single individual, by design
whatever other its design flaws, this is a superb core principle
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@TFFPrisoner @mastodonmigration @davetroy
...and Paul Frazee has responded to the article (full thread in https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3lbku7vdikk2l ) :
"I disagree with this characterization of atproto's shared-heap model:
"The physical world equivalent would be that every user had their own house at which they stored a copy of every piece of mail delivered to every other user at their house."
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to Vivek Gani last edited by [email protected]
@vivekgani @TFFPrisoner @davetroy
And this is in response to this deep dive into the subject by @cwebber :
Christine Lemmer-Webber (@[email protected])
How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵
social.coop (social.coop)
The fact remains that there is still only one node in this 'distributed' network, making it kind of not a distributed network no matter how it is architected.
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@mastodonmigration @davetroy The crypto bros who invested in BlueSky will be very happy to sell to Elon (or any other #oligarch if he overpays for it like he did for Xitter. The core team will find it very hard to resist a unicorn valuation. So the odds are very high that the ascendant #oligarchy in America will get control of BlueSky very soon, one way or another.
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Tend to agree, but they will wait until critical mass is established and the next important inflection point is months away, leaving no time to for the dispossessed to regroup.
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@mastodonmigration @davetroy I think the timeline will be driven by when BlueSky burns through the $15M they just raised, which is probably a year away. I will be very surprised if they aren’t effectively controlled by the #oligarchs by this time in 2025.
