Bluesky, decentralisation, and the distribution of power Bluesky has seen a large inflow of new users following the results of the US election, and a significant amount of media attention as well. All that attention to Bluesky has also led to a renewed conversation around the question of whether Bluesky is decentralised or not. The terms decentralisation and federation are used in multiple ways: to describe the technological architecture details of an internet protocol, but just as often as a sh...
  • seaQueue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    I wonder which billionaire is going to snap up bluesky once they’ve fattened their crop of highly engaged users

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

    We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital

    In other words, the enshittification is coming. Because Bluesky is backed by crypto-bro venture capital.

    A lot of hay is being made about Bluesky but despite literal oligarchs taking over the country, I guess rich people dictating how our systems work is what people want because apparently Mastodon is too much to ask of individuals.

    We can talk about Bluesky and how great their tech is all we want, but unless we address the elephant in the room, venture capital that wants a return on their investment, we’re just spiraling the same stupid fucking drain we’ve been down with every social media preceding it.

    • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      For profit incentives are part of what made open source successful, see red hat and Suse. From what i can tell bluesky is open source and could be forked like what happened with nextcloud and lineageos. blockchain has reasonable applications .

      We could use something like codeberg for bluesky, a open source community of developers and donors that could balance the for profit entity.

    • DaseinPickle@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      Maybe Mastodon should take a moment to learn something. Everybody on Reddit is praising all the moderation capabilities of Bluesky, the ability to create block lists and starter packs. The way you can verify your user by using your own domain as a handle.

      Instead of complaining about users, which is pointless, make Mastodon better. Users won’t come to Mastodon by shaming them for being stupid.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        Well yeah, let’s get the Mastodon devs a cool $15 million so they can hire more devs and compete. /s

        You fail to understand open source. You want it better? Get fucking involved and stop asking people who are coding for free to compete with the code of an organization that has millions in dollars backing them and a team of professional developers.

        Either get involved or start dumping money into the Mastodon devs patreon accounts.

        Whichever you do is way more constructive than bitching about an open source program made by volunteers and comparing it to a slick corporate product with literally millions backing it and it’s development. That’s just sucking corporate dick by any other name.

        Further, pretty sure block lists were and are available on Mastodon.

        No wonder Trump won, everyone wants to suck at the teat of the rich instead of saying “we don’t need you.”

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          Do the volunteers want people to use what they make?

          Because, I’ll be honest, based on how people on the fediverse talk about people coming from Twitter or Reddit or wherever, I’m not convinced that they do. Rather, they just want to pat themselves on the back for being high minded developers.

        • DaseinPickle@leminal.spaceEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          Keep doing what you are doing. I’m sure people will suddenly care deeply about software licenses if you shame them enough. They probably don’t have other shit in their life to worry about. It’s really constructive.

  • blue_berry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Decentralisation doesn’t necessarily come with decentralized technical infrastructure, but its the basis for it. I’m still betting on ActivityPub. Sure social insentives are important, but the most openess will win. Also, Wordpress, Flipboard, Threads already joined ActivityPub, so the ecosystem already is kind of attractive in that direction.

  • Funkwonker@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    I don’t really get all the pessimism. Even if folks are right in saying there’ll be a bait and switch, this is people moving to a new platform en masse. If Bluesky goes to shit there’s more reason to believe users would just move again.

    In the meantime, as members of the fediverse, we should be using Bluesky being “decentralized” as a way to ease people into actually decentralized platforms.

    • Jared White@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      I can tell you right now nobody’s on Bluesky because it’s “decentralized” because the evidence is clear, it’s not in practice decentralized lol.

      This is all a bloody waste of time. I really wish I could just fast-forward two years into the enshittification when everyone realizes they got duped by Big VC. Again.

  • iso@lemy.lolEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Ok. I want to host my own Bluesky and interact with the bsky.app instance. How?

    The article is all about excuses.