Clive Thompson
An excellent layperson's breakdown of how Bluesky works, beneath the hood ...
... specifically, what's decentralized about it (content storage, for now) and what, for now, isn't (the part that queries for updates in user's posts, and then assembles it into a feed)
https://anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/maybe-bluesky-has-won
via @pluralistic
Kristoffer Lawson
@clive @pluralistic one key takeaway from the article is the inherent (or current?) nature of BlueSky’s decentralisation is such that you need pretty huge resources to fully run your own thing. In that sense Mastodon’s decentralisation is more widely scalable.
Clive Thompson
yes, one enormous advantage of a federated service like Mastodon -- and all fediverse projects -- is that they're self-funded by the people who form the community of users
self-funding by the community has its own limitations bien sur
but it doesn't have the mass deformations we've seen with every major social network so far
I can't imagine how bluesky will avoid running into the same monetization problems in the long/medium run ...
Pooka🍸Boo 👁🫣🫵
I'll boost this because I think everyone should get a peek behind the hood of these things. I don't know about Bluesky, but if it's driven by advertising, I will not touch it. The beauty of Mastodon is no ads. I'm sick to death of people trying to sell shit. If I need something, I know where to look. I don't need absolute garbage shoved in my face incessantly by folks only interested in our money, not our issue. To that end, I say fuck that aspect of capitalism.
Clive Thompson
@lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic
I think some people indeed would pay for Bluesky!
The problem is I suspect it’s a minority … and like many corporate social networks, Bluesky would probably like to grow *fairly* quickly, and “free” does that better
Mind you if they made it so you could really leave Bluesky and take all your followers with you …
… then *that* would probably be an even bigger preventative against enshittification than a paid option
kookster
@clive @lednaBM @pluralistic I don’t pretend to know either, but I was never going to pay for X, but I would pay to support bluesky, and if that would keep it from enshittifying, it would be worth it
Mastodon Migration
@clive @lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic
Sorry, but this does not make sense, or maybe misunderstanding you. The fact that Cory has raised this point does not mean Bluesky will do anything about it. They will just ignore it, or give some tech mumbo jumbo ostensible explanation about how it will someday be possible. These guys are consummate vaporware salesmen when it comes to anything that would secure against enshittification, like a real distributed network or taking your followers with you.
Mastodon Migration
@clive @lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic
Just would like to point out how effective from a marketing POV the Threads promise to interface with the Fediverse was, what a year and a half ago, and how difficult a time the largest social media engineering company on the planet is having pulling this technical miracle off, sarcasm intended. It is not hard to promise things you never intend to do, and gain all the PR benefit up front for them. Until reporters become less credulous that will be the MO.
Clive Thompson
@lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic
Since — Cory’s made this point many times — then the folks running Bluesky actually have to pay attention to what the folks using Bluesky want
because now they could face serious competition 😅
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