Mastodon Migration
What is hard to understand about the Free Our Feeds BS is what Cory Doctorow @pluralistic, who normally is quite outspoken about these tech bro efforts to coopt legitimate social technology, is doing supporting it? And also why, despite numerous requests to explain his rationale he has been silent on the subject.
What gives Cory? Why are you lending your name to #FreeOurFeeds?
Cory Doctorow
@mastodonmigration Dude. I've replied to about ten of these. That's hardly being "silent."
I'm about to publish a long essay about it, but the long and the short of it is, "Scolding people for enjoying a popular technology is no way to build a popular movement. The only way to do that is to make the technology they use free."
Cory Doctorow
@mastodonmigration As to why I haven't responded to every comment, there are several reasons:
1. It's redundant, especially as I'm working on a longer piece
2. I have a book deadline
3. I have a radio documentary deadline
4. I have cancer and complex chronic pain, which is time consuming
5. My city is on fire.
6. I have a family.
I hope that's sufficient for you.
Cory Doctorow
@Beachbum @mastodonmigration I do indeed use Twitter, and I've explained why numerous times, at length, e.g. https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/
Beachbum
@pluralistic @mastodonmigration so do you use Facebook Instagram or Twitter?
kuteboiCoder
@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online @pluralistic@mamot.fr
#FeedOurFeeds sounds like a slogan for sentient tapeworms from an alien invasion scifi film.
Cory Doctorow
@john @mastodonmigration Of what? Bluesky federation? I'm not only a supporter of that idea, I've written many, many, MANY articles about it, e.g.:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes
John Mierau
@mastodonmigration @pluralistic
You're a litlte busy, no doubt.
I was confused at the 'lending your name' thing--I didn't think you were a supporter.
Cory Doctorow
@john @mastodonmigration I mean, there's like 20m people there. What kind of tech freedom advocate would I be if I didn't support making it easier for them to leave?
CellularMoose
@mastodonmigration @pluralistic So because it's not perfect it shouldn't be done? Also, if you read the first two goals of the fundraiser it seems like the point is is to give Bluesky/AT protocol users the same freedoms that ActivityPub users already have. In short, to bring AT up to par with ActivityPub. Which sounds like a really good thing to me.
Cory Doctorow
> Don't understand what you mean by the scolding comment.
"What gives Cory? Why are you lending your name to #freeourfeeds
Mastodon Migration
Appreciate you responding here. Don't understand what you mean by the scolding comment. What we are talking about is an initiative that sucks money and energy away from real public platforms. Looking forward to the long response.
Grassroots Joe
@joborg @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber
There's no question Mastodon can scale. The ability is fundamental to the AP protocol. No 1 server needs to scale. The load can be distributed across many dozens of servers; spinning up new ones can be done very quickly.
If people moved to Mastodon en mass, movement organizations would spin up servers using their brand and host their members, once again spreading the load.
Sure improving conditions is great, if Bsky allows it.
Joborg
@joeinwynnewood @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber Scaling by 1M users per day in November was pretty convincing to me, and it's not at all obvious that AP/Mastodon has that potential without an incompatible do-over.
I agree that there is an argument for funding Fedi improvements (which I do), but improving future conditions for 25M Bsky users (and other AT applications to come) is not negligible.
Joborg
@joeinwynnewood @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber
If you will, though from a technical perspective ATproto is a better protocol, and more successfully deployed (in terms of user count and resource usage). ATproto already has distributed outboxes (and labellers, blocklists et c. missing here).
Grassroots Joe
@joborg @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber
Re: better protocol
I don't know that this is true. There's nothing Bluesky has done that a few million dollars dropped in Eugene Rochko's lap couldn't get done for Mastodon.
The primary difference is Eugene won't give up some measure of control to VCs in return for their money.
The money being raised by this effort very arguably would be much better spent on enhancing the Fediverse.
Grassroots Joe
@joborg @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber
Re: as in Mastodon
So IOW recreate ActivityPub (AP) in the middle of the rest of the Bluesky stack which seems a bit silly when AP already exists and is quite successfully deployed (as Christine notes someplace in her posts).
Joborg
@joeinwynnewood @jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @cwebber
The expensive part is "storing every post ever made on the network and its cryptographic signatures". A selective relay (only collecting posts its users want, as in Mastodon) would cut this by a lot, or it could just keep the last week or so of relayed posts.
But for that to happen someone has to build it.
Grassroots Joe
@jubei @cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @pluralistic
I don't know that this very long and technical thread addresses the interoperability question, but it definitely talks about At vs activitypub.
Perhaps more importantly, it talks at length about the degree to which Bsky is not distributed and as likely as not never will be. Not because it's not technically feasible, but because implementing the full stack costs way too much money.
Jubei
@cellularmoose @mastodonmigration @pluralistic I would love it if somebody could explain how AT is different from activitypub and if there is any chance for interoperability.
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