Notices by Shannon O'Neill (0mnishambles@mastodon.social)

@mmasnick I sincerely hope you’re right. I don’t know enough about the PBC structure to be confident it can withstand financial pressure. The journey of OpenAI from non-profit to whatever the hell it’s becoming certainly doesn’t inspire confidence.

@mmasnick In every interview Graber comes across as thoughtful about the important issues. Nevertheless Bluesky seems doomed to fail. Their business model of services and commissions is unlikely to satisfy the expectations of VC investors. Automattic might not be investing just for the $, but others are.

Bluesky’s legacy is likely to be ideas and tools for custom feeds which hopefully become widespread and encourage further innovation. Perhaps that’s enough.

#Bluesky
https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-wont-enshittify-ads/

A lot of Bluesky discourse around at the moment, now that they’ve opened up access. I recently joined Bluesky after being impressed by their CEO Jay Graber’s performance on this panel. 🧵

#Bluesky #Mastodon
https://vimeo.com/906085927

I didn’t want to join Bluesky. I was hoping that all my favourite Twitter posters would move Mastodon. Some did, but others stayed on Twitter, and many chose Bluesky. As Casey Newton notes, It’s significant that the comedy community in particular chose Bluesky (although many are still active on Twitter).

https://www.platformer.news/bluesky-public-opening-jay-graber/

Comedy is as important to my mental health as antidepressants. Using Twitter is untenable, so I’m now looking to Bluesky. Of course there are funny people and posts on Mastodon, but that’s not its strength. This Twitter post from one of my favourite comedians, Benjamin Partridge, still haunts me. It was the moment I realised Mastodon was unlikely to become what I’d hoped, at least in the short term.

My early impressions of Bluesky are mixed. The enthusiasm there feels a bit forced. It reminds me of the hype around (the disastrous) Clubhouse, which also used invite-only access to build a sense of VIP exclusivity. I find that distasteful, but it seems to have worked so far.

I’m now inclined to agree with John Scalzi that we should become comfortable using different social media for different purposes and contexts eg Bluesky for fun and Mastodon for more nerdy or serious discourse. Mastodon does a great job of scratching my itch for tech (esp. FLOSS & Apple-related) and electronic art & music.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/02/06/bluesky-out-of-beta-various-social-media-thoughts-february-2024/

@mmasnick Another important question is whether and how AT Protocol could interoperate with ActivityPub. This would be my preferred outcome in a truly federated and open social media ecosystem.

I’ll never join Threads (I’ve boycotted Facebook/Meta since 2013) but I would welcome being able to read certain Threads accounts via the fediverse.

My biggest question for Bluesky is its business model. In particular, what is its runway? When and where will its next funding round come from, and under what terms? Eg will the likes of a16z be influencing it? Will it become another Ello?

Perhaps @mmasnick has some insight here.

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

Bluesky’s killer feature is custom algorithms. Mastodon should adopt that ASAP. I’ve always chosen chronological timelines over centralised algorithms. But I have a number of strategies for getting through my feed, such as short-term muting busy accounts. I would love to turn these techniques into algorithms that I could switch between, like in Bluesky.

@mmasnick Already there is promising work being done to create unified experiences at the client level, such as Tapestry. All of this activity makes me hopeful that this current messy situation might actually have a good outcome.

I think this is positive for Mastodon and the fediverse in the long-term, as it will likely still be a viable option if (probably when) the other social media options like Bluesky eventually enshittify.

https://blog.iconfactory.com/2024/02/tapestry-unwoven/