@davidgerard as someone who lurks both there and here, while the trends are defo a problem for Bluesky (the company), i think the platform itself has enough decentralization baked in that there's a decent chance it just becomes "mastodon but with a different protocol and community" edit: if the company collapses that is
(i do have plenty of Other Thoughts but i figure i should keep it relevant :p )
@sussusamogus i think there's no way that can happen while it's 99.99+% Bluesky Social PBC for the big expensive bottlenecks.
The design of AT Proto seems to need big central bottlenecks. Perhaps there's a version that doesn't, but so far it's entirely hypothetical.
@davidgerard AFAIUI, relays are the most expensive bit, and aren't strictly required. there's also a decent chance the cost of running one would lower a fair bit if Bsky pbllc went down given there'd be a lot less accounts to crawl, but I'll concede that's mostly conjecture on my part :p
i could see the PLC directory going down being a problem, though; I'm not 100% sure if / what people have planned for that, other than i think the eurosky people maintain a read-only mirror(..?)
@davidgerard saying all this, I'm far from an expert on how atproto works, so i could very well be missing something. anything i know has mostly come from idle curiosity / passive absorption lol
@sussusamogus i keep reacting "it can't be that stupid, I must be understanding it wrong" and then it is that stupid
@sussusamogus the atproto appview is also a killer
yeah, lotta the problems are the bsky shit doesn't scale without huge centralised control points.
Fedi scales and is robust because it's *actually* decentralised, but then you have the disadvantages like really bad user discovery, and no real introductory algorithm to get new users into the swing of things. Masto users will of course dive in to explain at length why sucking is good actually.
Yes, but have you considered that sucking is good actually?
Sorry, I'll see myself out.
@davidgerard @sussusamogus Sucking as a Service?
@davidgerard interesting! i was under the impression that atproto scaled better at larger sizes *because* of the more centralized aspects, but i suppose that idea mostly does come from that side so lol
ahh just now seeing the edit, woops! but yeah, seems like different designs for different goals
@sussusamogus yeah. bluesky are coiners, so bluesky corp think very much in terms of saying "decentralised!!" a lot while maintaining multiple points of absolute control. every time something breaks, another central point of control is exposed.
this stuff was never designed to be *operationally* decentralised, but it sure does great decentralisation theatre. Decentralised!!
@davidgerard didn't know that was The Buzzword in that space (always ignored them lmfao), but it certainly makes sense why they like talking about it! just seems to annoy people that understand decentralized systems, and at best means nothing to people who don't
@davidgerard @sussusamogus The coiners always used the word "decentralised", when they actually mean "distributed".
I'm starting to believe RSS is the only social media I/we need, TBH. :) I'll never understand this desire for *any* algorithm, even a custom one, but I have no horse in the BSky race at all. They are just a thing I funnel all my posts to. It could vanish today and I wouldn't blink because I have folks following me via RSS and my mailing list, but I do wonder about more of the long form stuff others are building over there though and how that will succumb to decay. @davidgerard @sussusamogus
@davidgerard @sussusamogus here, how about this “it forces actual community building rather than community discovery”.
Or “algorithms are how you get post capitalist techofascism, do you want (more) post capitalist techofascism?”
O’kay, I’m done.
@jkdelauney @sussusamogus using shitty and unpleasant software is good for the character, all the users telling me they're sick of my shit are wrong