Chris TrottierJack Dorsey explaining exactly why no single company should own a social media platform.
But Jack Dorsey also still prefers that Elon Musk own Twitter instead of a bank.
Which is a wild thing to say knowing what we know now.
Call me crazy, but if I was in Jack Dorsey’s position, I would have converted Twitter into a consumer-owned and worker-owned co-op.
Sell it to everyone who uses Twitter and works on it.
That model works for many successful companies.
I just asked Jack Dorsey why he doesn’t donate towards helping ActivityPub.
Will he reply? Because I really want to know 🙂
Here’s how Jack Dorsey want to monetize Bluesky:
1. Subscriptions
2. Ads
3. Commerce/Transactions
Jack Dorsey says he doesn’t believe a company should own a protocol platform and distribution.
Glad to hear he regrets Twitter.
Sooo… when will Bluesky connect to multiple nodes?
Jack Dorsey says if AT protocol has a CEO, it fails.
I agree.
I guess Bluesky should decentralize soon.
Jack Dorsey doesn’t want AT protocol to be capable of DMs.
That means they’re probably not coming to Bluesky either.
Here’s what I don’t understand: why does Jack Dorsey pretend that ActivityPub doesn’t exist?
Oblomov@atomicpoet because it's actually successful.
Peter Jakobs ⛵@atomicpoet I would tend to think because he believes he will get enough screentime to make with his own protocol, which will give home more control and therefore more opportunity to monetarize
@atomicpoet ha! Had I read the posts before those, I would have been more puzzled an would not have come to this answer
Mike Beasley@pjakobs @atomicpoet he doesn’t own or control atprotocol. he isn’t in charge of it. he gave them some of twitter’s money a while back and he gets one board seat that that doesn’t give him enough sway to make any decisions. the actual ceo is jay graber and she has confirmed this multiple times.
@MikeBeas @atomicpoet see my own answer to my response
@pjakobs @atomicpoet haha now I feel like if I had read the additional posts I also would not have come to this conclusion lol 😬
Raoul@atomicpoet My money is on hubris and Dorsey's trademark vapidness.
Cyber Yuki@atomicpoet Easy: Because it's become an existential threat to his business, just like Linux against Microsoft.
Jack doesn't want to participate in a distributed, open world. He wants an empire he can control.
Pēteris Krišjānis@yuki2501 @atomicpoet it is even sadder than that - he believes that he is only one who "gets" it. Any competition or open source entity is non-existant.
Money and a bit of idiocy does that to people.
Money and a bit of idiocy does that to people.
David@yuki2501 @atomicpoet I was at a #Microsoft presentation these past weeks, and one of the guys said 70% of the virtual machines on Microsoft #Azure run #Linux . Sometimes you have to embrace the enemy.
Packy Anderson@atomicpoet Because he doesn't control it.
People who build things with open protocols don't become worshipped as tech gods. They may become names recognized in communities, but they don't get rich.
@packy he doesn’t control at protocol either. he has one board seat and no control. so if it’s control he’s after he’s doing a terrible job of that.
@MikeBeas Okay, how about the "not invented here" phenomenon?
Rather than working on ActivityPub, something that already exists, he'll make sure BlueSky reinvents the wheel.
I still believe the credit for the invention is most of it. Jack can't be lauded as a tech innovator if he just embraces existing technology. I don't care if he's one seat on the board: he's getting ALL the credit for BlueSky.
@packy dude activitypub sucks. why would they build on it?
@MikeBeas Oh, you're one of THOSE people. What sucks about ActivityPub, and why couldn't that suckage be fixed by extending the protocol? Please be specific.
Just reiterating that it sucks doesn't clarify your current standing as a Jack Dorsey fanboy.
@packy i’m not a dorsey fanboy. i couldn’t care less about him. atproto isn’t his system. he gave people money but he didn’t create anything. they did.
and activitypub has moderation only based on what your server admin wants to moderate, zero true account portability, usernames based on your host that change if you move, and a lot of other terrible foundational choices. you can’t retrofit fixes for all of this stuff into the protocol.
@packy If you want to know why they didn’t use ActivityPub after they considered it, here’s their own explanation of the shortcomings. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/
@MikeBeas Ok, THIS is an answer.
@MikeBeas but also, why aren't you including @atomicpoet in your replies? I mean, **he's** the one asking the question. I was just speculating on the answer.
@packy @atomicpoet oh I didn’t realize I had accidentally over written his user name
@atomicpoet @packy I don’t care man
@atomicpoet @packy the blue sky team evaluate it all the options and decided none of them were good enough. I don’t care what you think. You’re not building anything
Emelia 👸🏻@atomicpoet that's probably a good idea.. though mentioned users only posts seems good for stuff that doesn't really strictly need privacy, just quietness?
@thisismissem Why not integrate Bluesky with something like Matrix?
@atomicpoet simplicity? idk, maybe not every app needs to be everything? Especially with federated or decentralized identity
@thisismissem I’ve seen numerous social media platforms try to go without DMs. It rarely works.
@atomicpoet mmm, yeah, I guess integrating matrix would be okay, but iirc it doesn't have portable identity?
@thisismissem True. I guess that’s another thing that will need to be built.
@atomicpoet or adapted/evolved?
@atomicpoet @thisismissem they’re choosing between matrix and some other options. the entire thing is still in development and very much a beta. people whining about missing features at this stage are idiots.
@MikeBeas @thisismissem You know what’s really silly? Allowing 100,000 people to use software when basic features aren’t there.
@atomicpoet @thisismissem there aren’t 100,000 users on there. there aren’t even a third of that. and some of those people got in by brute forcing invite codes, the leadership already said they would not open to a lot of people before these features got in place, but they can’t just build in a vacuum, they need users to help test this stuff. If you’re not comfortable being a beta tester go away until it’s ready.
@MikeBeas @thisismissem Nah, I'm going to stay. Reporting on decentralized social media is kind of what I do.
Regardless of registrations, Bluesky should probably close them off right now before this gets too hot to handle.
@atomicpoet @thisismissem it’s fine. blocking landed yesterday. federation is due within another week or so.
@MikeBeas We'll see. One thing I've learned about software development is that "another week" could wind up becoming "another month". And every moment Bluesky delays federation is a moment that the userbase misunderstands the service.
@atomicpoet they were going to build federation sooner but people started demanding blocks first even though blocks are supposed to be built on top of the federation architecture. I trust them when they say it’ll be ready in a week.
@MikeBeas Again, this is a problem with inviting too many people to the platform.
@atomicpoet @MikeBeas i'm gonna second chris here, in that they really got their earlier adopters group wrong, in that they've grown way faster than expected and to an audience that doesn't quite get that it's not ready for prime time, in part because they've created a FOMO effect.
Pumping invites to for instance, leaders of certain social communities is definitely going to skew your beta & you need to be *really careful* about who you invite to early releases, otherwise shit gets dangerous
jamie hill🏴☠️
Sal Rahman@atomicpoet BlueSky is a profit-driven business like Twitter and Meta?
Scott Williams 🐧@manlycoffee @atomicpoet Yup. I don't think that was ever in question. It was always intended to be "monetized". BlueSky and Nostr are particularly popular with the crypto crowd who are into everything being monetized.
James EndicottIt's actually incorporated as a Public Benefit LLC.
They're somewhere between for-profit and non-profit in that they are allowed to make money and must pay taxes but the board is bound by terms in the covenant/mission at time of incorporation instead of having a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.
Mostly it protects CEOs from getting sued by shareholders for suboptimal decisions.
sub_o@atomicpoet what about selling user data to AI companies. Wasn’t there an online therapy or suicide hotline company that did that?
Arindam BasuBecause you are a good man, Chris.
@atomicpoet hypercapitalists see worker ownership/coops as borderline communist. They can't even entertain the idea, let alone contemplate the possibility of it working
AndyTiedye 𓀥@oblomov @atomicpoet They are more than willing to use the products thereof, e.g. open-source software.
@andytiedye @atomicpoet of course: it's there, why wouldn't they. They aren't stupid. Sometimes they even participate in the ecosystem, in a fashion. But they don't believe it's in any way sustainable I'm the longer term.