Mastodawn

Anil Dash Apr 25, 2023

Since some people have asked me, here's a quick thread on initial experience comparison between Bluesky and the fediverse. It's important to note that this comparison is somewhat absurd by default because Bluesky is still tiny & unproven, but there's interest so I'm happy to share what I've observed. Also, I don't get into protocol differences because honestly who cares. So:

Anil Dash Apr 25, 2023

The fediverse (including Mastodon) is better at: having been proven to scale, having multiple places running different services, offering more choice of apps, giving a choice of legal jurisdictions and business/non-profit models, and is still growing far faster, especially globally.

Bluesky is better at: Onboarding & signup experience, having fewer choices to make, quality of the default app, familiarity for people used to Twitter's design, discovery of other users within the existing service.

Anil Dash Apr 25, 2023

Here are things we don't know: What Bluesky's trust, safety & abuse policies will look like at scale, compared to fediverse services. Mastodon and other fediverse services have been uneven at times, but have matured over years; Bluesky is still tiny and hasn't been tested at all. We don't know if Bluesky can scale, either technically or socially.

Anil Dash Apr 25, 2023

There are also platform features that people might legitimately have different goals for. Bluesky makes content & people searchable by default, which Mastodon only does for hashtagged content. This aids discovery, but can also enable kinds of abuse. Fediverse partisans argue this constraint helps build healthy community, but many newer users find it a frustrating omission. Both platforms let you use your own domain, but it's much harder to do so on the fediverse right now.

Anil Dash Apr 25, 2023

People's perception of the overall fediverse is (probably unfairly) shaped by Mastodon, though many other services make different choices around key features that others might find meaningful. Understanding federation is a huge barrier for people who just want to (re)connect with friends or institutions. People's perception of Bluesky is shaped by Jack Dorsey's role in its initial conception; we don't yet know whether that's fair, though he doesn't seem very involved at all.

Anil Dash Apr 27, 2023

My feeling, which I expect will encounter some resistance for a while, is that if Bluesky succeeds (for whatever definition of "success"), it's just part of the fediverse. Email has thrived for a long time with multiple protocols making it run behind the scenes; there's no reason that the new wave of social networks built on the open web can't share that trait.

jwz Apr 27, 2023

@anildash My strong suspicion is that Bluesky (or any similar corporate product that preaches federation) will use federation for their initial growth spurt, and then find a way to pull up the drawbridge once private equity or the Saudis decide that lock-in sounds more profitable.

I don't know why I would be so cynical, except for my lying eyes and the entire history of Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, RSS, XMPP, OpenID, and even Open Graph meta tags.

Doug Wilson Apr 27, 2023

@jwz Don't forget about Slack using IRC to then kill IRC compatibility.

Asbjørn Ulsberg Apr 29, 2023

@onpaperwings @jwz @nicomen True. There’s also a major flaw in @anildash’s comparison of social networks with email: Email clients had to support RFC 821, 822 and 918 (and their successors) in order to operate at all. Interoperability was a given — a requirement — to even compete.

Bluesky doesn’t interoperate. They had a quick glance at the one existing open standard that exists — #ActivityPub — concluded “NIH”, and created their own, proprietary protocol. Their use of the word “open” to describe the AT Protocol is meaningless until the spec is submitted to a standardisation organisation.

The current state of social network protocols is nothing like email. It’s even worse than the initial years of the web where browser vendors innovated furiously on top of HTTP and HTML and we had to endure the 20 years of IE winning and then dying before getting back on the standardisation and interoperability track.

Having lived through it, I can’t say that history is something I wish to repeat.

Carl Malamud Apr 29, 2023

@bitbear I think @anildash had it right. Each RFC was based on “rough consensus and working code.” Multiple actual independent implementations. Look at the IETF site and you will see a huge number of iterations of SMTP and then ESMTP, MIME. You cited POP, but like SMTP, that was all a negotiation between completing implementations. The key was that everybody sat down at the table and worked it out. Mastodon/Bluesky/… could do the same if they make it a protocol play.

Carl Malamud Apr 29, 2023

@bitbear @anildash p.s., point taken on http/html ... even protocol plays can go rapidly awry. Likewise instant messaging where even repeated efforts never got people to play nicely in the sandbox. I just like to be optimistic and have faith we might work it all out this time.

Asbjørn Ulsberg Apr 29, 2023

@carlmalamud @anildash I appreciate your optimism. I’m taking a more cynical approach and feel Bluesky has got a major job of convincing to do before I can place any amount of trust in them.

Anil Dash Apr 30, 2023

@bitbear @carlmalamud I think that's the right stance. I'm playing around with it and exploring because, I mean hell, I'm on all the other sites and they're even worse. But it's good to hold them to the standards of the open web, not the standards of the hyper-growth platforms run by fascists.

Maria Bustillos Apr 30, 2023

@anildash @bitbear @carlmalamud

Profitmaking interests will invariably attempt to herd everyone into a monopoly-controlled pen. How to prevent this?

Olav May 1, 2023

@maria
@anildash @bitbear @carlmalamud we can't keep corps out, and TBH we probably shouldn't if we want the Federation to be the societal norm. Our energy there should be making them abide by our rules, and the few early adopters seem to get that. Also our energy should be getting our standards bulletproof something like FB can't ride roughshod. Both are doable if we fund both the ActivityPub and [federation sw] maintainers since they're in like every small instance admin

Maria Bustillos

@olavf @anildash @bitbear @carlmalamud

I'd love to figure out how to get the word out better, through our publications and elsewhere, so please get in touch with me wherever I can help!