Mastodawn

Charlie Stross Jul 4, 2023

Fuck Bluesky. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4034584-ex-twitter-leader-jack-dorsey-endorses-rfk-jr-for-president/

Ex-Twitter leader Jack Dorsey endorses RFK Jr. for president

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared to endorse anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Democratic presidential nomination over the weekend. Dorsey retweeted a video of Kennedy saying he could beat former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who announced his bid for the White House on Twitter last month. Dorsey captioned…

The Hill

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Boris Mann Jul 4, 2023

@cstross you may not care, but Jack Dorsey is not in charge of BlueSky. It erases the good efforts of Jay Graber and her team.

Some balanced background reading here in an article by @micahflee https://theintercept.com/2023/06/01/bluesky-owner-twitter-elon-musk/

The team is very much intent on building an open protocol

Is Bluesky Billionaire-Proof?

Questions and answers about the new social media network Bluesky that you don’t need an invite to see. First, Jack Dorsey is not an owner.

The Intercept

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Charlie Stross Jul 4, 2023

@boris @micahflee Yeah, all that and bluesky monetize anything you upload by using it as input for their LLMs. Not to mention the advertising. And the fundamental original sin—another goddamn social media site owned by a corporation who can turn hostile or sell it on a whim.

In capitalism, if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product.

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Boris Mann Jul 4, 2023

@cstross @micahflee that is also not true.

They use HiveAI, a commercial service that does content labeling (which many services use).

The BlueSky ToS and their agreement with HiveAI does not allow for training.

In Micah’s article, you’ll see that BlueSky is a PBLLC, and the team themselves are working to design AT Protocol to protect against that company “going bad”

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Charlie Stross Jul 4, 2023

@boris @micahflee Doesn't matter: it's still corporate ad-funded social media, which means it's monetizing the users sneakily. The real problem is the behavioural advertising industry, which is as intrinsically toxic and corrupting as CSAM and should be criminalized accordingly.

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Noam

@cstross @boris @micahflee It is not (yet) ad-funded. They're trying to figure out sufficient non-ad monetization at the moment. Their first crack at it (probably insufficient) is to sell domains and set them up as usernames (since setting up domains as bluesky usernames is a little technically tough normally).

FWIW they're moving now towards opening up AT-protocol federation (somewhat slowly, but making tangible steps towards it) at which point they will not longer fully control the network. Many of the too-cool-for-school userbase doesn't really care but there's enough decentralization enthusiasts among them that there will certainly be alternative servers when that happens.