1/IMPORTANT thread about Bluesky funding and origins. Many folks know that it was seeded by Jack Dorsey around a libertarian vision of a magical network that wouldn’t need moderation because it would be decentralized and baked into a protocol (somehow).
The people who aided Dorsey in pursuing this vision were other libertarian/post-rationalists connected with effective altruism and other online anarchist movements.
2/One network called TPOT (‘that part of Twitter’) was instrumental. It carried over into Bluesky’s founding DNA.
Someone made this visualization in 2023, showing the TPOT/EA network quite clearly. EA as you know is part of TESCREAL and the belief systems that have driven Sam Bankman Fried and Elon Musk. SBF also put money into Musk’s Twitter buy.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/tpot-postrat
Attached: 1 image For some reason people fleeing the sinking #Twitter / #X ship for #BlueSky don't seem to be aware of the fact that crypto bros at #BlockchainCapital bought a huge stake in the company just a few weeks ago. Like these are basically the same crypto bros who just helped #ElonMusk buy Twitter. They might even be literally the same people (I strongly suspect they are but I'm too lazy to check). Either way #BlockchainCapital was co-founded by #BrockPierce, who also brought you #Tether, AKA the company that Trump's transition team chairman manages $120 billion for. Pierce is also a friend of the #Netanyahu family. You don't have to take my word for it. Here's the official press release: https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a Moving to BlueSky is not an escape. Growing a base there is just putting in a bunch of work to create a platform that will be co-opted by crypto bros as soon as X breaks in half. p.s. crypto bros (#a16z) also own #Substack #crypto #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #USDT #Trump #DonaldTrump
6/Possibly Bluesky can address this by discussing their funding in detail, the expectations of the funders, and whether the TPOT/PostRat community is still a principal driver of the vision for the "company." But this all points to another rug pull in progress, and a lot of credulous people hurt.
While it is reasonable that the company acknowledged that Dorsey's vision of "moderation by protocol" was unfeasible, it sets up a highly centralized model that is now subject to capture.
7/And the next investment they took was from anarchocapitalist cryptobros with ties to Russia? Doesn't add up.
For those interested, here's the original post I shared here back in 2023 re: the TPOT DNA and origins of the network.
https://www.easyzoom.com/imageaccess/884cb1c001cd48e79aca92232bd24a04
8/From Bluesky's press release:
"[Blockchain's] Kinjal Shah will join our board. Kinjal shares our vision for a social media ecosystem that empowers the people who use it, and we are glad to have her support as we invest in driving the adoption of decentralized social."
@julieofthespirits @RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy
Came here to say exactly the same.
It's not necessary to call ultraneoliberal dudes "anarchists" just because they had the money to occupy the label in media.
Or shall we call rightwingers now "patriots" or "common sense-driven people"?
And we could call anti-vaxxers "fully informed"?
Otherwise, thank you for the information! 
(and sorry for jumping in your mentions)
@julieofthespirits @RandomDamage @Moss
Yeah, I didn't think "anarchists" was quite right either. Not very similar to the kinds of anarchists I know, who reject coercion/ manipulation of others.
I would add that I think I've seen "TPOT" in use for "this part of Twitter" meaning simply whichever network the writer is in - so although I'm not saying it _isn't_ also a specific group, the acronym is potentially ambiguous.
But thanks @davetroy for the overall info!
@julieofthespirits @RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy Anarcho-capitalism is a thing, but the "anarcho" part doesn't align well with what, say, the anarcho-syndicalists uphold. The former believe in the pursuit of unfettered self-interest in the competitive arena of an unregulated market, the latter in organizing around shared wants and needs - collective bargaining, unions, co-ops, mutual aid etc.
In the popular imagination, "anarchism" is synonymous with lawlessness, civil disorder, even terrorism.
@simon_lucy @[email protected] @RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy Yeah, that was kinda my point, only I'm currently labouring under the Tyranny of the Austere Character Limit!
I wonder how many disagreements a person has that hinge entirely on the participants using variant definitions of a single word? An example would be one party defines "gender" as natal sex, the other as a social identity. Dictionaries support both senses, so they're stuck in a linguistic dispute, talking at cross-purposes.
@ApostateEnglishman @julieofthespirits @RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy
Exactly so. It is a bête noir of mine. It operates in all areas of discourse but it destroys social media because terms are never agreed.
It's almost like footnotes are needed (not community notes). But who is qualified to make such Solomonic Judging, apart from you and I and the Good Folk that agree?
@julieofthespirits @ApostateEnglishman @RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy
In this case, I agree with you about anarchy as a category being misused though I'd probably admit to being a cooperativist.
@julieofthespirits @simon_lucy Have you had extensive professional training on navigating gender identity in social and healthcare contexts? Until recently I worked for the British NHS, and for many years before was senior support lead for adults with complex needs.
Have you read any books or studied any of the recent literature on the evolving science of sex and gender? What would you say is sufficient to determine biological sex? Chromosomes, gametes, hormones, neuroanatomy?
Something else?
@julieofthespirits If you say so.
I hope that between typing out an average of 40 - 50 posts per day on Mastodon (more than 29,000 since only mid-2022, all of which are constructive praxis, of course!), you can find the time to be that model activist you measure everyone else against. The one you portray yourself as being online.
The world needs you, after all. 👋
@RandomDamage @Moss @davetroy But "National Socialist Party" sounds so positive!
/s
It could be worse, they call MAGA a #conservative movement, although they are the most revolutionary (or perhaps the only revolutionary) significant movement of our time.
@davetroy Thanks for the thread. I agree with your recommendations: Bluesky needs to publish a clear and convincing "trust story"; and peopel should be very skeptical about the long-term possibilities of Bluesky.
Also, on the moderation front, Dorsey was replaced on #Bluesky board by Mike Masnick, who's also very libertarian. Masnick's a lot smarter than Dorsey, and does understand the importance of content moderation. Still, one of the examples Masnick's "Protocols not platforms" paper that inspired Bluesky (and Nostr) uses to discuss about why the protocol approach is better is that it allows Alex Jones fan to still reach his audience: "those who don’t wish to be bothered with his nonsense need not deal with it; those who do wish to see it still have access to it."
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
I still see Bluesky as a useful short-term Twitter alternative (Meta and Threads are already doing all the things that Bluesky is likely do in the future, it's a lot easier to get up and going on Bluesky than Mastodon, and Blacksky is the only thing I know of in the decentralized world that's a good path for Black Twitter. Still, even without all the important points you make, and the "we don't have to ban Alex Jones" factor , they're a venture-funded startup, so once they need to monetize they're very likely to turn to an exploitative business model. So while it's situationally useful, it's not a promising long-term base.
@thenexusofprivacy thank you for that thoughtful commentary. I discussed a lot of this stuff with Dorsey ages ago, and know where it comes from.
Practically, I'm most concerned with the latter points you mention, about its funding model and likely trajectory.
@thenexusofprivacy @davetroy
I'm thinking about making an account on BlueSky, but still keeping this as my "home". Thanks for all of this information.
I took it as a good sign that they just kicked Gaetz, Boebert and Greene off of the platform.
@TransitBiker @thenexusofprivacy @davetroy nodds in agreement
#BrownSky is just absurd and the folks who use it learned nothing from #tumbkr, #twitter and #NSAbook!
Right now, Bluesky is a much better place for Twitter-like progressive organizing and activism than anything else in the fediverse. And it's still contested ground; Jay and the other founders still have the balance of power (not the VC), and it's not yet clear that they'll fully side with fascists -- and even if they do, the broader ecosystem may well split to at least some extent, and there will be a "free ATmossphere" as well as the "free fediverse" that @ophiocephalic and others (includingn me!) talk about. So building a presence there is a reasonable thing to do,.
Still also there's a lot more to organizing on social networks than Twitter alternatives, and that' plays to the fediverse's strengths. So it's all the more critical to address the fediverse's weaknesses so that there's another organizing and activism platform, both to support the battle on Bluesky and as an alternative power base.
@davetroy thank you for this excellent thread (which I initially just read on BlueSky).
Which has led me to here https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113486557802954242
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