Mastodawn

Elena Rossini ⁂2d ago

Can you imagine Mastodon raising 100 MILLION dollars from a crypto VC fund and failing to disclose it... for a full year? No I can't either.

And from their actual press release: "The Atmosphere currently contains about 20 billion public records—the posts, likes, comments and other interactions that bring the ecosystem to life. It's an astonishing collection of what open social infrastructure makes possible."

https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-19-2026-series-b

How I read it: data harvesting at its finest 💁‍♀️

Bluesky's 2025 $100M Series B Lays Foundation for Open Social Web - Bluesky

In April 2025, Bluesky raised $100 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Crypto. Since our Series A, we've grown from 13 million to over 43 million global users.

Bluesky

@_elena are you aware that any record is public on atproto and checkable on pds.ls? there's nothing new .....

Elena Rossini ⁂2d ago

@mat sure but it's the language they used that creeped me out - it's like they are using this as a selling point for VCs to say: here, collect all these data

@_elena permissive data/spaces is coming this year, and you can use E2EE messaging germ using your pds. if you want to delete any data, you can just connect to pds.ls and delete any record you want (e.g. all your likes, comments, etc)

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 2d ago

if you post a public message, someone can ingest that message. there's no protection in what you're citing

(for the record, no such protection on public mastodon messages either)

you're claiming a protection that does not exist

bluesky is a capitalist endeavour funded by cryptobros, while mastodon is not. bluesky has a financial incentive to do quiet seedy things behind the scenes with your data mastodon does not. any secrecy like elena cites is a warning you should heed

Elena Rossini ⁂2d ago

@benroyce @mat tangentially related but I'm beginning to think that maybe the whole point of the ATmosphere being open is to find a way to capture billions of data points for profiling / monetization purposes? I know everything is public here too, but the language of their press release gave me the creeps.

I may start referring to them as Blue$ky and the ATmo$phere.

I mean what's the draw otherwise for VCs and crypto bros?

Stefan Bohacek 2d ago

I've been feeling this way myself. A lot of what ATProto does well can be implemented in the fediverse, from what I've been reading, there's just not enough funding to get it done fast enough.

Stefan Bohacek 2d ago

And I really believe that Bluesky got ahead because it's been essentially a centralized Twitter 2.0, only now slowly starting to open up, and that's already creating UX problems people have been complaining about with Mastodon/fediverse.

Here's a random post: https://witchsky.app/profile/did:plc:rtf3bjc3w2yn4syxtm4r7jt2/post/3mfrp6tovy22g

Try replying from https://bsky.app. The old "put the URL in the search box" trick doesn't work here.

And developers are disagreeing over "log in with Bluesky" vs "with ATProto" vs "Atmosphere", because the first one erases the diversity of the network, while the more accurate labels are "too confusing for normies".

Plus, "pick a PDS and an AppView and an app" sounds a lot more daunting than "pick a server".

Ronen Tamari (@ronentk.me)

Can everyone building on atproto please answer this question? 😇 ↘️ quoting Pedro Vezza (@pedro.vza.net): Why did you decide to bet on atproto over Mastodon or similar?

Witchsky

@stefan I don't understand what your issue is, you want to reply to this post with your bsky handle? just log into witchsky with your bsky identity

https://witchsky.app/profile/did:plc:rtf3bjc3w2yn4syxtm4r7jt2/post/3mfrp6tovy22g

it's also way easier to switch from pds/appview as it's way more modular than a mastodon instance, you can connect into any appview regardless of where your pds is. you can also change your pds hosting very easily and keeping all of your existing data from any service

@_elena @benroyce

Ronen Tamari (@ronentk.me)

Can everyone building on atproto please answer this question? 😇 ↘️ quoting Pedro Vezza (@pedro.vza.net): Why did you decide to bet on atproto over Mastodon or similar?

Witchsky

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 2d ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

mat are you a salesman or something?

why are you trying to sell us on an exciting future that someday might happen, when we already have it right here on mastodon as the current reality?

@benroyce why would you run your own appview for yourself only? there's already dozens of alternatives (anisota, blacksky, reddwarf, witchsky, blacksky, deer.aylac.top...), aether os, tokimeki...

@stefan @_elena

Stefan Bohacek 2d ago

@mat Not to speak for @benroyce, but personally, I like having full control over my web presence. That includes my personal website, blog, and social media.

Super easy to do with WordPress + Mastodon.

@stefan actually you can host an appview for 10-20€/month, it all depends on how much data you want to federate with. just like a mastodon federation, it doesn't make sense to store the integrality of the bsky app view (+18To), you can just host the last 2 weeks of the bluesky activity or just 500go/1to and have the same user experience as the bluesky centralized one

@benroyce @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES

@mat @stefan @_elena

right so you hand control to plutocrat assholes who do have the money for that

you're accepting centralization, while trying to sell decentralization, so you're a seedy lying conman/ salesman or you're incoherent and don't even think about what you're saying

@benroyce what's the difference between an appview hosting a part of the bluesky activity and a mastodon instance storing a part of every mastodon activity ?

@stefan @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 2d ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

because if a mastodon server goes down, nobody cares, everything still works

but if a centralized piece of bluesky plumbing goes down, everyone is fucked

@benroyce do you even know how atproto works ? if bluesky goes down, I still can log into blacksky or any other appview

@stefan @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 2d ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

potentially

always in the future, never the current reality

@benroyce you can't access it because it has been suspended at the pds level. it can't exist if you self host your pds. if someone from bluesky ban the user from the appview, the other app views can see the suspended account

@stefan @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 1d ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

Can I ask you a question?

The top post was about shady crypto shit infecting bluesky

And you come in like a used car salesman and haven't stopped once over a dozen comments

We don't care dude

We get it that you don't look at or consider downsides and everything about bluesky for you is rainbows and unicorns and bluesky is literally Jesus

But why?

Why are you here with this empty plastic mindless salesman shit?

@benroyce are we were talking that the "public" data isn't the only repo

you dumb or what? you're spinning around and personally attack me treating me as a crypto bro blablabla bluesky shit

you're saying wrong things about atproto, so I explain to you how the protocol works and why the account you see is unavailable on both blacksky and bluesky and still the only thing you can do is being rude and yelling blablabla crypto bro bluesky shit, idk give real arguments

@stefan @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 12h ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

Yes

Because I don't respect you

The thread is about crypto infecting bluesky and you come into it wanting to play used car salesman. Why? Nobody fucking cares. Why are you even here? Go to bluesky and masturbate your bluesky dreams. What about this thread convinced you this was the place to do that

@benroyce you litterally are a nazi about the way you treat people who don’t think the same way as you do

@stefan @_elena

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 3h ago

@mat @stefan @_elena

that's very intelligent of you mat. i dislike your used car salesman routine with bluesky... therefore, i am literally a proponent of nazi ideology. wow. stunning insight. that's quite perceptive of you mat. you are a very smart person