Mastodawn

Michel Patrice 7h ago

Elena Rossini ⁂

RE: https://mas.to/@Aubreader/116330793703168577

This article is a must read.

An excerpt: “Why would anyone fund an Atmosphere project if #Bluesky, with $100 million in the bank, might ship a competing feature at any moment? Why would a founder bet their career on this ecosystem? The presentation didn't just hurt Graze. It made the entire ecosystem look unfundable.”

Why do I keep bringing up this topic?

Because #ATproto is often put in the same category as #ActivityPub (“open protocols yay”) but I strongly disagree with that stance

Jonathan Schofield 8h ago

@_elena they think algorithmically sorting people *in the context of discursive discussion* can be good. They are wrong

Benjamin Sonntag-King 8h ago

@_elena reading that article I also stopped at that sentence. I totally love the fact that nobody think activitypub is a good place to do VC funding of startups ... It proves it's sane enough <3

🫧 socialcoding..4h ago

@_elena thank you for sharing the article.

The same considerations should be honestly made for the #ActivityPub fediverse as well. So we may address them in time. Not all is well. I am writing a blog post on open standards divergence and increasing unattractiveness of an ecosystem that hems itself into a straitjacket of narrow application areas, by the protocol decay we allow to fester. Combined with inadequate work methods to reconcile the tech debt that this incurs. We must go "back to standards" or have an ecosystem based on enabling technologies that are increasingly unattractive to adopt.

@_elena - completely agree with this. If Bluesky have taken $100m then someone is expecting north of $1b back, so the question is whether there's a way to achieve that which is aligned with the community, and even if there is, whether management has the discipline (and strategic skill) to avoid being distracted by easier wins or bigger prizes. We've had more than 20 years of people trying and failing to do that, and I've not seen anyone credibly arguing that something fundamental has changed.

We mustn't be complacent about ActivityPub though - as I see it there are very few protocols which are genuinely open, to the extent that they couldn't be easily captured by a sufficiently well funded motivated party. Those which are (HTTP, email, JSON, etc.) have been widely used for a long time, so there's a lot more work to do.

hamish campbell 4h ago

@_elena it's a mess that keeps growing, and we will be left to compost it, too much #techshit, and we all start to stink - why would anyone use the #openweb with that bad smell. The last time this happened was the #encryptionists with the #blockchain mess, there is a big overlap with #bluesky

Elena Rossini ⁂2h ago

@hamishcampbell I'm getting big EEE vibes from Bluesky - I hope my instinct is wrong

hamish campbell 2h ago

@_elena Sadly, it isn’t - and it’s painfully visible. @evan called this right from the start, and he was right on this.

This is #techshit, spreading a miasma over the #openweb. And when it inevitably fails, the rotting stink will linger, making it even harder for people to take the step they need to take.

Evan Prodromou 59m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

I see three outcomes for Bluesky:

1. They keep working on opening up the ATmosphere.
2. They try to claw back value from the developer ecosystem (FB and Twitter did this in early 2010s).
3. They run out of money and shut down.

Here, "they" means the current corporate entity or an acquirer. If there's another outcome I'm missing, lmk!

Evan Prodromou 58m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

If they stay open and of goodwill indefinitely, awesome. Great for everyone. People I've met and like there, like @mmasnick or @bnewbold.net , seem to want that to happen. 🙏🏼

Evan Prodromou 55m ago

The clawback scenario usually happens when there's a change of management. I think it's great that when that happened, Toni Schneider took up the CEO job. He's got a good background in Open Source and standards from Automattic.

The big clawback of the early 2010s came when FB and Twitter rolled out advertising as a business model. They needed more control of end user experience to make that viable. So, a big thing to watch for with Bluesky.

@hamishcampbell @_elena

Evan Prodromou 54m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

Running out of money just happens. I think the kind of management decisions that let you make money without cannibalizing the ecosystem are hard to do. I wish the Bluesky team luck in it.

Evan Prodromou 52m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

The biggest danger for the whole open social web is that we put all of our eggs in the Bluesky basket. And if they claw back or collapse, we might not have enough happening outside the blast zone to recover.

Evan Prodromou 49m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

So, I think there are two important things people in the Fediverse movement can do to help with these possible outcomes.

Evan Prodromou 49m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

The first is to keep building on ActivityPub. I love our protocol and our ecosystem, and I think it's a wonderful network. But it's also a necessary hedge against clawback or collapse.

Evan Prodromou 47m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena

The second is to encourage all the work making ATproto and the ATmosphere open and independent. Taking the stack to the IETF is great. So is the independent DID corporation. And the patent statement helped a lot. The existence of independent (afaik) *Sky projects like Blacksky, Eurosky, Northsky and Gander are good too.

We can help keep up that momentum with some bridge-building and encouragement from the outside.

Evan Prodromou 46m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena the good part is that this is what we should do in the best case scenario, too. So, all worthwhile.

Evan Prodromou 41m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena one other thing: bridging is really important for us all right now. It's how we can tell developers to implement ActivityPub and still get access to the BlueSky audience. I hope everyone works to support BridgyFed.

MeaningfulBits 11m ago

@evan @hamishcampbell @_elena I agree w/ most of this my only issue is the bridging which I avoid most of the time. It always seems low quality and one way. I know threads.net is an activity pub instance within the meta ecosystem but a post from a threads user just seems insanity more natural even though it's one way. When I see a bridged bluesky post it's just a weird one way link that reminds you it's a bridge to bluesky every change it gets. Do they want to participate or what?

Evan Prodromou 7m ago

@MeaningfulBits

I agree, the smoother and more natural the bridge is, the better.

MeaningfulBits 7m ago

@evan @hamishcampbell @_elena bluesky needs to maintain its own bridging infrastructure because having 10 low quality bridges that take me off the platform I'm on seems like bad UX at best and active sabotage at worst.

Evan Prodromou 6m ago

@MeaningfulBits @hamishcampbell @_elena

I can assure you that the people at A New Social are not trying to actively sabotage you.

Mastodon Migration 51m ago

@evan @hamishcampbell @_elena

Actually think the most likely scenario is that they continue to operate at a loss and are funded by crypto VC interests, or outright billionaire oligarchs, with the purpose of coralling liberal voices and managing their reach through increasingly restrictive algorithmic manipulations.

-more-

Mastodon Migration 44m ago

@evan @hamishcampbell @_elena

The real benefit to the corporate and oligarchic owners is that the existence of Bluesky inhibits the growth of a truly open, defensible and powerful public social media.

Everyone who participates on that platform is effectively working against the interest of building a strong alternative to corporate domination of the public's access to information.

David Fleetwood - RG Admin 28m ago

@mastodonmigration @evan @hamishcampbell @_elena Evan is mostly good at openwashing boot licking.

Evan Prodromou 27m ago

@mastodonmigration @hamishcampbell @_elena I won't argue with this. Having two incompatible stacks hurts the entire ecosystem. When developers and decisionmakers see that, it makes them want to sit back and wait to see what comes out on top.

I think our best mitigation for that right now is reassurance that investing time, energy and money into ActivityPub will not be a waste.

Mastodon Migration 22m ago

@evan @hamishcampbell @_elena

💯 Slow and steady wins the race. It is just frustrating that people are so easily distracted by bright shiny objects.

Evan Prodromou 35m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena oh, also, thanks for the kind words!

hamish campbell 34m ago

That's a very political answer.

Evan Prodromou 26m ago

@hamishcampbell @_elena lol

Jessie Heald 3h ago

@_elena This is why I'll _almost_ never understand the excitement around the #ATmosphere . It's designed with FOSS aesthetics and private interest profiteering in mind.

Not to say that #ActivityPub doesn't have some pretty big problems, it does. Ones that #Bluesky does a much better job with. But with ActivityPub? It's not designed or built around a private platform first. It was built to be an open ecosystem from its inception.

Bluesky was built to be open as a side quest, not a driving mission.

Elena Rossini ⁂3h ago

@JessieHealdUK spot on 🎯 thank you for sharing this

hamish campbell 2h ago

@_elena interestingly this was the exact play of twitter - you can see the DNA.

Mike Fraser 2h ago

@_elena Some grey beard tech wisdom here. Back in the day the big tech players would set up a sales channel, invite you to be a partner, incentivize you and then after you built your channel they'd promptly screw you over and steal the customers. You'd know when you received an email about "exciting changes for channel partners". This is the same behavior. Mikes first law of tech business, big tech always screws the channel. Or should we say in 2026 big social always screws the community.

@[email protected] do you think this is a result of the corporate atmosphere from back in those days?

I (perhaps inaccurately) feel like as of the 2010s, if you were nimble enough to outcompete an entrenched incumbent, the playbook would be to acquire your company.

Mastodon Migration 1h ago

"Minutes after saying "look at all the amazing work from our community," Bluesky said "look how excited we are to eat our young."

Dad told a story about a lawn mower manufacturer in the early 1900s. They made a great lawn mower, and sold 1000 of them per year. They were approached by Sears Roebuck and got an order for another 1000 doubling their business. Then Sears wanted 5000. They borrowed heavily and expanded. Then 10,000. Then 50,000. You see where this is going.

-more-

Mastodon Migration 1h ago

Sears showed up one day and said they were renegotiating the deal and were only going to pay 75% of the price per mower. The company had no choice, but to accept even though they were now losing money on each unit sold. Then suddenly Sears began offering their own mower, and stopped buying any at all and the company, full of debt, was ruined.

Same as it ever was...

william.maggos 1h ago

I agree with the argument but it's deeper. the developers trying to build VC futures on AT don't understand the beauty of decentralization.

whatever you come up with, you're not going to be crazy rich. your service or app will be one of many implementations that do very similar things and where people can switch easily. hopefully many people will pay you a reasonable amount to keep it great but it's going to be a lifestyle business, not a sellout and retire or start again type thing.

Amoshias 57m ago

@_elena while I truly do feel for the author, who seems to have had both his livelihood and his ideals shaken... what did he expect? what reasonable person could think things were going to turn out any differently?

Evan Prodromou 39m ago

@_elena I had heard about Attie but I didn't know what it does. It sounds a lot like Bonsai, the project from Princeton:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.10776

Evan Prodromou 36m ago

@_elena I actually think this is a great use of AI. Using LLMs to let us find interesting information, stay better connected with our friends and family, be better informed citizens, challenge our assumptions, stay cognitively healthy, all seems like a great application of technology.