⁂ L. RhodesI'm a little gobsmacked sometimes at just how much work independent techies are pouring into ATProto development. I foresee a point at which a great many of them end up feeling sorely betrayed.
One way that Bluesky really ate the fediverse's lunch is in positioning itself as a shiny design toy. People look at ATProto and see the potential for building something new and fun. If they also see it as free labor given to a Web3 company that's already swimming in VC funding, that takes a distant second to the toy factor.
It's clear to me that most devs don't get that same new toy feeling from the contemporary fediverse. Nor should the fediverse work toward recapturing it. We have a reputation for stepping on developer fun, but it's because many of us are heavily invested in the project of building social media that can function as community — or, at least, as a tool for supporting community. The flinging-spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to development is often at odds with those aims.
It's like the difference between a maker faire and a city council meeting. One space is set up to accommodate any idea that seems feasible, because experimentation is both the vibe and the goal. The other space is concerned with how best to arrange the conditions that impact everyone, which makes it less conducive to experiments that haven't been subjected to consideration and input from the people affected. Maker faires are great, but they're no way to run a society.
Anyway.
There are clear signals that Bluesky is gearing up for a pivot. They've accepted $100s of millions in funding that they'll need to justify with ROI. They've now tightly knit with crypto and blockchain funds. They're already integrating AI into feed tailoring. It's a machine built for surveillance capitalism; there are only so many ways it can go. Any independent dev committing to that ecosystem need to either be clear that they're comfortable contributing to that result, or find ways to work against it.
Watching this unfold is a bit like watching The Phantom Menace, where interactions with Anni are all slightly ominous because we know what he becomes. Except, some people don't know the original trilogy, so all they see is young potential. And some of them end up building things like trash compactors and trench defense systems and really big lasers because they're excited about this big framework he's launching that's shaped like a full-sized moon.
foundseed@lrhodes what is your impression of Blacksky and their decided departure from vanilla bluesky systems? Would such forks still be feeding into the free labor funnel of the main pds?
@foundseed The PDS isn't really the revenue engine for Bluesky. The relay is the key component for monetizing data on the network, so any 3rd party service that feeds into Bluesky's relay, or encourages engagement that can then be collected by the relay, is ultimately contributing to Bluesky's potential profitability.
@foundseed I know. But if Blacksky servers are communicating with Bluesky accounts, then they're also using Bluesky's relay.
OV Dragonman@lrhodes So glad this is the only platform I use.