Jack Dorsey skipped ActivityPub, built AtProto, lost Twitter, funded Bluesky, watched it become a company with VCs and a board, said it was "repeating all the mistakes," left, and now funds Nostr.
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@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
zero argument
i remember reading mekka's posts about the sordid harassment, that us while folks just don't see
that's a struggle we have a duty to help with
i can see jumping to atproto as a valid response
i just fear that whole ecosystem is doomed, because of bluesky
maybe bluesky crashes, and blacksky picks up from the ashes
regardless, it's fruitful to fight the fucking reply guy bigots on mastodon, as an ethos, and with technical improvements
@benroyce Absolutely!
But I'm just not seeing this as being important enough to the development of Mastodon in particular.
When people called out the strong opposition to quote posts as racist, given that the sort of call-and-response style of conversation has been so popular on Black Twitter, I thought this was reaching a bit.
But now we're looking at the most requested feature, the ability to disable replies, which many agree would help with the harassment particularly marginalized voices receive on here, and again, there is so much pushback, as well from the overall community here.
Starting to see a pattern.
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@benroyce Absolutely!
But I'm just not seeing this as being important enough to the development of Mastodon in particular.
When people called out the strong opposition to quote posts as racist, given that the sort of call-and-response style of conversation has been so popular on Black Twitter, I thought this was reaching a bit.
But now we're looking at the most requested feature, the ability to disable replies, which many agree would help with the harassment particularly marginalized voices receive on here, and again, there is so much pushback, as well from the overall community here.
Starting to see a pattern.
@benroyce And yes, we all know there are technical challenges making that happen, but given this was requested back in 2018, it tells you all you need to know about priorities.
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3. "Exchange of ideas". There are some really interesting things for us to learn from each other in the different protocol communities. I think the client-first, dapp-style development happening in the ATProto community is a *great* architecture for us to adopt in the Fediverse. You mentioned long-form text standards between FEP-b2b8 and standard.site -- another great opportunity for some mutual learning.
4. "Window of opportunity". This is a more complex one, but it is compelling. Basically, there is a non-zero chance that Bluesky's leadership team changes in the next few years, or that their strategy changes. (This has happened with other social networks like Twitter when the advertising business model was adopted.) They may at some point try to claw back the value that's been generated with the current open protocol, open source model. Hopefully not, but you never know!
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@benroyce And yes, we all know there are technical challenges making that happen, but given this was requested back in 2018, it tells you all you need to know about priorities.
@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
i opposed quote posts. i've never used them
even on twitter i never used them
i always thought of them "i'm going to repackage someone else's thoughts" (whether in support or to troll) as inauthentic. i always find replying to be more honest
nevertheless, people like them. and they did put controls on them
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@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
i opposed quote posts. i've never used them
even on twitter i never used them
i always thought of them "i'm going to repackage someone else's thoughts" (whether in support or to troll) as inauthentic. i always find replying to be more honest
nevertheless, people like them. and they did put controls on them
@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
as for reply guy bullshit:
i think that disabling replies is the wrong approach
i think that the ability to delete replies is superior
why should black people force themselves to not get replies and thus be isolated because of the harassment they receive? it puts the burden on the victim of harassment to change their habits. no. we need to directly fight the reply guy harassment instead
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@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
as for reply guy bullshit:
i think that disabling replies is the wrong approach
i think that the ability to delete replies is superior
why should black people force themselves to not get replies and thus be isolated because of the harassment they receive? it puts the burden on the victim of harassment to change their habits. no. we need to directly fight the reply guy harassment instead
Definitely did not mean to imply that all opposition was rooted in racism, in case it came across that way!
And there were, again, technical challenges in making that work, some that are still being resolved.
And the ability to disable replies, the way I look at it, is more useful for locking your post in case things get out of hand.
I've had, on two occasions, my post attract pretty vile harassment. One of them was some pro-trans news, the other one, more recent, just generally about harassment in the fediverse.
It would've helped a lot to lock replies while I went ahead and blocked some of the servers, wait a bit for things to cool off, and open the replies back up.
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Definitely did not mean to imply that all opposition was rooted in racism, in case it came across that way!
And there were, again, technical challenges in making that work, some that are still being resolved.
And the ability to disable replies, the way I look at it, is more useful for locking your post in case things get out of hand.
I've had, on two occasions, my post attract pretty vile harassment. One of them was some pro-trans news, the other one, more recent, just generally about harassment in the fediverse.
It would've helped a lot to lock replies while I went ahead and blocked some of the servers, wait a bit for things to cool off, and open the replies back up.
@benroyce Not sure if this is how everyone would use this feature, but that is one example.
It's more about having the tools to defend yourself while mods and admins can take action.
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@benroyce Not sure if this is how everyone would use this feature, but that is one example.
It's more about having the tools to defend yourself while mods and admins can take action.
@benroyce But I do agree with your larger point.
Having self-defense tools is not a fix for the reasons why they're needed. The culture here needs to vastly improve.
Until then, either people will have the tools, or go to Bluesky, where they have them, and may not need them as much.
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@quillmatiq @dansup I'm not trying to burn you, I promise! I know that you want to engender a culture of kindness and cooperation. I'm trying to suggest a more effective way of doing it: not by telling people they're bad, but by telling people why it's in their own interest to be better.
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@benroyce But I do agree with your larger point.
Having self-defense tools is not a fix for the reasons why they're needed. The culture here needs to vastly improve.
Until then, either people will have the tools, or go to Bluesky, where they have them, and may not need them as much.
I do agree that being able to delete replies would help a lot, part of why I like running my own server!
But that also requires being exposed to vile, hateful stuff.
I think of it as locking comments on your blog. Or at least having a spam filter so that they don't show up publicly. Common sense stuff.
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I do agree that being able to delete replies would help a lot, part of why I like running my own server!
But that also requires being exposed to vile, hateful stuff.
I think of it as locking comments on your blog. Or at least having a spam filter so that they don't show up publicly. Common sense stuff.
@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
i get you
and i agree
if you post something like
"i am dealing with a death in family. i will not be posting in awhile"
and setting it at no replies
you just don't want to fucking deal with it at the moment
no replies is a useful feature
but i do not think black people should be socially isolated because of harassment. "just turn off replies" is asking them to go off in social siberia when the real solution is to fight fucking reply guy bigots
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@stefan @adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
i get you
and i agree
if you post something like
"i am dealing with a death in family. i will not be posting in awhile"
and setting it at no replies
you just don't want to fucking deal with it at the moment
no replies is a useful feature
but i do not think black people should be socially isolated because of harassment. "just turn off replies" is asking them to go off in social siberia when the real solution is to fight fucking reply guy bigots
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@quillmatiq @dansup So, I'd like to give you some unsolicited advice, since you've been so generous with yours.
If you want to see more cooperation between people on the Fediverse and the ATmosphere, telling people on the Fediverse that they're bad and wrong and nasty isn't working. It may be true, but it's not effective.
@evan @quillmatiq @dansup the problem is, and always has been, that we keep fighting between the protocols and slinging mud, such that it deters collaboration.
That's why I wrote that damn letter back in September last year. The more this carries on, the more it hurts us all.
In case you need a refresher: https://writings.thisismissem.social/statement-on-discourse-about-activitypub-and-at-protocol/
That actively had people on both sides going "hell yeah, let's work together" and a small group of people decided they didn't like that. Think about how that impacted developer relations. Think about how that harmed collaborations.
Think about the ideas that could have been cross-pollinated and instead we lost them for ActivityPub and for AT Protocol. (though, tbh, I think it's mainly ActivityPub that lost out here, because AT Protocol is so much further ahead in splitting data from applications)
Also, fwiw, Mastodon has had huge investors to keep it alive at times. That β¬1 Million euros that Eugen was paid didn't come from the community supporting the project on Patreon. That came from one or a few large funders (investors).
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@reflex @dansup @quillmatiq I think Anuj's point is that there is a growing ecosystem around ATProto that is not owned or controlled by Bluesky LLC. There are a lot of people in that ecosystem that are just as concerned about decentralization and distribution of control as we are. Many people in the LLC even support that decentralization. It is a serious bummer that it's splitting the social web, but at least we have bridges and multistack services to connect us.
@evan @reflex @dansup @quillmatiq thanks for summarising Evan. Is there an accessible (non-dev) article available to explain the makeup of the ATProto ecosystem and the chances of it not being a target/surviving without Bluesky? As a tech-aware/non-dev person, I am not interested in the respective merits of the actual protocols, more about each's ability to thrive away from VC (dev community size, culture, capitalist power dynamics... what else?)
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@baralheia @mastodonmigration @quillmatiq @dansup @evan
PLC directory is in the process of being moved to a swiss association, it's just taking time, because legal stuff always takes time.
https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org
The thing about AT Protocol is that you don't *need* to reimplement the entire stack to be independent. You can push people towards independently hosted PDSes, you can use non-Bluesky relays, you can build your own application and social graph. You can run your own moderation systems.
Bluesky is a tiny subset of what we can do on AT Protocol: microblogging. There's so much more happening: video streaming, blogging, science collaboration, annotating the web, links and bookmarking, E2EE messaging, source control management (git), books and pop culture reviews, Q&A services, a container registry, a package management service, music scrobbling, learning journeys, work profiles, video sharing, etc.
I've probably missed at least a few entire categories here.
ActivityPub forces you to re-implement the entire stack, AT Protocol allows you to do it progressively or reuse community infrastructure.
If you think of AT Protocol as Bluesky, then that'd be the same as thinking of ActivityPub as Mastodon. Far too many ActivityPub developers fall into that trap of "I must be compatible with mastodon" that it stifles innovation.
@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @quillmatiq @dansup @evan I appreciate this information, but my main interest in modern decentralized social media protocols is for social media (microblogging, as well as picture & video sharing), and I am not a developer - just a nerd. My primary concern in all of this is I simply don't trust Bluesky PBLLC. That's why complete and total independence from their infrastructure from a microblogging standpoint is important to me before I would ever consider using an ATproto-based service as my primary social media platform. While I'm okay using community resources for now, I *want* the ability to host my own completely independent full stack so I would never need to rely on a company or community to stand up a relay or AppView or something. I can do that easily and *cheaply* today with Mastodon or WAFRN (the ActivityPub side of it, anyway) or Pixelfed or Loops - it's not a big lift because these platforms were already designed with the full stack as a single deployment. This makes the network highly resistant to adversarial takeover, especially as things exist *right now*. It's a far, far, far bigger lift to stand up a similarly independent full stack of Bluesky (for example), and far far far easier for the majority of the network to be compromised if all statuses must be funneled through corporate or community chokepoints.
Tl;dr if I can't easily host a full stack that can run completely on it's own (while still being able to federate with others), that's not independence. *Every* service built on top of ActivityPub can give me that independence *by design*. It's the difference between human-scale networking and corporate-scale networking.
If there's an easy, lightweight, fully independent way for me to participate in Bluesky-compatible microblogging on ATproto with an experience that is comparable to what I'd get from using Bluesky directly, I'm interested to learn more - because I'm not currently aware of anything like that. I can get that from multiple platforms on AP *today*.
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@evan @reflex @dansup @quillmatiq thanks for summarising Evan. Is there an accessible (non-dev) article available to explain the makeup of the ATProto ecosystem and the chances of it not being a target/surviving without Bluesky? As a tech-aware/non-dev person, I am not interested in the respective merits of the actual protocols, more about each's ability to thrive away from VC (dev community size, culture, capitalist power dynamics... what else?)
@sheislaurence That is an awesome question. I'm not sure!
There's a good landing page here with a lot of links to explore.
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@alexchapman @quillmatiq @evan @dansup it happened to @HolosSocial just a week ago, that made me very sad, that the angry loud voices won.
@alexchapman @quillmatiq @evan @dansup @HolosSocial
and it has implications on innovation.
We/I could build a LinkedIn (when LinkedIn was good) version for the fediverse.
A nice professional UI fediverse-client that shows indexed #jobs posts, adding @badgefed / certifications celebrations, and some #lemmy forums on specific companies and job market. But I am afraid that simply indexing (even if done in the "right and respectful" way), would get a drawback.
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@alexchapman @quillmatiq @evan @dansup @HolosSocial
and it has implications on innovation.
We/I could build a LinkedIn (when LinkedIn was good) version for the fediverse.
A nice professional UI fediverse-client that shows indexed #jobs posts, adding @badgefed / certifications celebrations, and some #lemmy forums on specific companies and job market. But I am afraid that simply indexing (even if done in the "right and respectful" way), would get a drawback.
@mapache @quillmatiq @evan @dansup @HolosSocial @badgefed I think we need to fight back against the elitest mentality and actually make it clear that stuff like this can be successful, and it doesn't hurt to allow different protocols and methods of doing stuff.
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@quillmatiq not throwing stones, just spittin facts. To much glazing over AtProto when many seem to forget its history, so I feel a duty to remind people of this.
ATProto never cared about openness or the social web, or they would have adopted ActivityPub and helped improve it.
They had to control everything. Jack even said he regrets that himself.
@dansup @quillmatiq heya Dan! Going to do the mastodon/activitypub thing - I think you mean Bluesky
ATProto has a thriving community that I and others are part of.
I care about openness and the social web, which is why I spend time with the ATProto community
Feel free to yell at Bluesky-the-company
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4. "Window of opportunity". This is a more complex one, but it is compelling. Basically, there is a non-zero chance that Bluesky's leadership team changes in the next few years, or that their strategy changes. (This has happened with other social networks like Twitter when the advertising business model was adopted.) They may at some point try to claw back the value that's been generated with the current open protocol, open source model. Hopefully not, but you never know!
4. (cont'd) The more that we as a whole social web community do now to encourage and accelerate the shifting of the centre of gravity of the ATmosphere from Bluesky to other PDSes, relays, lexicons, codebases, etc., the less effective that clawback effort will be, and the less damaging it will be. So, we in the Fediverse should support that shift as much as possible.
