Jay Graber is the CEO, dunno about the investors but I don’t care tbh. If Bluesky does go to shit, the protocol lets me move away without losing my data.

Bluesky’s development has been pretty democratic, moreso than Mastodon where one guy basically leads the entire trajectory of the fediverse (at least from a mainstream perspective) from what I heard.

As for Jack, hasn’t been on Bluesky for a while now - he prefers Nostr. Even though he’s on the board, he’s not attended any meetings nor has he dictated how the platform should go. He just threw money at it and ran after the community didn’t take him seriously.

This all implies Bluesky can be considered a massive tech corp (which it honestly isn’t even with investors, definitely not compared to Meta, or even Mozilla at this point), and can even be monetised.

In the event that they do attempt that, users can move to a different PDS and not lose any of their data - that’s how AT was built. While on AP, it’s dependent on if the software powering the account supports migration, and even then I’ve not seen an implementation that carries over all of the user’s data (Mastodon only does followers/following, Lemmy has no migration whatsoever). That’s not to say it’s impossible, but I’ve not seen it happen.

I think the moderation will be an uphill battle for Bluesky. I haven’t seen a clear answer over how legal issues are going to be handled and generally, people want some form of moderation. Maybe not the extent that the fediverse has with its blocking drama.

But the resiliency against corporate capture and community ownership, meh I’m not really worried. I work with and use open-source projects that have been backed by corporations, Mastodon.social has already said they wish to federate with Threads, and there are corporations sponsoring (in the case of mastodonapp.uk) or outright owning instances (in the case of Flipboard, Mozilla Social and Vivaldi Social). Bluesky seems to be built on the notion that it too will be a possible adversary in the future, so the protocol is being built with that in mind.

Before I hopped onto Bluesky, I was one of those fediverse evangelists trying to get my friends onto it. Except, I couldn’t give a solid answer to the fediblock problem, and my friends definitely saw right through it or were confused about it. And I can’t blame them. They don’t want to worry about federation, or whether one instance will be blocked by the other over some drama. Meanwhile since Bluesky has been opening up more, I’ve only seen the fediverse grow more toxic towards Bluesky, to the point where it’s exhausting to be part of.

There’s no native iPad mode. 😩

Thankfully there is an app that’s iPad native named, uh, Skeets.

AFAIK, Bluesky started on ActivityPub at first, but then it was decided to make a new protocol which resulted in Atproto. It also started as an internal project at Twitter, was funded by Jack, but then as it got popular amongst a more regular audience, he left when he kept getting pestered with @ mentions and anti-crypto stuff. He hangs out at Nostr now and from what I’ve been told, isn’t really involved in Bluesky’s meetings.

There was an effort to bridge Bluesky/Atproto, ActivityPub and also Nostr together - Bridgy Fed - for when Bluesky started getting their protocol federating outside its own network. The issue was, the creator made it opt-out rather than opt-in. The AP fediverse collectively shat themselves, spreading their delusions about Bluesky, one guy called the creator a rapist for using public data and another threatened to sue/fine the creator. It was absolutely bonkers and that incident exemplifies a good part of why people find the fediverse to be toxic, moreso than anything involving Threads.

Yeah, from some cursory glances and following of AT devs, some things I understand the logic of and some things I’m thinking “isn’t this a bit over-engineered?”

I feel like the people who got scared of Bluesky joining the AP fediverse don’t even actually want a fediverse. They want a bog-standard, non-federating bulletin board instead.

From what I saw, fedi people were mostly freaking the fuck out while most of the Bluesky users were just making fun of the whole ordeal.

AFAIK, no bridges to Bluesky are actually active yet, and Bridgy Fed is considering ways of going opt-in.

I think the fediverse, and that includes Lemmy, have this warped idea of what Bluesky is and what ActivityPub/the fediverse actually is. They think ActivityPub is the de-facto protocol for microblogging, when it has glaring issues that Bluesky wanted to solve with Atproto (the queer.af debacle is a great example of this, imagine if you’ve got an account on queer.af and you want to move your data to a new instance). If you’re a Linux guy, you might have seen parallels between ActivityPub/Mastodon vs. Atproto/Bluesky and X11 vs. Wayland.

It’s exactly this. Bluesky has its problems but there is a massive overreaction from the fediverse crowd that it makes it hard for me to sympathise with them even if I agree on the principle.

EDIT: JSYK, the Bridgy Fed developer is working towards making the bridge opt-in! https://tech.lgbt/@ShadowJonathan/111925391727699558

Is it wrong to get Author’s Guild lawsuit vibes with the NYT vs. OpenAI stuff? Seems similar.

Pleroma should work, but I’d also raise an issue with GoToSocial about the specific issues you’re facing as well.

Yeah the selective part I think is new. I believe Akkoma’s authorised fetch is similar to Mastodon, though I’ve also heard it came at the cost of breaking MRFs (essentially policies to handle incoming messages, that can be custom-written if needed)

Agreed. I think Lemmy is more public than Mastodon and co. which do have some privacy settings for posts and account follows, but ActivityPub is inherently a public protocol. Appreciate everything you’ve done for Poptalk btw!

Authorised fetch has been a thing on Mastodon and I believe Akkoma too. I don’t know if Pleroma, Soapbox or Misskey have it though.

Essentially, Facebook’s Twitter competitor Threads is gearing up to join the fediverse by integrating ActivityPub into their platform. Don’t take my word too much on this but I believe this is due to the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act which requires interoperability (similar to how iOS now requires sideloading in the EU). This is essentially their cheap way of complying.

The fediverse has a strong hatred of Facebook, for various reasons (from petty things like “embrace, extend, extinguish” to much more serious things like Facebook’s compliance in the Myanmar genocide) and a “pact” was enacted of fediverse instances that are simply outright blocking Threads. Part of it is the fear that Facebook will federate its moderation problem and cause a headache (which, in my opinion, would be better dealt with by limiting Threads to followers only - Mastodon and Pleroma allow this).

Opponents of the Fedipact are optimistic this will help a more mainstream audience warm up to the fediverse. The fediverse has a reputation of being unwieldy and complicated to newcomers, and having a major platform like Threads integrating ActivityPub might help bring them in and see what it’s like. Toxicity is cited as a reason for defederating Threads, but IMO I see more toxicity towards newcomers and outsiders coming from the people already on the fediverse, so I’ve been quite apathetic to the Threads thing.

On Lemmy, it’s shown. On Mastodon, instances are given the ability to hide their blocked instances which IMO hinders people’s ability to join. A lot of the drama on the fediverse with regards to blocking is from Mastodon and similar instances.

People claim the instance you join doesn’t matter because “everything is federated!” but it kind of does. It strongly affects the people who will see your posts and even who you can follow, and if you don’t know what an instance is blocking it creates an air of uncertainty. I’ve seen instances get blocked for stupid at best and downright malicious at worst reasons, so the 4chan post isn’t inherently wrong.