It's yet to get bad, because they are flush with venture capital money right now. Eventually they will need to monetize that. VCs always demand their money.
Bluesky-ians will be shocked, shocked to discover their platform has ads and Nazis.
We can wait. We'll still be here, with no ads, and nazis being shut down and ejected from civil discourse.
@ScottStarkey I'm interested to see if/how bsky's federation actually works. If it does, it has hope.
I found many more of my friends there than here. I think Masto's complexity and sometimes-overly-spirited moderation has turned folks away, which is too bad; I think Masto is overall the best platform, in terms of infrastructure and design. But like real estate, it's all network effect, network effect, network effect, and bsky currently has the lead for me there.
@ScottStarkey But you're completely right about how the clock is ticking on bsky's salad days. When the VC money runs out, things will get ugly, and if they don't have federation solved by then, they are dead.
It will be interesting. I'm kinda excited about fedi-everything right now.
I can't wait until new things are invented with ActivityPub that just flows seemlessly - even monetized non-open-source stuff. Someone could launch a project on ActivityPub and it would connect with 1+ Million monthly active users at launch. Right now. That's an attractive feature for a new app, and maybe the Fediverse's best kept secret.
@ScottStarkey Totally, the fedi's size (driven primarily by this site) is a big plus. I think either Threads or bsky will have some decent enough federation that the concept will take off; whether they will properly connect to this Fediverse is another question.
@ScottStarkey I also think the Fediverse will Balkanize soon. For example, if Threads gains a legitimate 2-way connection to the Fediverse, there will be instances connected to it, and instances defederating. At some point, we'll wind up with 2 separate continents.
Even now, I need 2 Masto accounts to follow all the people I'd like to, because of defederation.
Yeah, balkanization is a weird quirk of the fedi. In some ways it can be good. Nazis and CP advocates are confined to their nazi and CP "free speech" island where we don't see them.
OTOH, there can be some politics that cut people off. That being said, I found a great small regional server that has very good moderation and pretty reasonably smart lines drawn and moderation. And, every gray area that they've decided I've agreed with them on, so... 🤷
@ScottStarkey Oh, 100% agreed. I'm more concerned about side effects, but yes, the fact that federation works to keep bad actors out of the system is a huge benefit that will help other platforms, if they can make it happen and use it properly.
Add comment