Technology

the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to "Following" rather than "Discover" and isn't jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There's basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.

The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.

Do we honestly believe there won't be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on benefiting users?

...or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?

Here is some more food for thought, given the fact that large western social media corporations and the investors behind them have the equivalent power and cash of small nation states... why all of a sudden the interest now? If Bluesky is a genuine vision of the future why did all these prestigious, highly paid people with more power and R&D resources at their disposal than any of us could hope to ever have...show up AFTER the fediverse already did the R&D, created the vision and took the impossibly hard step of breaking ground and fighting up hill against the network effect and a generally dismissive tech press?

Everything you just said is also true of mastodon.