https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a
We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital
In other words, the enshittification is coming. Because Bluesky is backed by crypto-bro venture capital.
A lot of hay is being made about Bluesky but despite literal oligarchs taking over the country, I guess rich people dictating how our systems work is what people want because apparently Mastodon is too much to ask of individuals.
We can talk about Bluesky and how great their tech is all we want, but unless we address the elephant in the room, venture capital that wants a return on their investment, we’re just spiraling the same stupid fucking drain we’ve been down with every social media preceding it.
Maybe Mastodon should take a moment to learn something. Everybody on Reddit is praising all the moderation capabilities of Bluesky, the ability to create block lists and starter packs. The way you can verify your user by using your own domain as a handle.
Instead of complaining about users, which is pointless, make Mastodon better. Users won’t come to Mastodon by shaming them for being stupid.
Everybody on Reddit is praising all the moderation capabilities of Bluesky
Bluesky is an unmoderated space. People don’t seem to know what “moderation” is anymore. It’s not the ability for end users to block other end users.
block lists and starter packs
This is a bigger issue than it seems, because the people building and using the fediverse care very strongly about things like trust and consent, and so discussions around stuff like this get stifled.
It’s not a technological issue with Mastodon. It’s a social one, with the fediverse at large. The place is swarming with people who will openly attack you for making the place more comfortable to less technically adept users, because they themselves were bullied off of Twitter.
Like, this is the real issue the fediverse can’t get traction. People will overcome other hurdles, and develop work arounds for other limitations. But being treated as unwelcome tourists by the people who are already here? No, they won’t do that.
The way you can verify your user by using your own domain as a handle.
This is a core feature of the fediverse. Run your own server, use your own domain. And mastodon offers secondary validation by adding an ID string to your website that it can check and verify.
Well yeah, let’s get the Mastodon devs a cool $15 million so they can hire more devs and compete. /s
You fail to understand open source. You want it better? Get fucking involved and stop asking people who are coding for free to compete with the code of an organization that has millions in dollars backing them and a team of professional developers.
Either get involved or start dumping money into the Mastodon devs patreon accounts.
Whichever you do is way more constructive than bitching about an open source program made by volunteers and comparing it to a slick corporate product with literally millions backing it and it’s development. That’s just sucking corporate dick by any other name.
Further, pretty sure block lists were and are available on Mastodon.
No wonder Trump won, everyone wants to suck at the teat of the rich instead of saying “we don’t need you.”
Part of that is what they’re saying: If you want to make Mastodon prevail over Bluesky, you should go start developing and encouraging instead of just insulting everyone. You’re the person demanding everyone use and support an inferior product developed by much better people here.
Keep doing what you are doing. I’m sure people will suddenly care deeply about software licenses if you shame them enough. They probably don’t have other shit in their life to worry about. It’s really constructive.
I’m sure continuing to make demands while not doing anything yourself will work out just swimmingly.
Do the volunteers want people to use what they make?
Because, I’ll be honest, based on how people on the fediverse talk about people coming from Twitter or Reddit or wherever, I’m not convinced that they do. Rather, they just want to pat themselves on the back for being high minded developers.
Users to VCs in a year or two: “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal”
I don’t really get all the pessimism. Even if folks are right in saying there’ll be a bait and switch, this is people moving to a new platform en masse. If Bluesky goes to shit there’s more reason to believe users would just move again.
In the meantime, as members of the fediverse, we should be using Bluesky being “decentralized” as a way to ease people into actually decentralized platforms.
I can tell you right now nobody’s on Bluesky because it’s “decentralized” because the evidence is clear, it’s not in practice decentralized lol.
This is all a bloody waste of time. I really wish I could just fast-forward two years into the enshittification when everyone realizes they got duped by Big VC. Again.
