I think the politics of people creating a given tool are crucial information when trying to understand the tool and predict what the tool is built for and how it's going to be used. Whom will it benefit, who will wield power in it, and so on.

So it is crucial to understand that Dorsey and Musk are basically the same breed of Silicon Valley techbro hypercapitalist.

What Musk did to Twitter, someone will do to BlueSky, as IMVHO it's been designed to allow for that to happen.

I am not saying we should not discuss certain features of BlueSky. Sure, we should have a bit better account migration on fedi, for example.

But my blogpost is not about feature comparison. My blogpost is about how BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization to trick people into another roach motel.

sure. And if somebody writes a technical deep-dive comparison, I will gladly read it.

Dorsey might or might not be directly involved. The connection is still informative as to possible — let's say — philosophical underpinnings of BlueSky. And it meshes well with available protocol documentation.

BlueSky could be different, of course. And if I start seeing signs of that, I will happily eat my words. But we've all been tricked too many times already to give it the benefit of the doubt.

> Of course, fedi could also have some search and discovery algorithms built on top. Operators of such algorithms (there had been a few attempts already) would also benefit from being first and going big.

> But their potential power is balanced by the power fedi instance admins and moderators have (blocking and defederating) and by the fact that fedi is perfectly usable without such algorithms. And by strong hostility of a lot of people using fedi towards non-consensual indexing.

#BlueSky

🧵/3

> In a pretty meaningful way, “speech and reach” is the model of #Twitter today. You just don’t get to choose your recommendation/discovery algorithm.

(…)

> The only way to effectively fight harassment in a social network is effective, contextual moderation. The Fediverse showed that having communities, which embody that context and whose admins and moderators focus on protecting their members, is pretty damn effective here. This is exactly what BS is not doing.

#BlueSky

🧵/4

> In other words, “neutrality” and “speech” and “voice” and “protection from bans” is mentioned right there, front and center, in #BlueSky’s overview and FAQ. At the same time moderation and anti-harassment features are, at best, an afterthought.

(…)

> Of course the sad reality is that people will buy the hype, build communities under the everloving watchful eye of Jack “Musk is the singular solution I trust, likes are superficial if not paid for” Dorsey.

🧵/5

> And then do a surprised picachu face when inevitably some surveillance capitalist robber baron enshittifies it to a point of complete unusefulness.

> It fascinates me how quickly people forget lessons from the whole Twitter kerfuffle, and just fall for another Silicon Valley silly con. Without even skipping a beat.

#BlueSky

🧵/6/end

More in-depth dive obviously in the blogpost:
rys.io/en/167.html

Shout out to @tomasino, @mekkaokereke, and @dr2chase, whom I mention directly in that blogpost. And to everyone who offered their thoughts on ATproto in this thread:
mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@…

If you want an even deeper (if a bit chaotic) dive, go read that thread.

@ibeardslee In 2000, my parents bought a PC with StarOffice 5.1 preinstalled.
I discovered OpenOffice (1.x) in 2005 when I went to my cousin’s home once.

Office7 (a fork) was preinstalled on my first laptop PC (2007-2009).

I switched from Office 2007 to OOo in 2010, and from OOo to LibO the day of its public release (a winning bet, since nobody knew if this fork will last at this time).