It doesn’t bother people that their blocks are public?

I was talking about Bluesky.

Who’s the billionaire?

It’s run by a millionaire, not a billionaire. People like it because it’s Twitter without Musk. That’s it.

Doesn’t Threads use AP?

I’m getting Google+ vibes.

Because there’s VC money behind it.

I assume so. There’s a download and setup instructions here.

It’s in the article.

Not quite. Elon is a rather singular figure.

Apparently the instances are connected to a central hub.

I thought it takes that much storage to run a relay, not an instance. (Which Bluesky calls a “Personal Data Store.”)

Maybe this is just my ignorance showing, but this seems like a really archaic way to design something like this in 2024. Dump all the data into a central repository and then have clients pull from that?

It reminds me of what Google tried to do initially with Google+. They copied Diaspora’s concept of aspects, calling them “circles”. Over time, though, using the circles became more and more janky until they removed them entirely. Then, of course, Google+ got shuttered completely over security issues.

Likewise, “federation” and “decentralization” are the new hotness in social networks, so here’s a big corporation looking to cash in on that. Of course, real decentralization would take too much power away from the corporation, so they have to half-ass it somehow.

You mean misogynists? I tend to not feel bad for misogynists.

That’s true for any social network. It’s only useful if a lot of people are using it, but a lot of people won’t use it until it becomes useful. That’s the catch-22 that keeps new social networks from getting off the ground.

Would the relays be connected, though? Or would each one be an entirely different ecosystem?

I don’t know about that. The big issue, for me, is that it isn’t actually decentralized.

Instances are run through a central “relay” which is controlled by Bluesky HQ, so it isn’t decentralized like, say, Mastodon is.

Even if you aren’t Cory, you have to face leaving behind the people who won’t switch (which will be most of them).

Yes, because it’s so easy to get people to switch to a different service!

I tried to get my friends to move from Facebook to Diaspora. How many of them did? ZERO. Not even the ones who like to talk about how much they hate Facebook.

Look what it took to peel off users from Twitter! The last straw had to be Elon getting a dictator elected. And even then, it’s only a fraction of users.