All the lefties fled to Bluesky following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. But CEO Jay Graber says the app is for everyone—and could revolutionize how people communicate online.
I stopped at the bit about revolutionizing communication online. That revolution happened over a decade ago with the rise of social media. More social media is just more, not new.
I think that it’s fair to want the interviewer to ask more critical questions and in general be more precise with their phrasing but
repeat that PR talking point
is a very cynical and uncharitable take on bluesky and decentralization. Cynical takes aren’t necessarily wrong but they’re not necessarily correct either.
The AT protocol is by its own account an ongoing project with problems that still need be solved before it is able to provide a social network with all the properties that they’re interested in.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized. One reason for this is that it’s prohibitively expensive to self-host relays. This is something that the AT protocol devs have plans for addressing, so it’s possible that this de-facto centralization is a temporary stage in the evolution of bluesky and AT proto.
It is of course possible that they are lying or that they will be unsuccessful despite best intentions but taking for granted that it’s just a “PR talking point” is, once again, very cynical in a way that I don’t think is completely motivated.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized.
That’s like me calling myself a millionaire because I could theoretically be one at some point in the future. I am de facto not a millionaire, but I also have more than zero dollars. so I’m not completely a non-millionaire.
So first of, the part of my comment that you quoted doesn’t make sense because what I’m saying is that bluesky theoretically allows for decentralized relays but it’s impractical in practice. Your analogy doesn’t really apply to that.
I do think that it’s misleading to call bluesky decentralized today (at least without any caveats). The goal of the project however is to eventually create a more meaningfully decentralized social network and they have tangible plans for moving in that direction so I think it’s unfair to dismiss this aspect of bluesky completely.
If they do achieve decentralization in the future I’ll gladly call it decentralized, but “tangible plans” don’t warrant use of a descriptor like that. If someone is training in the hope of making their country’s Olympics team they don’t get to call themselves an Olympian. You have to have gone to the Olympics to justify that title. Working towards decentralization is the same thing. You don’t get to call yourself decentralized just because you wrote it down as a goal on your roadmap.
I agree that the interviewer shouldn’t have implied that they are decentralized today! I don’t know if bluesky even say that they are decentralized themselves, on their website it says that they’re “building an open foundation for the social internet” which is more accurate but maybe they mischaracterize themselves somewhere else.
I stopped reading when the “journalist” asked this question:
How little research must one do to credulously repeat that PR talking point for a platform that is in fact completely centralized?
I stopped at the bit about revolutionizing communication online. That revolution happened over a decade ago with the rise of social media. More social media is just more, not new.
Decentralisation via activitypub is the next revolution
or possibly something else, but definetly not atproto as it stands
I think that it’s fair to want the interviewer to ask more critical questions and in general be more precise with their phrasing but
is a very cynical and uncharitable take on bluesky and decentralization. Cynical takes aren’t necessarily wrong but they’re not necessarily correct either.
The AT protocol is by its own account an ongoing project with problems that still need be solved before it is able to provide a social network with all the properties that they’re interested in.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized. One reason for this is that it’s prohibitively expensive to self-host relays. This is something that the AT protocol devs have plans for addressing, so it’s possible that this de-facto centralization is a temporary stage in the evolution of bluesky and AT proto.
It is of course possible that they are lying or that they will be unsuccessful despite best intentions but taking for granted that it’s just a “PR talking point” is, once again, very cynical in a way that I don’t think is completely motivated.
That’s like me calling myself a millionaire because I could theoretically be one at some point in the future. I am de facto not a millionaire, but I also have more than zero dollars. so I’m not completely a non-millionaire.
So first of, the part of my comment that you quoted doesn’t make sense because what I’m saying is that bluesky theoretically allows for decentralized relays but it’s impractical in practice. Your analogy doesn’t really apply to that.
I do think that it’s misleading to call bluesky decentralized today (at least without any caveats). The goal of the project however is to eventually create a more meaningfully decentralized social network and they have tangible plans for moving in that direction so I think it’s unfair to dismiss this aspect of bluesky completely.
If they do achieve decentralization in the future I’ll gladly call it decentralized, but “tangible plans” don’t warrant use of a descriptor like that. If someone is training in the hope of making their country’s Olympics team they don’t get to call themselves an Olympian. You have to have gone to the Olympics to justify that title. Working towards decentralization is the same thing. You don’t get to call yourself decentralized just because you wrote it down as a goal on your roadmap.
I agree that the interviewer shouldn’t have implied that they are decentralized today! I don’t know if bluesky even say that they are decentralized themselves, on their website it says that they’re “building an open foundation for the social internet” which is more accurate but maybe they mischaracterize themselves somewhere else.