Submitted 5 days ago by wisdomchicken@piefed.social to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://connectedplaces.online/on-discourse-and-decentralisation/
On Discourse and Decentralisation
The Community Group for #ActivityPub is drafting an open letter calling for respect and collaboration between the people working on the different protocols in the open social web.
I'm signing the letter, and with it, I have some thoughts regarding discourse, decentralisation and why I think this space matters.
In a post where she signs the open letter, ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber summarises the changing world well:
“This is actually a really important time for that message to come across, because our communities do both face major threats which I believe we are ideologically aligned in wanting to face:
We are facing a large number of laws which appear well-intentioned and aimed to try to take on tech gatekeepers, but unintentionally build regulatory moats that allow only gatekeepers to participate, and which threaten user freedom at large.
The rise of techno-fascism and omnisurveillance affects all users. Neither ATProto nor ActivityPub, at present, are built in such a way that they can provide the levels of protections necessary to respond to the needs of activists and community members against nation-state level threats.
These are our existential threats, not each other. And we need to figure out how to work together.”
I’m reading this as “be nice to the Bluesky guys, because we have a bigger problem to deal with.”
That’s fine, I’m not inclined to be mentally ill at strangers on the internet.
But I’m also not going to call it decentralized when it’s meaningfully not, and I’m going to keep an eye on where their money comes from.
We have a common enemy in government control.
But if you’re going to be my friend, I need you to not lie to my face.
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of misdirection and reframing of the situation here. Should we be “cool” and “respectful”, yes, absolutely. Should we all agree ATP is a good idea and worth adopting? Absolutely not. It should be rejected until they figure out how to properly decentralize. As of now the protocol itself seems to require so many resources that it disqualifies it from any sort of meaningful discussion. I hope to be wrong. Maybe as they inevitably grow to become excessively shittier, some other hosts will step in.
As of now the protocol itself seems to fundamentally require so many resources that it disqualifies it from any sort of meaningful discussion.
Cannot that be done for 40$ per month? whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l
All this rests on the implied assertion that ATProto is part of the open social web.
It’s “open” in the same way that cryptocurrencies are “open”. It doesn’t matter how technically decentralized the power structure is when someone owns more than 99% of the tokens.
I’d say it is, since atproto is, at the very least, open.
open social web is used here as a descriptive term, to mean the collection of networks that includes activitypub, atproto, nostr (and potentially more like matrix and farcaster, depending on your inclination).
whether open social web is the correct term or not does not really matter, because if it was not than i would simply have to replace it with another term that describes the exact same thing
Comment explaining how to create an account without any of the Bluesky infra:
Example of independent ATProto platform: blackskyweb.xyz
Is it “open” sure, but not in any meaningful way as long as 99.99% of users are hosted by the same server.
The discourse around decentralisation has elevated a form of network architecture that facilitates and contributes to a healthier social internet into a goal into itself.
Big agree with this.
Kirk@startrek.website 4 hours ago
There is hard evidence that BlueSky’s users are centralized on a single instance: arewedecentralizedyet.online
There is hard evidence that the word “centralized” means “cluster around a center”: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centralize
There is hard evidence that bluesky is for profit company: bsky.social/about/blog/2-7-2022-overview
BlueSky was started by Jack Dorsey, a cryptocurrency booster. The the CEO of BlueSky has a background in crypto.
Cryptocurrency also claims to be “technically decentralized” while missing the point of while actual, real, decentralization is important for social media.
Bluesky is centralized and for profit.
Blaze@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Pixelfed has 112k monthly active users, 89k being on a single instance
Does this make Pixelfed centralized ?
lemmy.zip/post/48357775/21408588
Where does Bluesky intervene in that sign up and usage process?
Kirk@startrek.website 3 hours ago
How many whatabboutisms do you have to do each day per account to earn your btc?
There is hard evidence that BlueSky’s users are centralized on a single instance: arewedecentralizedyet.online
There is hard evidence that the word “centralized” means “cluster around a center”: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centralize
There is hard evidence that bluesky is for profit company: bsky.social/about/blog/2-7-2022-overview
Bluesky is centralized and for profit.