Can you imagine Mastodon raising 100 MILLION dollars from a crypto VC fund and failing to disclose it... for a full year?

[_elena@mastodon.social]

Can you imagine Mastodon raising 100 MILLION dollars from a crypto VC fund and failing to disclose it... for a full year? No I can't either.

And from their actual press release: "The Atmosphere currently contains about 20 billion public records—the posts, likes, comments and other interactions that bring the ecosystem to life. It's an astonishing collection of what open social infrastructure makes possible."

Bluesky's 2025 $100M Series B Lays Foundation for Open Social Web - Bluesky

In April 2025, Bluesky raised $100 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Crypto. Since our Series A, we've grown from 13 million to over 43 million global users.

Bluesky (bsky.social)

How I read it: data harvesting at its finest ‍️

#Bluesky

[mat@zelk.space]

@_elena are you aware that any record is public on atproto and checkable on pds.ls? there's nothing new .....

[_elena@mastodon.social]

Mike Masnick, who sits on the board of #Bluesky, claims the team was too busy to announce the series B funding (see screenshot).

But something is fishy.

Even the VC firm - Bain Capital Crypto - isn't listing Bluesky anywhere on their website: https://baincapitalcrypto.com/portfolio/

Why the mystery? Was Bluesky afraid of a public backlash & asked to keep the information under wraps?

Sorry if I keep repeating myself but I will forever be skeptical of Bluesky and think of the tale of the scorpion and the frog.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@mat sure but it's the language they used that creeped me out - it's like they are using this as a selling point for VCs to say: here, collect all these data

[wtl@mastodon.social]

@_elena Very sketchy behaviour, for certain.

[wonkothesane@mstdn.social]

@_elena Yea. I’m hopefully that projects like Blacksky can completely break free of Bluesky, but being ignorant of how the tech works I worry there’s some kind of rug pull to come

[patpro@social.patpro.net]

@_elena Bain Capital Crypto is involved in the European project supposed to create an alternative to GitHub. Super red flag, I think.
https://goodtech.info/tangled-levee-fonds-alternative-open-source-github/

[leberschnitzel@existiert.ch]

@_elena I mean, I run a mastodon, I'd surely not forget to disclose that!

[707kat@mastodon.art]

@_elena And this is how I find out that he's on their board.

Even if Bsky themselves and some of their staff actions didn't raise alarms from the get go for me. The fact that they are located in the US under current administration and the lack of autonomy does.

I'm happy I finally took the plunge and made them my back up social media and Mastodon my primary. I like some of the utility over there, but it's already doing the spiral I watched Twitter doing before leaving there.

[ikuturso@mastodon.social]

@_elena it's insane to think people would believe this "explanation"...

[ikuturso@mastodon.social]

@patpro that's another project that is building on Bluesky (ATproto) so even without the funding not being so european now it already has dependencies to the US platform and I guess BCC funding both it and Bluesky is not suprising when they are part of the same ecosystem...
@_elena

[mat@zelk.space]

@_elena permissive data/spaces is coming this year, and you can use E2EE messaging germ using your pds. if you want to delete any data, you can just connect to pds.ls and delete any record you want (e.g. all your likes, comments, etc)

[ikuturso@mastodon.social]

@wonkothesane well when the userbase is mostly on Bluesky and likely to stay there I don't really see the ability to completely break free as very realistic. It's also true their retained control absolutely allows them to rug pull no matter how many times they say "credible exit".

@_elena

[markmetz@sfba.social]

@_elena
Thanks for highlighting this.
Bsky smells of narrative capture to me, much like Substack, (who are now teaming up with prediction markets)

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@markmetz you nailed it (at least, that's my interpretation, too)

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@patpro I didn't know this and... yikes. Thanks for sharing this

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@707Kat this is the way! (Mastodon as primary and Bluesky as backup)

[tedmielczarek@mastodon.social]

@_elena all the startups I've worked for have blasted out press releases the moment their funding rounds closed. Part of being a startup means constantly vying for attention. This explanation does not hold up.

[theriac@plasmatrap.com]

@_elena@mastodon.social
Just out of interest - any of the bluesky-bridged-to-fediverse accounts posting about this?

[ainmosni@social.ainmosni.eu]

@_elena @patpro Indeed, but do we need a European SlopHub if @Codeberg already exists?