Can you imagine Mastodon raising 100 MILLION dollars from a crypto VC fund and failing to disclose it... for a full year?
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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 Yeah, this excuse is baloney.
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@707Kat
I hate it but I'm laughing@erikcats Haha that was my intend.
You'll probably laugh watching this as well.
TLDW; Video goes over how OpenAI has had to hire a projectlead who is now raising alarm about all of their unfinished projects going nowhere other than wasting money and resources.
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
(www.youtube.com)
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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
️ @_elena Mastodon data are open too….
But yeah blue sky has crypto investors it will be monetised for sure -
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
️ @_elena
You'd scared me.
I really thought Mastodon did something sinister at the first glance XD -
@erikcats Haha that was my intend.
You'll probably laugh watching this as well.
TLDW; Video goes over how OpenAI has had to hire a projectlead who is now raising alarm about all of their unfinished projects going nowhere other than wasting money and resources.
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
(www.youtube.com)
@707Kat they sell vibe more than anything, so all projects trumps product (see Ee-lahn Mushk for reference).
But you're wrong, the video had me facepalming
good video! -
@707Kat they sell vibe more than anything, so all projects trumps product (see Ee-lahn Mushk for reference).
But you're wrong, the video had me facepalming
good video!@erikcats I believe facpalming should be a standard response to what's been happening with this tech for the past couple of years.
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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
️ @_elena
How many cats can get for this? -
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
️ @_elena "Open social infrastructure" - Haha, nice bullshit term.
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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
️ @_elena This is disappointing. I hope the best for BlueSky, but I have a bad feeling this is going to come back to haunt them.
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@_elena "Open social infrastructure" - Haha, nice bullshit term.
@torstentorsten open social web for crypto vcs = billions of open data points up for grabs / surveillance / monetization opportunities
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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.
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@_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)
if you post a public message, someone can ingest that message. there's no protection in what you're citing
(for the record, no such protection on public mastodon messages either)
you're claiming a protection that does not exist
bluesky is a capitalist endeavour funded by cryptobros, while mastodon is not. bluesky has a financial incentive to do quiet seedy things behind the scenes with your data mastodon does not. any secrecy like elena cites is a warning you should heed
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if you post a public message, someone can ingest that message. there's no protection in what you're citing
(for the record, no such protection on public mastodon messages either)
you're claiming a protection that does not exist
bluesky is a capitalist endeavour funded by cryptobros, while mastodon is not. bluesky has a financial incentive to do quiet seedy things behind the scenes with your data mastodon does not. any secrecy like elena cites is a warning you should heed
@benroyce @mat tangentially related but I'm beginning to think that maybe the whole point of the ATmosphere being open is to find a way to capture billions of data points for profiling / monetization purposes? I know everything is public here too, but the language of their press release gave me the creeps.
I may start referring to them as Blue$ky and the ATmo$phere.
I mean what's the draw otherwise for VCs and crypto bros?
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@stonedonkey totally
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@_elena
You'd scared me.
I really thought Mastodon did something sinister at the first glance XD@Pouakai OMG I'm so sorry
yeah I should have phrased things differently, I was just so riled up -
@benroyce @mat tangentially related but I'm beginning to think that maybe the whole point of the ATmosphere being open is to find a way to capture billions of data points for profiling / monetization purposes? I know everything is public here too, but the language of their press release gave me the creeps.
I may start referring to them as Blue$ky and the ATmo$phere.
I mean what's the draw otherwise for VCs and crypto bros?
if a message is public, it's public. people need to understand anyone can scrape you, on any protocol
but there is a difference between the fediverse which has no financial motivations, and bluesky, which does have creepy financial motivations. they can, and will, eventually, simply as a matter of the inevitable financial imperative of seedy cryptobro creeps, to do things with your data *on the inside*
(private messages, linking it with data in other plutocrat silos, etc)
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@benroyce @mat tangentially related but I'm beginning to think that maybe the whole point of the ATmosphere being open is to find a way to capture billions of data points for profiling / monetization purposes? I know everything is public here too, but the language of their press release gave me the creeps.
I may start referring to them as Blue$ky and the ATmo$phere.
I mean what's the draw otherwise for VCs and crypto bros?
I've been feeling this way myself. A lot of what ATProto does well can be implemented in the fediverse, from what I've been reading, there's just not enough funding to get it done fast enough.
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@stefan frankly I don't think that migrating from URLs to DIDs as identifiers would still qualify as the same protocol in the case of ActivityPub.
So, if ActivityPub is the main component of the Fediverse - which it is for me - I don't think we'll be able to reproduce _all_ the functionality ATProto has.
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@_elena Mastodon data are open too….
But yeah blue sky has crypto investors it will be monetised for sureyeah but there's a difference between someone screenscraping your posts somewhere
and a financially motivated effort by seedy cryptobros *on the inside* linking all sorts of private data
- using your email and birthdate to link to other plutocrat data silos
- ingesting your private messages
- profiling your posting behavior
- feeding it all to AI
etc
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And I really believe that Bluesky got ahead because it's been essentially a centralized Twitter 2.0, only now slowly starting to open up, and that's already creating UX problems people have been complaining about with Mastodon/fediverse.
Here's a random post: https://witchsky.app/profile/did:plc:rtf3bjc3w2yn4syxtm4r7jt2/post/3mfrp6tovy22g
Try replying from https://bsky.app. The old "put the URL in the search box" trick doesn't work here.
And developers are disagreeing over "log in with Bluesky" vs "with ATProto" vs "Atmosphere", because the first one erases the diversity of the network, while the more accurate labels are "too confusing for normies".
Plus, "pick a PDS and an AppView and an app" sounds a lot more daunting than "pick a server".
