This article is a must read.
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@_elena Some grey beard tech wisdom here. Back in the day the big tech players would set up a sales channel, invite you to be a partner, incentivize you and then after you built your channel they'd promptly screw you over and steal the customers. You'd know when you received an email about "exciting changes for channel partners". This is the same behavior. Mikes first law of tech business, big tech always screws the channel. Or should we say in 2026 big social always screws the community.
Dad used to tell a story about a lawn mower manufacturer back in the early 1900s. They made a great lawn mower, and sold 1000 of them per year. They we're approached by Sears Roebuck and got an order for another 1000 doubling their business. Then Sears wanted 5000. They borrowed heavily and expanded to fulfill the order. Then 10,000. Then 50,000. You see where this is going.
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Dad used to tell a story about a lawn mower manufacturer back in the early 1900s. They made a great lawn mower, and sold 1000 of them per year. They we're approached by Sears Roebuck and got an order for another 1000 doubling their business. Then Sears wanted 5000. They borrowed heavily and expanded to fulfill the order. Then 10,000. Then 50,000. You see where this is going.
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Sears showed up on day and said they were renegotiating the deal and were only going to pay 75% of the price per mower. The company had no choice, but to accept even though they were now losing money on each unit sold. Then suddenly Sears began offering their own mower, and stopped buying any at all and the company, full of debt, was ruined.
Same as it ever was...
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@_elena Sadly, it isn’t - and it’s painfully visible. @evan called this right from the start, and he was right on this.
This is #techshit, spreading a miasma over the #openweb. And when it inevitably fails, the rotting stink will linger, making it even harder for people to take the step they need to take.
I see three outcomes for Bluesky:
1. They keep working on opening up the ATmosphere.
2. They try to claw back value from the developer ecosystem (FB and Twitter did this in early 2010s).
3. They run out of money and shut down.Here, "they" means the current corporate entity or an acquirer. If there's another outcome I'm missing, lmk!
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I see three outcomes for Bluesky:
1. They keep working on opening up the ATmosphere.
2. They try to claw back value from the developer ecosystem (FB and Twitter did this in early 2010s).
3. They run out of money and shut down.Here, "they" means the current corporate entity or an acquirer. If there's another outcome I'm missing, lmk!
If they stay open and of goodwill indefinitely, awesome. Great for everyone.
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RE: https://mas.to/@Aubreader/116330793703168577
This article is a must read.
An excerpt: “Why would anyone fund an Atmosphere project if #Bluesky, with $100 million in the bank, might ship a competing feature at any moment? Why would a founder bet their career on this ecosystem? The presentation didn't just hurt Graze. It made the entire ecosystem look unfundable.”
Why do I keep bringing up this topic?
Because #ATproto is often put in the same category as #ActivityPub (“open protocols yay”) but I strongly disagree with that stance
@_elena while I truly do feel for the author, who seems to have had both his livelihood and his ideals shaken... what did he expect? what reasonable person could think things were going to turn out any differently?
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If they stay open and of goodwill indefinitely, awesome. Great for everyone.
The clawback scenario usually happens when there's a change of management. I think it's great that when that happened, Toni Schneider took up the CEO job. He's got a good background in Open Source and standards from Automattic.
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The clawback scenario usually happens when there's a change of management. I think it's great that when that happened, Toni Schneider took up the CEO job. He's got a good background in Open Source and standards from Automattic.
Running out of money just happens. I think the kind of management decisions that let you make money without cannibalizing the ecosystem are hard to do. I wish the Bluesky team luck in it.
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Running out of money just happens. I think the kind of management decisions that let you make money without cannibalizing the ecosystem are hard to do. I wish the Bluesky team luck in it.
The biggest danger for the whole open social web is that we put all of our eggs in the Bluesky basket. And if they claw back or collapse, we might not have enough happening outside the blast zone to recover.
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I see three outcomes for Bluesky:
1. They keep working on opening up the ATmosphere.
2. They try to claw back value from the developer ecosystem (FB and Twitter did this in early 2010s).
3. They run out of money and shut down.Here, "they" means the current corporate entity or an acquirer. If there's another outcome I'm missing, lmk!
Actually think the most likely scenario is that they continue to operate at a loss and are funded by crypto VC interests, or outright billionaire oligarchs, with the purpose of coralling liberal voices and managing their reach through increasingly restrictive algorithmic manipulations.
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The biggest danger for the whole open social web is that we put all of our eggs in the Bluesky basket. And if they claw back or collapse, we might not have enough happening outside the blast zone to recover.
So, I think there are two important things people in the Fediverse movement can do to help with these possible outcomes.
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So, I think there are two important things people in the Fediverse movement can do to help with these possible outcomes.
The first is to keep building on ActivityPub. I love our protocol and our ecosystem, and I think it's a wonderful network. But it's also a necessary hedge against clawback or collapse.
