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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This is an absurd and transparent lie, that reflects very badly on Mike Masnick.
We are talking about a $100M investment, and he is asking people to believe they were just "too busy." Hogwash.
@mastodonmigration it’s the first time in the entire history of capitalism that a company wouldn’t publicly boast about raising 100 million dollars
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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 I'm not going to mince words here, that's either total bullshit from Mike or incompetence from the team, or both. You've just received 100 mil in the bank and you can't get a staffer to spend an hour writing a press release. The real hold up was figuring out how they were going to explain it which they still haven't done.
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Great. So maybe someday in the future the bluesky ecosystem will eventually have what mastodon already has
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@UlrikeHahn it surely is, but nothing technically prevents anyone to crawl data from https://[any_instance]/public/local automatically. It's even worse on AP because you never really delete a post as it's duplicated on a thousands different instances. Someone already did a firehose of activitypub but I can't remember his @
@mat @_elena I think the legal aspect matters. And once someone downloads an ATproto post it’s not going to vanish by the author deleting it either. There is a freely available archive tool that lets you download your entire Bluesky post history with two clicks. And given how ATproto works, that means you can use the same tool to download, archive and search another users entire history of posts as well
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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)
Isn't there also something about the idea of the ATProto ID that it should follow you across the web, making tracking across services easier? On the fediverse we have accounts that are separate, and tracking the same user across the internet remains a significant challenge.
This seems to me to be the real problem BS sought to solve.
@benroyce @_elena @mat -
@mat @_elena I think the legal aspect matters. And once someone downloads an ATproto post it’s not going to vanish by the author deleting it either. There is a freely available archive tool that lets you download your entire Bluesky post history with two clicks. And given how ATproto works, that means you can use the same tool to download, archive and search another users entire history of posts as well
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Isn't there also something about the idea of the ATProto ID that it should follow you across the web, making tracking across services easier? On the fediverse we have accounts that are separate, and tracking the same user across the internet remains a significant challenge.
This seems to me to be the real problem BS sought to solve.
@benroyce @_elena @matYup
"I want to post some shit on social media with an anime profile picture" is perfectly cromulent and so who gives a fuck about DID
The same with the "your messages are portable!" bit the bluesky cringe crew keep enthusing about
Oh yeah, the meme I posted about the Oppenheimer movie 2 years ago is an extremely important record I must preserve for all posterity
2 weeks later, no one gives a shit about your posts
Social media is ephemeral nonsense, not a doctoral thesis
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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 He makes it sound like it's me trying to file my taxes on time or something. Anxiety disorder creating artificial roadblocks and "forgetting". I'm also the "CEO" of a software company but mine isn't going anywhere at all, like EVER.
I wonder if he's on SSI. I've been considering it...
And the whole team has it!!?? I'm sorry. That must be a real mess to manage. Does everyone panic at the same time or y'all take turns?
We take turns.
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Yup
"I want to post some shit on social media with an anime profile picture" is perfectly cromulent and so who gives a fuck about DID
The same with the "your messages are portable!" bit the bluesky cringe crew keep enthusing about
Oh yeah, the meme I posted about the Oppenheimer movie 2 years ago is an extremely important record I must preserve for all posterity
2 weeks later, no one gives a shit about your posts
Social media is ephemeral nonsense, not a doctoral thesis
@benroyce atproto is way more than a protocol for microblogging. messages aren't the only data our pds stores. it can log all the movies/tvshows we watched, all of our blogs, music history, rss feeds, encrypted messages, games, etc can be stored out there
I think you're criticizing atproto without being aware of how powerful it is. bluesky is just a brick of atproto, just like mastodon is just a brick of activitypub
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@benroyce atproto is way more than a protocol for microblogging. messages aren't the only data our pds stores. it can log all the movies/tvshows we watched, all of our blogs, music history, rss feeds, encrypted messages, games, etc can be stored out there
I think you're criticizing atproto without being aware of how powerful it is. bluesky is just a brick of atproto, just like mastodon is just a brick of activitypub
You sound like a cryptobro with your endless enthusiasm for an exciting future while utterly ignoring the pathetic present. Correct: mastodon is just one brick... in an entire house. While bluesky is one brick... oh wait it's the only brick, there's no house, there's no decentralized reality. Just endless cryptobro style salesmanship
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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 I don't know what the going rate on hiring an intern is at the moment, but I bet $100 million would cover it.
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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 well... This is really disappointing. I have never trusted BlueSky but I have trusted Mike Masnick. His response is really not convincing at all.
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@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".
@ikuturso @wonkothesane @_elena The idea of a personal data server is a good one but it needs some stuff. You should be able to put permissions on things and manage who has access. In AT it's all public.
Should also be able to manage what relays pull what. Be able to negotiate with relays to get into feeds (you're a journalist and want to publish to a journal so you ask to be on their relays).
There's stuff to like about AT. Someone was working on a good idea before VC's got it.
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@_elena @Jerry Curious if there’s a plan to monetize #Bluesky you are aware of? Two points to accent your post:
- criticism on #Mastodon initially feels like smearing a rival platform first, investigative reporting second. (Feel free to push back on that, it’s just the vibe I get when I read these articles)
- bureaucracy is an issue with brand communication. This MAY be what Bluesky is encountering because the United States needs to have a serious conversation about the illusion of brand
@craig_patrick @_elena
They aren't forthcoming about financing. So, as would be expected, they are not forthcoming about their monetization plans. These are 2 bad signs.Then add in the gaslighting about why major funding went unmentioned by both Bluesky and the VCs: "Everyone at Bluesky is just so gosh dang busy nobody had time to mention it." This is the gaslighting we see daily in the news. "I'll give you an obvious, nonsensical excuse, but still expect you to believe it because you all are gullible and emotion-driven."
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You sound like a cryptobro with your endless enthusiasm for an exciting future while utterly ignoring the pathetic present. Correct: mastodon is just one brick... in an entire house. While bluesky is one brick... oh wait it's the only brick, there's no house, there's no decentralized reality. Just endless cryptobro style salesmanship
@benroyce I'm only talking about the protocol since the beginning, nothing of what I'm saying is about crypto
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@craig_patrick @_elena
They aren't forthcoming about financing. So, as would be expected, they are not forthcoming about their monetization plans. These are 2 bad signs.Then add in the gaslighting about why major funding went unmentioned by both Bluesky and the VCs: "Everyone at Bluesky is just so gosh dang busy nobody had time to mention it." This is the gaslighting we see daily in the news. "I'll give you an obvious, nonsensical excuse, but still expect you to believe it because you all are gullible and emotion-driven."
@Jerry @craig_patrick thank you Jerry. “Gaslighting” is a perfect way to describe that nonsensical response.
What’s super creepy is that Bain Capital also kept the info under wraps. For a full year! I never heard of anything like this… the kind of news that is usually shouted from the rooftops (ESPECIALLY in this economy)
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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".
@stefan @_elena @benroyce @mat
Telling how one of the answers is about being able to monetize on the user end (« Culture problems w/ ActivityPub/Mastodon on a number of levels. Seemed openly hostile to anyone potentially making money, even small biz »). That’s a feature, not a bug as far as I’m concerned
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The way crypto works is people fall for this exciting salesmanship of an exciting future and then... nothing
Bluesky was started by, is run by, is funded by, and owned by, cryptobros
So they deploy the same bullshit con job
"It's decentralized!"
Except it isn't
Lies and a seedy sales job, and unfortunately lots of dum dums fall for it
Who trusts this endless hype shit? Where does it lead?
To a rugpull
