cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24748390
https://bsky.app/profile/freeourfeeds.com/post/3lfmvqip7zk2v
tldr, it’s a new foundation launching with an open letter signed by:
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emerita, Harvard Business School and author of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’
Mark Ruffalo, Actor
Alex Winter, Actor and filmmaker
Audrey Tang, Former Minister of Digital Affairs, Taiwan
Roger McNamee, Businessman and author of ‘Zucked’
Brian Eno, Musician
Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative journalist
Cory Doctorow, Blogger and journalist
Akilah Hughes, Writer and comedian
Sebastian Soriano, Former Chairman, Arcep
Rosie Boycott, Member, UK House of Lords
Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament, Greens/EFA
…
Bluesky has expressed a clear interest in public governance of the protocol they have developed. We are establishing a Foundation to help steward this process, to ensure that the AT Protocol remains capture-resistant and is instead governed in line with a thriving public interest and open community.
The $4m would be better invested in the Fediverse. ATproto is designed with a winner takes all philosophy and Bluesky has the headstart and more funds, so this is a wasted effort most likely.
Would it though? I really don’t care about AT, but from their perspective, any € spent on AT will matter incredibly more than on AP. AP is a mature ecosystem, with a lot of complex interests, endless dialects and a lot of mess to grapple with. AT is basically not a protocol yet and can be shaped a lot more.
Well, obviously the $4m wouldn’t have to be spend on ActivityPub protocol development, meaning it could be spend way more effectively to on specific gaps in the network and software.
But even that aside, ATproto is a funnel towards Bluesky the company. It’s fundamentally designed to have a winner takes all situation, so yes maybe these $4m could be effectively used to improve it, but the only one that will ultimatly benefit from that is Bluesky.
Edit: I guess I am just repeating myself. But I recommend reading up on the ATproto design. It’s not necessarily bad if your goal is to create a single global town-square (i.e. Twitter like) microblogging website, but given this design goal, it will always be dominated by a single entity controlling the app view, and that is likely to be Bluesky itself.
Well, if they build enough leverage, they could force Bluesky to adopt a version of AT that is less skewed in their favor. Protocol details are easy to change when you have only one adopter, lol. Not sure this is part of their strategy though.
Also you seem to be thinking that anybody involved in this (the fediverse, bluesky, this initiative) follow a logic of commoning, where this money will be spent to improve the technical protocol itself. I don’t think this is the goal at all here. They want to change the power structure in the world of social media and integrating with AT is just a tool for that, that might change going forward. AT is interesting only insofar it supports their goal, but the interest of the “AT commons” (which for what I know is basically non-existant) is a secondary concern for now.
How so? I heard their protocol was better than Activity Pub, but I don’t really know the details or what the difference is.
Funny, Mastodon just posted a similar thing about creating a foundation. But the problem is, the existence of a foundation does nothing to prevent billionaires from controlling social media. For billionaires its very easy to donate a few hundred thousand USD to the foundation and gain influence that way. I expect that Bluesky will be fine for the first years (maybe like early Twitter), but sooner or later the foundation will take decisions that the users dont like, and there is nothing they can do about it.
In my view, the only way to avoid influence from billionaires is to avoid any large centralized structures. In the Fediverse there are dozens of platforms and thousands of instances. Even if a billionaire were to take control over a couple of projects or large instances, people would create forks in a matter of days. Some admins would block these corrupted instances, and their users would barely notice that anything changed.
So Bluesky is just trying to repeat something that has already failed. The Fediverse is the future, but it will take a long time for most people to understand that.
So I presune these people didn’t have google to search something less stupid than funding another silicon valley tech startup to counter the problems of a silicon valley tech startup.
They are exactly the people that have always been advocating for this stuff all along. They are doing their thing. Nothing to be surprised of
Why they ignore the established fediverse instead of boosting the effectively centralized bluesky and its questionnable at protocol
I wouldn’t say the fediverse is established. It’s a very small and niche phenomenon compared to mainstream social media. By now it’s clear it’s not going to ever grow to an impactful size. It’s here to stay, but it will stay as a minor, geeky thing.
In the short term, I think that Bridgy Fed’s multi-protocol bridge has a better chance of decentralizing Bluesky than Bluesky.
Any confirmation this is real? The donate button goes to GoFundMe.
Any confirmation this is real? The donate button goes to GoFundMe.
- Audrey Tang confirms https://bsky.app/profile/audreyt.org/post/3lfn56wzdf22n
- Bill S. Preston Esq confirms https://bsky.app/profile/alexwinter.com/post/3lfmzjpszsc25
- Vox Media confirms https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342799/free-our-feeds-social-media-ecosystem-at-protocol-bluesky
