Yeah, I knew some lovely people who worked at Twitter too. And did you know they once had unfettered API access and anyone could create their own client? Some of us loved that so much we built things that helped legitimise them as an open platform. And then one day they just switched that off.

Legitimacy is gold to venture-capital-funded startups. They need people with it to convince everyday folks that this latest iteration of the same old rug pull is different. Until they’ve grown so much that they don’t need it anymore, that is. I guess we haven’t learned that much after all.

You want to understand Bluesky? Imagine if Google had invented email and scaled Gmail before allowing others to set up their own email servers, knowing that maybe a handful would and that they were large enough to make the rules ad infinitum. That’s Bluesky.

Don’t fall for the latest venture-capital funded Silicon Valley social network no matter who tells you it’s fine and no matter how many words they use to do so. Especially when we’ve had a noncommercial and noncorporate alternative for close to a decade now in the form of the fediverse.

I know it’s a low bar but can we please at least get it through our thick heads that venture capital funded Silicon Valley Big Tech does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11503454

@aral just listened to a recently re-released podcast by the folks at #onTheMedia in which they interview the people and creators at #bluesky . Obviously they defend the argument that the protocol itself is free, so blue sky the company would not be able to enshitify there protocol.

(And maybe you have listened to it already, chances are).

@gabriel Indeed. In just the same way that the protocols of the web are free so we don’t have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. And the protocols of email are free so when Gmail says your email address is spam it’s meaningless because you can still email anyone in the world (apart from the three people in Iceland who use Gmail, those losers!) Thankfully, we live in a system where companies that have billions or trillions of dollars and economies of scale have zero advantages as long as the protocols are free.