It is entirely conceivable to me that ATProto “wins” the technical battle, Mastodon “wins” its ideological battle, and most users end up back on X, Threads, or Instagram.
There’s this anti-social quality to it all that is truly poetic. And horrible.
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@mattiem I loathe "us vs. them" discussions between atproto and AP and wish there was more convergence between the two ecosystems.
Also, we can't change the nature of things - ATProto is a US-centric-ex-Facebook-sort-of-engineering (and the marketing of it) and ActivityPub comes from semantic-web-humans-bring-their-own-adventure culture which makes them ideologically incompatible. Only active roadmap and culture work on both sides can bring them closer but it may be too late
@iamkonstantin I think changing those organizations is probably hopeless. But I’m not ready to give up on a technical solution that side-steps both.
@mattiem Most users have never left X or Instagram in the first place. Changing the world is never easy. We’re in for the long run.
@Gargron I have no doubt!
But what I hope for is a hybrid ActivityPub/ATProto service. Technically, very messy and with massive tradeoffs, but collaboration is the only truly social move I see here.
@mattiem That's a nice thought, but even if there was any incentive/interest on the ATProto end (eg. there is https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/issues/125, so who knows!), and/or if there was enough funding and resources on the fediverse side, the best outcome would probably be that it would be something people would have to opt into, which is fair, but looking at how this went with Threads, I wouldn't expect many to do that.
@mattiem The best case scenario I can see for the fediverse is Bluesky the company running out of money (https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/116697583448447818) and by that time Mastodon/fediverse implementing reply controls, better account portability, and admins getting better at handling harassment.
We'll see!
@stefan hmm yes the opt-in component is an interesting point
