People seem to misunderstand Bluesky. Imagine if a few years ago instead of Twitter crippling their API, they totally opened it up, and at the same time built a distributed platform where you could host your tweets on any server, with usernames tied to your own domain name. Sounds pretty great!

@manton The complaints AIUI are more that (a) federation has not happened, it is currently vaporware; (b) an accountable governance model is absent, so there are no mid term guarantees, and (c) there is a heavy element of centralisation in the relay / firehose model, which could lead to dominance or other issues such as moderation problems

@manton Maybe I misunderstand it, but do they actually do the “host on any server” part?

@jim Right, I think that is my point. The complaints are about what it isn’t so they’re missing what it is.

@ezwal They do.

@manton When do we start seeing the ecosystem of third-party apps for Bluesky as we did for Mastodon? E.g., does Tapbots have a Bluesky client in the works? Will there be clients that support both ActivityPub (or Mastodon API) and AT Protocol (or Bluesky API)? Or is this similar to the Betamax vs. VHS in that we have to wait to see who wins?

@pratik There’s at least one already called Openvibe. If Bluesky continues to grow at this rate, there will be other clients. Can’t speak for Tapbots of course.

@manton The funding model very much dictates their fate. I admire your optimism, but I’ve seen this story play out too many times to believe this won’t also end in tears.

@manton Perhaps, but worth remembering that these complaints are based on what BlueSky has been promising but is yet to deliver, knowing also that these matter to people, while BlueSky is also getting credit for its promises. At a certain point it feels rather 'jam tomorrow'.

@paulrobertlloyd @kjz I’m mildly concerned about whether they can be profitable. It’s hard to tell. They’re going to avoid ads, and current monetization with domain registrations must be pretty small.

@grubz @manton It looks good and something I'd subscribe to but I keep getting a rate limited message when trying to get logged in

@amerpie weird, I never got that before. Granted I’ve just been using the official app since before the last big influx of new people, I wonder if it might have something to do with that?

@grubz I'm sure it has to do with the influx. There's something like eight new signups every second right now.

@amerpie that’s nuts! I didn’t realize it was still going full throttle lol makes sense though.

@grubz Dude - look at this
https://bsky-users.theo.io

@amerpie that’s wild 👀 I thought we were still sitting around 15 million!

@manton Can speak in Openvibe as I used it in Testflight and am using it now. It’s nice but is a bit confusing at times since you have to remember what “mode” you’re in sometimes vis-a-vis Bluesky vs Mastodon. Also it doesn’t seem to show a full timeline for Threads unless the accounts have turned fediverse sharing on…

@manton This 🎯💯
I explain it this way everytime. It started off trying to be exactly that AFAIK

@starrwulfe Yep, they are basically doing what they set out to do.

@manton @ezwal AIUI, you can self host one account, and at some point soon, this may be extended to hosting ten accounts, according to the last blog on this https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080334/bluesky-self-hosting-servers-data-federated

@paulrobertlloyd I agree. I still have a handle on bsky but I don’t expect it to win out.

@jim @manton and VC / investment money from shady characters, future enshittification?

@manton @ezwal what differentiates it from Mastadon and the rest of the fediverse?

@manton Tbf this project was originally meant for Twitter to adopt it. Those plans were disrupted because Elon bought Twitter.

@manton Tbf this project was originally meant for Twitter to adopt it. Those plans were disrupted because Elon bought Twitter.

@grubz yeah Skeets is pretty good