On vaporware as an ideological product.

So, if you’re online poisoned like me, you may have noticed that Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has been having sort of a slow motion, low-key public meltdown for the past several weeks. Most recently, in this interaction with a user.
@jcsalterego.bsky.social on Bluesky: "(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??" @jay.bsky.team quotes posts this with: "Too real. We're going to try to fix this. Social media doesn't have to be this way." @antioccident.bsky.social replies to jay asking "have y'all banned Jesse Singal yet or" and Jay responds with "WAFFLES"
[…]
Even with practical technical decentralization, the vast majority of Bluesky users are on, well, Bluesky. Bluesky was never really packaged as something that was relatively easy for someone to spin up on their own servers; the network has been historically extremely centralized, and only small minorities of users have broken off.

AT Proto decentralization doesn’t exist as a practical reality, and if it ever does it won’t be for years. Most of the work driving effective decentralization is being done by third parties, who have limited guarantees about future compatibility with possible breaking changes on Bluesky’s end.

Bluesky inc isn’t really making ‘a protocol’, they’re making Bluesky, the monolithic (to within a rounding error) social network that they operate.

I do genuinely believe that the Bluesky team set off from the start to create a decentralized protocol, but unfortunately for them they ended up running a social network. And at this point, AT Proto has become essentially a sort of ideological vaporware; a way for Jay Graber et al to run a social media platform while claiming they don’t run a social media platform.

This is, of course, just another iteration of the Silicon Valley monoproduct: power without accountability. The tech industry elite are very much like Gilded Age railroad barons – buying up whole towns, breaking up strikes, imposing top-down economic policy on whole sectors – except all the while they claim that they are just technology enthusiasts playing with their little trains.

  • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.ukOPEnglish
    1·
    17 hours ago

    Of course, a hallmark of a decentralized network is that there is no central authority that could actually do that. Implicitly, this demand is a rejection of the very concept of decentralization.

    What, you can absolutely ban people on a decentralised network. You may not be able to expunge someone from a part of the network they control themselves, but you can expunge them from the part you control. Bluesky has this power and has used it in the past.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      Yes, but that doesn’t seem sufficient for some. Conservatives certainly would like to remove trans people from the public completely. Aside: It’s foolish for trans people to copy these tactics, assuming this comes organically from the trans community. These people are certainly acting like the heels in some right-wing propaganda play.

      Bluesky offers several ways in which users can remove unwanted content from their experience. Easiest is for users to block Singal; banning him from their personal part of the network. Blocklists can be shared easily. Users can also spin up their own moderation service.

      I probably shouldn’t go into the details of what Bluesky can do on a technical level. Incidentally, that blog post contains errors.

      In short: On a technical level, the Bluesky company can greatly reduce the visibility of someone. But they would likely run into legal problems if they used that on Singal. The EU regulates what can be done quite strictly. Maybe they could benefit from some industry friendly “loopholes”. I’d have to look that up.