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I would love Elon Musk to stay. So he can accomplish his mission of destroying Twitter for good, take down BlueSky and all the associated crypto crapware with

I would love Elon Musk to stay. So he can accomplish his mission of destroying Twitter for good, take down BlueSky and all the associated crypto crapware with it, and take down his own other businesses in the process. Two birds with one stone: 1. The whole idea of social media owned by large private companies that make money out of ads and surveillance will get a big hit, and open ActivityPub-based social media can fill the void left by Twitter (like it should have happened already a decade ago). If only Zuckerberg could also make the same embarrassing mistakes that Musk is making... 2. This arrogant buffoon whose only talent is to exploit people will get out of the way for a while. So go Elon. Hold on and stay on the sinking ship like a good captain. I'm enjoying both the show and the popcorn.

blacklight 4y ago
Btw I must also thank Elon for helping Mastodon so much. https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/files/109/537/631/171/524/950/original/b7110f14cf15646c.png https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/file... Every time he suspends a high profile Twitter account for posting Mastodon links (or, as he did recently, changes the T&Cs to explicitly "prohibit sharing Mastodon links"), we get a new spike of users and content on the Fediverse. He's doing more to bring people to the Fediverse than years of enthusiasts trying to explain normal folks what an instance and an ActivityPub inbox are.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  He could hardly do a better job if he tried. Which kind of makes me wonder, is he trying?
  - bongobingo1 4y ago
    No. Stop 5d-chessing these people.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      For a second I thought you had written “5D-cheese.” And I really liked it. Because it more-readily conveys that there is no way the ‘higher level’ explanation is real.
    - jdhdjdbdjdbd 4y ago
      If there was somebody smart enough to pull these kind of 5d moves itd be elon. Maybe, maybe not, but the probability is non zero.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - abathologist 4y ago
        Confidence men like Musk are brilliant in this respect at least: they can so bedazzle some segments that they are willing to reinterpret every possible outcome, no matter how obviously detrimental, as a secretly planned win, only under altered game rules. Cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails.
    - acjohnson55 4y ago
      I operate under the assumption that most people are neither super geniuses nor dumbasses. Rather, if you shared their context, values, and goals, their decisions would be understandable, even if not agreeable. This isn't always the right framing, but I think it's a very useful default model. The one thing I almost always discount is 5d chess.
remram 4y ago
I would love to see this poll go "no", though I suspect that he would step down anyway. He probably already had a replacement in mind before he posted the poll.
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  I mean he deleted and redid his last two polls when the answer he didn't like won, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect this to go differently. If it's an overwhelming yes vote, he'll delete it I think.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    That’s pretty funny, considering that he could just make the results say whatever he wants. (Or you’re fired, last-remaining poll engineer. If you still exist.)
dshpala 4y ago
How can anyone, in 2022, still have this utopian vision about open social media? There will always be another "arrogant buffoon" to ruin it for you. It's more productive to change your attitude.
- blacklight 4y ago
  I think that the shift towards open protocols is just inevitable at some point. The ads-funded and surveillance-based business model is getting backlash both from users and regulators. The EU's DMA is forcing giants to open up their platforms and APIs, which means opening up the walled gardens, which means that Twitter and Meta will no longer hold a monopoly on how their information is presented (i.e. there will be a blossoming of apps that deliver the content without all the spyware, which kicks surveillance capitalism directly in its bollocks). Users are also becoming more sensitive about who stores their data and how it's used. As platforms become more aggressive about defending their profit margins, and start shovelling more ads down people's throats, more sponsored results and deploy more trackers, people are actually starting to quit those platforms and move somewhere else - a reversal of the network effects that made these platforms' popularity about 10-15 years ago. I really believe that within 5-10 years the idea of using a closed, proprietary and surveillance-based piece of software to stay in contact with your friends will sound as dumb as using proprietary and paid protocols for computer networking instead of TCP/IP, or some proprietary implementation of messaging instead of emails.
  - archontes 4y ago
    How does an open protocol ever deal with the content moderation tech tree [1]? [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
    - blacklight 4y ago
      Every instance is run by different people. And every instance admin decides which relays they want their instance to participate to - therefore the content of which instances gets forwarded by default to the federated inbox. Moderation tools are available on all three levels of the hierarchy: user-level, moderator-level and admin-level. As a user, you can mute reposts from certain users, report content to the mods (both of your own instance or of the instance of the offending user), mute or block users, hashtags, or entire instances. As a mod, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to mute/block content on an instance level. As an admin, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to block content from entire instances (what is called "defederate"), as well as control which relays forward content to the federated timeline. And there's also an additional (often underestimated) layer of control through federation relays, whose job is to accept or reject requests of federation from other instances. So you have much more granular and scalable tools for moderation when compared to a centralized platforms. Individual instances can also decide to target a certain type of users or topics, and therefore can be more restrictive on what content gets forwarded to them, while others can be more general-purpose, and users can decide which ones they want to join on the basis of what experience they want by default, while not losing the ability to follow whoever they like on any instance. And, since individual instances are usually much smaller than a centralized social network, admins and mods have a much easier task moderating them. And it's also in their interest to do so: if things go too rogue on an instance and mods don't intervene, then other instances may decide to defederate the rogue node - with the consequence that the content generated by that instance will not reach other instances. To me this sounds like a much more granular and scalable way of moderating a social network.
jacquesm 4y ago
That's a very interesting viewpoint. You may be on to something there.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Totally agreed about BlueSky and all the crypto-related nonsense needing to go, but thinking that ActivityPub is the future is as naive as thinking the Linux desktop is the future. There are significant technical, scalability and user experience challenges with ActivityPub-based systems that people refuse to acknowledge and address. Some of those challenges may not even have a good solution - turns out there are also advantages to centralisation, and fixing social media toxicity doesn't necessarily require throwing the baby out with the bathwater and going all-in on a decentralised solution.
- blacklight 4y ago
  I agree on the user experience challenges - although I don't think they are more insurmountable than several of the technical decisions taken by Twitter. On the technical and scalability side, what challenges do you see? I personally see a distributed system of instances as something much more scalable than a centralized platform.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    See my comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34052083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34052083.
mikestaub 4y ago
What is the "crypto crapware" specifically you are referring to in the BlueSky project? There is no blockchain or token associated, though they are using DIDs to sign each post as well as standard asymmetric key encryption with the browsers WebCrypto API. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/packages/crypto/package.json https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/packages...

blacklight 4y ago

Btw I must also thank Elon for helping Mastodon so much. https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/files/109/537/631/171/524/950/original/b7110f14cf15646c.png https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/file... Every time he suspends a high profile Twitter account for posting Mastodon links (or, as he did recently, changes the T&Cs to explicitly "prohibit sharing Mastodon links"), we get a new spike of users and content on the Fediverse. He's doing more to bring people to the Fediverse than years of enthusiasts trying to explain normal folks what an instance and an ActivityPub inbox are.

acjohnson55 4y ago
He could hardly do a better job if he tried. Which kind of makes me wonder, is he trying?
- bongobingo1 4y ago
  No. Stop 5d-chessing these people.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    For a second I thought you had written “5D-cheese.” And I really liked it. Because it more-readily conveys that there is no way the ‘higher level’ explanation is real.
  - jdhdjdbdjdbd 4y ago
    If there was somebody smart enough to pull these kind of 5d moves itd be elon. Maybe, maybe not, but the probability is non zero.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - abathologist 4y ago
      Confidence men like Musk are brilliant in this respect at least: they can so bedazzle some segments that they are willing to reinterpret every possible outcome, no matter how obviously detrimental, as a secretly planned win, only under altered game rules. Cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails.
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    I operate under the assumption that most people are neither super geniuses nor dumbasses. Rather, if you shared their context, values, and goals, their decisions would be understandable, even if not agreeable. This isn't always the right framing, but I think it's a very useful default model. The one thing I almost always discount is 5d chess.

remram 4y ago

I would love to see this poll go "no", though I suspect that he would step down anyway. He probably already had a replacement in mind before he posted the poll.

BeefWellington 4y ago
I mean he deleted and redid his last two polls when the answer he didn't like won, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect this to go differently. If it's an overwhelming yes vote, he'll delete it I think.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  That’s pretty funny, considering that he could just make the results say whatever he wants. (Or you’re fired, last-remaining poll engineer. If you still exist.)

dshpala 4y ago

How can anyone, in 2022, still have this utopian vision about open social media? There will always be another "arrogant buffoon" to ruin it for you. It's more productive to change your attitude.

blacklight 4y ago
I think that the shift towards open protocols is just inevitable at some point. The ads-funded and surveillance-based business model is getting backlash both from users and regulators. The EU's DMA is forcing giants to open up their platforms and APIs, which means opening up the walled gardens, which means that Twitter and Meta will no longer hold a monopoly on how their information is presented (i.e. there will be a blossoming of apps that deliver the content without all the spyware, which kicks surveillance capitalism directly in its bollocks). Users are also becoming more sensitive about who stores their data and how it's used. As platforms become more aggressive about defending their profit margins, and start shovelling more ads down people's throats, more sponsored results and deploy more trackers, people are actually starting to quit those platforms and move somewhere else - a reversal of the network effects that made these platforms' popularity about 10-15 years ago. I really believe that within 5-10 years the idea of using a closed, proprietary and surveillance-based piece of software to stay in contact with your friends will sound as dumb as using proprietary and paid protocols for computer networking instead of TCP/IP, or some proprietary implementation of messaging instead of emails.
- archontes 4y ago
  How does an open protocol ever deal with the content moderation tech tree [1]? [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
  - blacklight 4y ago
    Every instance is run by different people. And every instance admin decides which relays they want their instance to participate to - therefore the content of which instances gets forwarded by default to the federated inbox. Moderation tools are available on all three levels of the hierarchy: user-level, moderator-level and admin-level. As a user, you can mute reposts from certain users, report content to the mods (both of your own instance or of the instance of the offending user), mute or block users, hashtags, or entire instances. As a mod, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to mute/block content on an instance level. As an admin, you have all the tools above, plus the ability to block content from entire instances (what is called "defederate"), as well as control which relays forward content to the federated timeline. And there's also an additional (often underestimated) layer of control through federation relays, whose job is to accept or reject requests of federation from other instances. So you have much more granular and scalable tools for moderation when compared to a centralized platforms. Individual instances can also decide to target a certain type of users or topics, and therefore can be more restrictive on what content gets forwarded to them, while others can be more general-purpose, and users can decide which ones they want to join on the basis of what experience they want by default, while not losing the ability to follow whoever they like on any instance. And, since individual instances are usually much smaller than a centralized social network, admins and mods have a much easier task moderating them. And it's also in their interest to do so: if things go too rogue on an instance and mods don't intervene, then other instances may decide to defederate the rogue node - with the consequence that the content generated by that instance will not reach other instances. To me this sounds like a much more granular and scalable way of moderating a social network.

jacquesm 4y ago

That's a very interesting viewpoint. You may be on to something there.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Totally agreed about BlueSky and all the crypto-related nonsense needing to go, but thinking that ActivityPub is the future is as naive as thinking the Linux desktop is the future. There are significant technical, scalability and user experience challenges with ActivityPub-based systems that people refuse to acknowledge and address. Some of those challenges may not even have a good solution - turns out there are also advantages to centralisation, and fixing social media toxicity doesn't necessarily require throwing the baby out with the bathwater and going all-in on a decentralised solution.

blacklight 4y ago
I agree on the user experience challenges - although I don't think they are more insurmountable than several of the technical decisions taken by Twitter. On the technical and scalability side, what challenges do you see? I personally see a distributed system of instances as something much more scalable than a centralized platform.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  See my comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34052083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34052083.

mikestaub 4y ago

What is the "crypto crapware" specifically you are referring to in the BlueSky project? There is no blockchain or token associated, though they are using DIDs to sign each post as well as standard asymmetric key encryption with the browsers WebCrypto API. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/packages/crypto/package.json https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/packages...