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Back in 2012, I was the first developer to join Dominic Tarr on Secure Scuttlebutt. I built Patchwork, the first client. If you’re not familiar with SSB, give i

by pfraze 2y ago

Back in 2012, I was the first developer to join Dominic Tarr on Secure Scuttlebutt. I built Patchwork, the first client. If you’re not familiar with SSB, give it a look! It’s an aggressively anarchist technical model. After a year and a half, I had serious concerns about our ability to attract users. I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced. We use that in the governance, the technical design, and the execution. We also follow a kind of separation of powers through modularity, and an aggressive focus on the right to exit. SSB was “no authority ever” and it failed to scale. ATProto is “no permanent authority.” Give the essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness a read sometime. I’ve worked in open source for my entire adult life and I’m now 38. There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who.

shafyy 2y ago
> There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who. This is not black and white. And to be honest, it is telling that you throw this statement into the room. Of course, there are also organization / people who have more weight in saying into which direction standards like ActivityPub should be developed, but this is a far cry from the protocol roadmap being owned by a single for-profit company. > I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. I agree, and Bluesky is obviously a great product. It is very likely that building on a truely decentralized protocol like ActivityPub has too many drawbacks to build a mass product in today's world. This is beside the point, though. > The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced It can be replaced in almost the same way as you are replacing Twitter. Or any service can be replaced by another. At best, ATProto is a glorified import / export feature in this context. Your work history has nothing to do with Bluesky's future. Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. To be clear, I don't doubt your personal intentions. But it is very naive to believe that a protocol developed by a for-profit company that has just taken in $ 23 million is somehow incentivized to build a network for the good of the people first and not for their own profit. And don't tell me that those two are the same thing or aligned somehow, please. I just would like to know this: How you can say that Bluesky is decentralized while the reality is that all your 20 million users sit on the same service run by the company behind Bluesky. And no, the ability to self-host your own data does not equate to being decentralized. PS: I will read up on those topics you mentioned.
- elfprince13 2y ago
  > Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. Bluesky is a PBLLC which pretty severely limits the rights of their investors.
  - shafyy 2y ago
    No, the fact that it's a PBC does not necessarily limit the right of their investors. PBC just means that they need to commit a certain percentage of their profit to a cause. It's still a for-profit company owned by shareholders. They have not publicly disclosed their charter or other information.
    - purlane 2y ago
      That is not what this means at all. Legally, it means that the company has other priorities that it must consider equally to creating profit. This means that investors have a much higher standard to have standing to sue the company or oust the CEO if they don't return a profit or don't return profits directly to investors. A good example of what this means in practice is developer awards from Bluesky Social. As I understand it, once Bluesky PBC starts making some profit they are planning to begin placing something akin to bounties on successful app projects within the protocol. I believe Graber called this "Coopetition" at some point, where developers are "competing" within the ecosystem but simultaneously working together to make the protocol's foundation stronger. This is something that a PBC structure makes immeasurably easier to do. Why? Because the company has more responsibilities than simply returning profit to shareholders. The shareholders can't simply sue the company or oust Graber because of this, since Bluesky Social also has a legal responsibility to "develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation". Please do get read on what it actually means to be a PBC.
      - shafyy 2y ago
        > Legally, it means that the company has other priorities that it must consider equally to creating profit. Ok, so it's even more vague than how I understood it. This could mean anything. Venture capital does not care about profits, they just care about selling their share at a considerably higher price than they bought it within ~ 7 years. In reality, most of the time, this happens through an acquisition. Many times this happens without the acquired company making a single cent of profit. So how does it matter that Bluesky Social is a PBC in this context? It is still owned and controlled by shareholders, many of them venture capitalists. It can still be sold at an uncapped profit to the share holders.

by pfraze 2y ago

shafyy 2y ago

> There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who. This is not black and white. And to be honest, it is telling that you throw this statement into the room. Of course, there are also organization / people who have more weight in saying into which direction standards like ActivityPub should be developed, but this is a far cry from the protocol roadmap being owned by a single for-profit company. > I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. I agree, and Bluesky is obviously a great product. It is very likely that building on a truely decentralized protocol like ActivityPub has too many drawbacks to build a mass product in today's world. This is beside the point, though. > The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced It can be replaced in almost the same way as you are replacing Twitter. Or any service can be replaced by another. At best, ATProto is a glorified import / export feature in this context. Your work history has nothing to do with Bluesky's future. Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. To be clear, I don't doubt your personal intentions. But it is very naive to believe that a protocol developed by a for-profit company that has just taken in $ 23 million is somehow incentivized to build a network for the good of the people first and not for their own profit. And don't tell me that those two are the same thing or aligned somehow, please. I just would like to know this: How you can say that Bluesky is decentralized while the reality is that all your 20 million users sit on the same service run by the company behind Bluesky. And no, the ability to self-host your own data does not equate to being decentralized. PS: I will read up on those topics you mentioned.

elfprince13 2y ago
> Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. Bluesky is a PBLLC which pretty severely limits the rights of their investors.
- shafyy 2y ago
  No, the fact that it's a PBC does not necessarily limit the right of their investors. PBC just means that they need to commit a certain percentage of their profit to a cause. It's still a for-profit company owned by shareholders. They have not publicly disclosed their charter or other information.
  - purlane 2y ago
    That is not what this means at all. Legally, it means that the company has other priorities that it must consider equally to creating profit. This means that investors have a much higher standard to have standing to sue the company or oust the CEO if they don't return a profit or don't return profits directly to investors. A good example of what this means in practice is developer awards from Bluesky Social. As I understand it, once Bluesky PBC starts making some profit they are planning to begin placing something akin to bounties on successful app projects within the protocol. I believe Graber called this "Coopetition" at some point, where developers are "competing" within the ecosystem but simultaneously working together to make the protocol's foundation stronger. This is something that a PBC structure makes immeasurably easier to do. Why? Because the company has more responsibilities than simply returning profit to shareholders. The shareholders can't simply sue the company or oust Graber because of this, since Bluesky Social also has a legal responsibility to "develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation". Please do get read on what it actually means to be a PBC.
    - shafyy 2y ago
      > Legally, it means that the company has other priorities that it must consider equally to creating profit. Ok, so it's even more vague than how I understood it. This could mean anything. Venture capital does not care about profits, they just care about selling their share at a considerably higher price than they bought it within ~ 7 years. In reality, most of the time, this happens through an acquisition. Many times this happens without the acquired company making a single cent of profit. So how does it matter that Bluesky Social is a PBC in this context? It is still owned and controlled by shareholders, many of them venture capitalists. It can still be sold at an uncapped profit to the share holders.