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Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

chrisholdgraf.com

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Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#311

Post by Izkata »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #159
jeroenhd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be surprised how many people think they can just use first.lastname@gmail.com and have email magically appear in their account. And even more people have no idea what the @gmail.com/@ibm.com is about. All they know is that some of their emails don't reach their contacts, probably because "the computer broke again". It's not a hard concept, but it's a concept that was only ever explained in school to a sliver o…

> You'll be surprised how many people think they can just use first.lastname@gmail.com and have email magically appear in their account. Since I like surprises, do tell ... how many people think that?

Several years ago, I started getting mass amounts of signups to one of my gmail accounts by the same person (thanks to some of these, I found out her first and last name). Some months after it started, I realized she also had the twitter account with that same name. I don't think she knew gmail and twitter were different things.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#312

Post by kmlx »

aSanchezStern wrote: post #144
glimshe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Openness",as far as for-profit businesses are concerned, is a marketing strategy. Once enough users are locked in, there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.

You're assuming that every for profit business is entirely devoid of morality. This was not true under the Keynesian compromise of the 20th century, and is not true of every business today. Just because people are sometimes selfish doesn't mean they never have any principles.

agree with what you wrote but the problem becomes more complicated when API access becomes expensive to provide. basically it’s easy to provide something for free when no one is using it and no one is making any money. but when things start picking up then the real problems arise.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#313

Post by sangnoir »

shwouchk wrote: post #280
sangnoir wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up a mail server is now more complicated due to blocking of residential blocks, specific IP addresses needing good reputation, and the general stance taken by most MTAs is to assume senders are guilty until proven innocent. Setting up Mastodon now is easier than setting up email in the past - you don't even have to worry about DKIM or not spamming - most Fedi instances consider other instances innocent until…

I understand this, but you seem to have ignored my point in that it is trivially easy to make something similar for email and yet no one did, and that it is unclear what’s to stop the same situation from happening again when 90% of users have a lemmy.org or whatever address. Or like happened with the original decentralized web. there was once a thing called a “blog” that you could host on your own server from your ho…

I failed to respond simply because I didn't realize you were making that point. To me, the existence of large players in a decentralized system is not something in need of addressing or fixing; IMO, decentralization is not the right tool to achieve egalitarianism - but it's a great way to avoid a monoculture.

The fediverse, like email and most other human systems that benefit from economies of scale will have a Pareto distribution with very large free providers > ISP / work and community instances > individual instances. Banking is decentralized and interoperable, this doesn't prevent banking giants from existing the world over - I expect them to exist, I also am in favor of smaller regional and local banks and credit unions.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#314

Post by wmf »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #296
wmf wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to because the normies are profitable enough.

Do you not understand fiduciary responsibility? If they can charge and make more money they are effectively obligated to. They would need to sell their investors against the plan that everyone uses AND propose a plan that will make more money. Reddit went through this around their IPO.

Do you not understand PBLLC? Also https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#315

Post by motorest »

aSanchezStern wrote: post #144
glimshe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Openness",as far as for-profit businesses are concerned, is a marketing strategy. Once enough users are locked in, there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.

You're assuming that every for profit business is entirely devoid of morality. This was not true under the Keynesian compromise of the 20th century, and is not true of every business today. Just because people are sometimes selfish doesn't mean they never have any principles.

> You're assuming that every for profit business is entirely devoid of morality.

The only person making any kind of assumption is actually you, by imagining that something is not possible or plausible because you project your personal expectations based on a personal notion of morality onto everyone.

If you take a step back and look at the scenario, you'll understand that nothing binds any third party to comply with your personal expectations, or follow your particular argument based on morality. Therefore your expectations are completely unfounded.

If you take a look at reality you'll find plenty of examples where projects which were previously open were afterwards closed and monetized. This is nothing new. Just take a look at, say, Reddit. Or even Twitter. Countless examples.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#316

Post by kalleboo »

piyuv wrote: post #179
wmf wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and then experts will use ad-free alternative clients and most people won't. But it will still be better than other social media systems that ban alternative clients.

I guess then Bluesky will ban alternative clients and start charging for API, a-la Musk?

Who remembers App.net, after the first time Twitter tried banning third-party clients back in like 2012?

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#317

Post by sangnoir »

wrycoder wrote: post #266
sangnoir wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your implausible estimate got me curious; so I checked[1,2] the first couple of result from Google on email marketshare. GMail is 27.7%. Apple has double the share, at 54%, you should be worried about Apple instead. 1. https://www.litmus.com/email-client-market-share 2. https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-used-email-clients

When I look at the email addresses in the various communities I belong to, it’s at least 80% gmail, and the rest are mostly defunct services are just barely hanging on. Yes, I run my own email server, have for years.

> the rest are mostly defunct services are just barely hanging on.

...and what a miserable bunch most of them were: 2 MB attachment limits and 10 MB mailbox quotas?! GMail had to drag all of them kicking and screaming into the 21st century when they debuted with a 1 GB mailbox quota.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#318

Post by kortilla »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #296
wmf wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to because the normies are profitable enough.

Do you not understand fiduciary responsibility? If they can charge and make more money they are effectively obligated to. They would need to sell their investors against the plan that everyone uses AND propose a plan that will make more money. Reddit went through this around their IPO.

That’s not how fiduciary responsibility works. It’s very easy to say, “we’re not going to do X because we don’t think it’s a good long term investment due to brand destruction”. This happens all of the time. It’s a complete myth that they are responsible to force short term charges for short term revenue.

What you’re confusing it with is shareholder pressure, which is orthogonal to duty. What Reddit went through was just kowtowing to large potential investors to increase IPO demand.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#319

Post by riffraff »

Aurornis wrote: post #163
dsr_ wrote: post #16

>“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@ibm.com are different email-people, too. This is not a hard concept.

This line of thinking is what makes the website user-hostile. I completely understood the function of the usernames from the start, but to this day I still sigh whenever I encounter a new Mastodon user on a different network because I have to do a song and dance to get them followed on my main account. The whole thing is cognitive overhead I do not want.

But this is the same for blue sky, it's just that there's no other bluesky "instance"

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#320

Post by nyclounge »

tqwhite wrote: post #238

I am a huge BLuesky fan. I have switched my entire social experience to it. I get good engagement, mostly with seemingly decent people. I almost always can find interesting things to read. I have moderated the shit out of my feed. I rarely see things I do not want to (I had to give up politics and current events after the election). I use the list feature to curate separate feeds for different topics (music, programm…

>Bluesky is also cool because of being the first mover/developer of AT Protocol. It’s my view that at:// will be a scheme that is as ubiquitous and important as http:// in a few years. That we will use it to login into stuff instead of facebook, google or github and that there will be numerous messaging things (including those sending money and other resources) based on ‘lexicons’ as well.

Unless the AT Protocol split it self from the company to be something like matrix.org or SMTP. Then Bsky will always have an advantage over other indexers. [1]

[1] https://fedimeister.onyxbits.de/blog/bluesky-at-protocol-vs-...

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