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Chris Trottier

I just asked Jack Dorsey why he doesn’t donate towards helping ActivityPub.

Will he reply? Because I really want to know 🙂

82 comments
Chris Trottier

Here’s how Jack Dorsey want to monetize Bluesky:

1. Subscriptions
2. Ads
3. Commerce/Transactions

Sal Rahman

@atomicpoet BlueSky is a profit-driven business like Twitter and Meta?

sub_o

@atomicpoet what about selling user data to AI companies. Wasn’t there an online therapy or suicide hotline company that did that?

Chris Trottier

Jack Dorsey says he doesn’t believe a company should own a protocol platform and distribution.

Glad to hear he regrets Twitter.

Sooo… when will Bluesky connect to multiple nodes?

Chris Trottier

At least Jack Dorsey doesn’t want to run Bluesky through a DAO.

Chris Trottier

Jack Dorsey says if AT protocol has a CEO, it fails.

I agree.

I guess Bluesky should decentralize soon.

Chris Trottier

Jack Dorsey doesn’t want AT protocol to be capable of DMs.

That means they’re probably not coming to Bluesky either.

Chris Trottier

Here’s what I don’t understand: why does Jack Dorsey pretend that ActivityPub doesn’t exist?

kotaro replied to Chris

@atomicpoet Of course he is trying to fool the less informed.

Oblomov replied to Chris
Peter Jakobs ⛵ replied to Chris

@atomicpoet I would tend to think because he believes he will get enough screentime to make with his own protocol, which will give home more control and therefore more opportunity to monetarize

Peter Jakobs ⛵ replied to Peter Jakobs ⛵

@atomicpoet ha! Had I read the posts before those, I would have been more puzzled an would not have come to this answer

Raoul replied to Chris

@atomicpoet My money is on hubris and Dorsey's trademark vapidness.

Cyber Yuki replied to Chris

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social Easy: Because it's become an existential threat to his business, just like Linux against Microsoft.

Jack doesn't want to participate in a distributed, open world. He wants an empire he can control.

DELETED replied to Cyber

@yuki2501 @atomicpoet YUP. All the while pretending like he’s some kind of man of the people. Where have I heard this song before?

Pēteris Krišjānis replied to Cyber

@yuki2501 @atomicpoet it is even sadder than that - he believes that he is only one who "gets" it. Any competition or open source entity is non-existant.
Money and a bit of idiocy does that to people.

Packy Anderson replied to Chris

@atomicpoet Because he doesn't control it.

People who build things with open protocols don't become worshipped as tech gods. They may become names recognized in communities, but they don't get rich.

Jae Bloom replied to Chris

@atomicpoet Because be wants to believe he’s “the only one”. His ego can’t allow him to not be in control.

Juhani Lehtimäki replied to Chris

@atomicpoet a very normal symptom of a techie. Admitting that it did would undermine his own efforts. And if course, in his own head, he has a very clear picture of how his own stuff works but figuring out alternatives takes effort.
That's the same reason we have 1M libraries for everything. It's easier to start your own than admitting that someone has already done fine oon solving the issue.

Enrique Barcelli replied to Chris

@atomicpoet of course he knows it exists.

This is just a theory, but I believe anyone who has been nurtured in the fast paced big tech will have serious problems in dealing with open standards and open source.

When they do it, they do it only out of no choice, because they cannot stand the long, convoluted and consensual process of the open management, their 'natural ways' will point them into the faster go-to-market pace of the direct command and control model.

The best you can expect from them is to develop something and then release it to the open source (if there is any benefit to them in doing so), but open management? No way.

We don't need to blame them, point fingers or feel puzzled or angry about them... it is what they are. It is just them being them. 🤷‍♂️

@atomicpoet of course he knows it exists.

This is just a theory, but I believe anyone who has been nurtured in the fast paced big tech will have serious problems in dealing with open standards and open source.

When they do it, they do it only out of no choice, because they cannot stand the long, convoluted and consensual process of the open management, their 'natural ways' will point them into the faster go-to-market pace of the direct command and control model.

D:\side\ replied to Chris

@atomicpoet a borderline conspiracy theory I'm wondering about is whether Nostr was created solely to prevent the development efforts in decentralized social media from gathering around ActivityPub. In a "divide and conquer" kind of way.

meduz' replied to meduz'

@atomicpoet And there’s also this one where he says centralization is bad, but stilll the first decentralization move from Twitter was all about crypto: twitter.com/jack/status/151031

Phil L. replied to Chris

@atomicpoet

Because it's too powerful for his sycophantic acolytes to be made aware of

They need to believe that there is only one true protocol

phi1997 replied to Chris

@atomicpoet
The answer is obvious: he wants people on his site rather than a Mastodon instance

Pēteris Krišjānis replied to Chris

@atomicpoet competition. Also it was easy to understand that he does not believe in open standarts.

FeralRobots replied to Chris

@atomicpoet Because he wants to pretend it's illegitimate. In his way of thinking, if he deigns to notice ActivityPub, then ActivityPub gains legitimacy.

He could also (& very likely does) have contempt for anything that's not paid for by VC funding, or designed with monetization in mind.

tenet replied to Chris

@atomicpoet Because it doesn't make him money, because he's a fucking techbro, and I don't know why so many people seem to be surprised about this.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@atomicpoet What value is he bringing over ActivityPub then? Tech bro gotta find something and pee on it till it smells like tech bro

Steve Torrente

@atomicpoet Wow, he really has an Invisible Hand fatalism thing going.

LAUREN

@atomicpoet
How truly innovative and different than Twitter.

Peter du Toit

@noondlyt @atomicpoet well it is in a way because the *clients* get to decide not some central body

Peter du Toit

@noondlyt @atomicpoet I guess that could lots of reasons one being a way to pay for costs associated with running an instance?

LAUREN

@peterdutoit @atomicpoet
I like this, here. I give to server admins as I can. Not just mine but others who are on here and an active part of the community. I can see Bluesky instances being leased or sold like franchises.

Enrique Barcelli

@atomicpoet
I have no issue with subscriptions and commerce/transactions.

Ads, or better saying 'commercial ads', require monopolistic power on the platform. This has been the norm since the first days of newspapers, magazines, radio, tv... and social media has been no different.

The fact is that given the choice, audiences (people) don't want ads. We gladly pay for removing them.

We all do 'Ads' all the time, when we pitch our ideas or speak about our products and services, and that is all fine as long as people freely chooses to listen to us.

Any platform expecting to monetize 'Ads', will need to force them through their audiences, and that is a fundamental abuse of the relationship, which requires some sort of power (ie. lock-in) on the platform side in order to be implemented.

This need or requirement will quickly come at odds with freedom and transportability.

If I am given the question: 'Would you pay $4 a month for half the ads?', I'd reply: 'I'd gladly pay $8 for ZERO ads'... problem is that there are many powerful actors who would happily pay a lot more for keeping them.

I think we need to think a bit more out-of-the-box here... in a world with infinite searching and indexing options, we don't need ads any more. Ads are not a solution, they are part of the problem.

We really want the content, the products, the music, the articles, the poetry, the news, the opinions, the movies, the art... and we need to pay for them to their creators... but there are many ways to do that without ads. Let's focus on those ways.

#NoAds

@atomicpoet
I have no issue with subscriptions and commerce/transactions.

Ads, or better saying 'commercial ads', require monopolistic power on the platform. This has been the norm since the first days of newspapers, magazines, radio, tv... and social media has been no different.

The fact is that given the choice, audiences (people) don't want ads. We gladly pay for removing them.

HistoPol (#HP)

@kikobar
💯 %
#AdsAreTheProblem

"I think we need to think a bit more out-of-the-box here... in a world with infinite searching and indexing options, we don't need ads any more. Ads are not a solution, they are part of the problem.

We really want the content, the products, the music, the articles, the poetry, the news, the opinions, the movies[...] and we need to pay for them to their creators... but there are many ways to do that without ads. Let's focus on those ways."
@atomicpoet

Gen X-Wing

@atomicpoet Ehm. Hard no.

Because he missed 4 (and any Robocop fan will get a kick out of this).

4. Harvest everything and sell everyone’s private data…

Olav

@atomicpoet at a minimum BS has to pay for itself, and I'm sure mister altruistic Jack wants the $15M+ he's sunk into this back.

And the parallel from his comment here is BS is being designed so everyone can monetize (for a modest fee of course)

Dr. Jibreel Sohail

@atomicpoet "people will choose the best way they can be exploited"

Toni Aittoniemi

@atomicpoet Which translates to exacty the same problems of commercialising attention.

The business model is the message.

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