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Chris Trottier

Here’s how Jack Dorsey want to monetize Bluesky:

1. Subscriptions
2. Ads
3. Commerce/Transactions

81 comments
Sal Rahman

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

Scott Williams 🐧

@manlycoffee @atomicpoet Yup. I don't think that was ever in question. It was always intended to be "monetized". BlueSky and Nostr are particularly popular with the crypto crowd who are into everything being monetized.

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.

Mike Beasley replied to Packy

@packy he doesn’t control at protocol either. he has one board seat and no control. so if it’s control he’s after he’s doing a terrible job of that.

Packy Anderson replied to Mike

@MikeBeas Okay, how about the "not invented here" phenomenon?

Rather than working on ActivityPub, something that already exists, he'll make sure BlueSky reinvents the wheel.

I still believe the credit for the invention is most of it. Jack can't be lauded as a tech innovator if he just embraces existing technology. I don't care if he's one seat on the board: he's getting ALL the credit for BlueSky.

Mike Beasley replied to Packy

@packy dude activitypub sucks. why would they build on it?

Packy Anderson replied to Mike

@MikeBeas Oh, you're one of THOSE people. What sucks about ActivityPub, and why couldn't that suckage be fixed by extending the protocol? Please be specific.

Just reiterating that it sucks doesn't clarify your current standing as a Jack Dorsey fanboy.

Mike Beasley replied to Packy

@packy i’m not a dorsey fanboy. i couldn’t care less about him. atproto isn’t his system. he gave people money but he didn’t create anything. they did.

and activitypub has moderation only based on what your server admin wants to moderate, zero true account portability, usernames based on your host that change if you move, and a lot of other terrible foundational choices. you can’t retrofit fixes for all of this stuff into the protocol.

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.

George Liquor :verified: replied to Chris

@atomicpoet If I had to guess, I'd say it's because he doesn't see any way to make quick billions off of it and it's a threat to his other investments

Sominemo replied to Chris

@atomicpoet bluesky's official website says "we couldn't find a way to retrofit our ideas into ActivityPub" without elaborating further, which sounds like BS because AP is an extremely extensible protocol.

Victor Volle replied to Chris

@atomicpoet one argument I read somewhere: With Mastodon, if the server you are on is completely down, you cannot move your data. With BlueSky that should be possible. And it was claimed that retrofitting such a feature to ActivityPub (not talking about Mastodon) was considered difficult. Sorry, I cannot remember the source, perhaps it was github.com/bluesky-social/atpr

Chris Trottier replied to Victor

@kontrafiktion It's hard to do with Mastodon, but it's easy to do with Zot -- which is what Hubzilla uses for nomadic identity.

Hubzilla also uses ActivityPub, by the way.

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

Mike Beasley

@GhostOnTheHalfShell first off he’s not bringing anything. he has no real power at bluesky. the actual CEO has said so herself.

but atproto does bring benefits over activitypub, like the ability to define many types of apps and their relevant entities (posts, etc) without polluting each other’s namespaces, total account portability (including post history) even if your original host is no longer available, etc. it actually is a better protocol.

Steve Torrente

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

John [He, Him, His] 🌈👨🏼‍🔬🧬🧫🧪💻

@atomicpoet the board should not have forced the sale? At an extremely inflated price that made everyone a ton of money?

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.

@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
💯 %

"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.

GabeMoralesVR

@atomicpoet 4. Bitcoin. His vision for bluesky is literally "twitter, on the blockchain"

He is a massive, MASSIVE crypto bro. He has spoken at length about integrating bitcoin intimately into social media.

Alfonso Betancort

@atomicpoet I don’t go where Jack Dorsey is, so I don’t give a f***.

Jeff Moe

@atomicpoet

There was also a thread with him and Joel Roth(?) where they discussed normalizing the expectation of having to pay for moderation services.

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