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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • wtf kind of lame criticism of mastodon is this…there are constantly cute pictures of pets being posted on mastodon… and like anywhere else with humans these posts are very popular on mastodon.

    I would say these posts are MORE popular on mastodon because without an algorithm cute animal photos are going to stick out as popular even more.

    This is all nonsense anyways, Bluesky is considered “cooler” by techy types with a childlike awareness of history, politics and power because the tech is cooler when considered in the abstract.

    Coincidently none of these technical details have the capacity to make bluesky a truly open and free place otherwise those investors would sue bluesky for purposefully and willfully not pursuing profit for shareholders. This won’t stop certain types from pointing at pictures in the sand and reciting idle words thrown to the wind by the people in charge for now.

    Bluesky exists as a legal instrument of profit, all else about bluesky is malleable and changeable and will eventually be bulldozed or undermined in the pursuit of profit for shareholders.

    edit 2 this is a real human, and I was grumpy and while it was satisfying to point fingers it just makes me into the asshole so I removed that, but my broader point still stands



  • In order for this to be accurate, the building plans would need to encoded so only the building designers have any clue how the building works and how safe it is.

    Also moving around random mundane objects in the building like a picture frame on an office wall not infrequently causes a cascading and horrendous displacement of all the other objects in the building.

    To open the breaker box involves operating two sets of panels, first the building tries to get you to use the new updated breaker panel interface but it was designed by the portion of the company that was told to sell more “cloud rooms” which are tiny and full of cameras that monitor residents and serve ads to them over a preinstalled intercom, so the first panel hides all the normal rooms and you have to find a latch and a set of 30 screws that when removed allows you to access the old breaker panel with all the other rooms. Every single time you open the breaker you have to repeat this process.

    There is a building supervisor that used to be at least somewhat helpful when residents had questions but they got replaced by a new person. The replacement confusingly advertises nearby chain stores to you when you call them up to ask about a plumbing issue and answers specific questions about the building they are in charge of oddly, as if they were questions about buildings in general all over the world.

    I feel like I am missing some key things here, but this is at least a somewhat accurate starting point for a microsoft word building.


  • the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.

    The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.

    Do we honestly believe there won’t be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on benefiting users?

    …or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?

    Here is some more food for thought, given the fact that large western social media corporations and the investors behind them have the equivalent power and cash of small nation states… why all of a sudden the interest now? If Bluesky is a genuine vision of the future why did all these prestigious, highly paid people with more power and R&D resources at their disposal than any of us could hope to ever have…show up AFTER the fediverse already did the R&D, created the vision and took the impossibly hard step of breaking ground and fighting up hill against the network effect and a generally dismissive tech press?







  • Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.

    Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.

    There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides (however imperfectly). It is also full of “liberal” sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.

    Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.


  • Side note for anyone reading, if you have an android please get f-droid, the google play store is an apocalyptic shithole and is 100% untrustable for finding safe functional apps, even very simple ones like a flashlight app or basic image gallery browser.

    It is honestly apalling and I don’t know how any google employees working on android get home from work at the end of the day and feel ok about the impact on the world of the thing they are working on.

    The play store is an atrocious, embarassing failure that actively makes the life of anybody who interacts with it worse.