Any kind of ownership model is possible on the Fediverse because it is designed to be as open as possible to anyone who wants to start a server, including individuals, non-profits, for-profits.

BlueSky is different. It has been designed to depend on corporate-owned feeds that have a much higher barrier to entry. In an interview, BS mentioned they might have ads in the future. Combined with their VC ownership, these are all the ingredients for another Meta/Facebook or Twitter/X.

3/3

I am responding to your "If it's not community-owned, it's not sustainable" statement. This is the meme that needs to die.

I'd actually think it's the opposite: aside from instances that require payment from all members, I'm yet to see any service that can call itself sustainable.

@raphael

Perhaps we disagree on what sustainable means?

I'd mean continuing to operate over a long period without exploiting users ("enshittifying"). There are plenty of instances that have done this, some of them date back to 2016 or before.

VC-backed services tend to demand growth within such a time frame. Continuing to exist in a stable state is incompatible with VC ownership.

What about the other side of the equation? How many instances disappeared due to moderator and admin burn out?

How many instances were created by enthusiastic people who were simply not able to manage it properly and shut their instances down when got their first wave of spam? How long do you think regular folks will be willing to keep hopping around because they picked an instance ran by amateurs?

@raphael

That's a totally fair point, maybe the biggest challenge for the Fediverse. I just don't think that VC is the answer to it.

VC tends to turn a service to crap while the VC people walk away with the money and don't care what happens to the service itself. They just wanted the money all along.

> They just wanted the money all along.

Again, doing things for money is not the problem and it is not something that only "evil VCs" do.

I don't expect to get food on my table out of goodwill of a "community-focused" farmer. I don't expect electric power in my home out of the community. Why should I expect social media services to be provided out of "community"?

If developers still go to VCs for funding projects, it's because "the community" is not valuing their work.

@raphael

Doing things for money is not the problem. We all have to do get money to survive.

Doing things ONLY for money or structuring your product so that it can easily be taken over by such people is the problem.

"Why should I expect social media services to be provided out of "community"?"

Because of the effects of social networks that are run by growth-chasers:

amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/…

thebureauinvestigates.com/stor…

theguardian.com/technology/202…

etc etc etc.

First of all I strongly disagree with the idea of equating the fediverse with ActivityPub. The fediverse existed before ActiivityPub, and has always supported multiple protocols Yes, AP's been dominant ever since Mastodon did embrace-extend-extinguish thing and replaced OStatus with AP in 2017, but history didn't end at that point.

But, even taking the AP-centric view of the fediverse, I think Bluesky qualifies as a fediverse instance. Diaspora, Flipboard, Wordpress ... none of them are built on top of AP internally, but they're all considered part of the fediverse. And yes, any instance running any software can unilaterally cut themselves off from the rest of the fediverse, either by turning off all federation or making a change at the software level (disabling a bridge or plugin, changing to a new protocol). Until that happens, though, they're part of the fediverse.

@oblomov @FediTips

But maybe we're just viewing things differently in general, so let's calibrate:

• do you think Diaspora is part of the fediverse?
• what about Wordpress?
• Flipboard?
• Threads?

For me the answer is yes to all. (On the last one, I think the fediverse would have been better off collectively blocking Threads just like they did Gab ... but that didn't happen.). But, maybe we also see those differently!

@oblomov @FediTips

@thenexusofprivacy
I do not consider Diaspora part of the Fediverse, and AFAIK it has never been considered part of the Fediverse, even in the OStatus days.
WordPress is not part of the Fediverse as such. The WordPress installations that have an enabled ActivityPub plugin are.

1/n

@thenexusofprivacy
Flipboard and Threads AFAIK do not implement full bidirectional federation, and until they do they cannot be considered part of the Fediverse proper, even though they're working to join (whether this is good or bad is an entirely different matter and OT for this discussion).

BlueSky isn't part of the Fediverse *at all* because it doesn't support ActivityPub in any shape or form (and no, the bridge doesn't count any more than the Twitter bridges do).

2/n

@thenexusofprivacy
What the platform uses internally is not particularly important. The degree of support for ActivityPub they strive for (and thus the effort to interoperate with the rest of the Fediverse) is.

Friendica and Hubzilla are examples of platform that are part of the Fediverse despite having their own protocols (DFRN, Zot), because they also support ActivityPub, aiming for full interoperability.

3/n

@thenexusofprivacy
BlueSky has no intention to interoperate with the rest of the Fediverse. It's entirely focused on its own protocol, of which they maintain complete control, with no intention to also support ActivityPub. Hence they cannot be considered part of the Fediverse.

4/4

Thanks for the clarification, I think I understand your position now -- your criteria is full bidiretional federation currently implemented, support of ActivityPub, and not using a bridge. Is that an accurate summary?

@oblomov @FediTips

Thanks!

On Diaspora, btw, opinions differ. Wikipedia, fediverse.party, and fediverse.observer all include it as part of the fedvierse; FediDB did until sometime last year (when joindiaspora shut down). But others don't see it that way.

@oblomov @FediTips

@thenexusofprivacy @oblomov

Diaspora cannot communicate with most of the Fediverse due to lacking ActivityPub compatibility. That doesn't mean Diaspora is a bad network, it just means it's separate.

My own take is that it gets a bit difficult for new people if we use the same name ("Fediverse") for two separate incompatible networks.

It is possible to be on both though if you use Friendica.