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@_elena in my experience, the main determinant for any technology’s long-term development is how control over it is structured. It’s all a question of power.
Technologies where power is centralized often grow quickly. Some achieve monopoly status, most others die.
Technologies where power is distributed often grow much more slowly. But they’re exceedingly resilient. Over time, many become part of the fabric of society.
the question is who puts them into the same category apart from their marketing bots?
After reading, it leaves me with concerns that are not dev related.
1. If there's xlarge $ infusions involved, it means profit will always be 1st, and fuck the tech. They will never care.
2. If they'll eat their young once - and don't wince about it - they WILL do it again and enjoy it more aggressively every time.
3. Once they have a taste of their own, they'll feed on other's 'outside the family'.
They want performing monkeys, not projects with merit.
@_elena I had heard about Attie but I didn't know what it does. It sounds a lot like Bonsai, the project from Princeton:
@_elena I actually think this is a great use of AI. Using LLMs to let us find interesting information, stay better connected with our friends and family, be better informed citizens, challenge our assumptions, stay cognitively healthy, all seems like a great application of technology.
@_elena I had heard about Attie but I didn't know what it does. It sounds a lot like Bonsai, the project from Princeton:
@_elena while I truly do feel for the author, who seems to have had both his livelihood and his ideals shaken... what did he expect? what reasonable person could think things were going to turn out any differently?
yes but the developers trying to build VC futures on AT don't understand the beauty of decentralization.
whatever you come up with, you're not going to be crazy rich. your service or app will be one of many implementations that do very similar things and where people can switch easily. hopefully many people will pay you a reasonable amount to keep it great but it's going to a lifestyle business, not a sellout and retire or start again type thing.
I agree with the argument but it's deeper. the developers trying to build VC futures on AT don't understand the beauty of decentralization.
whatever you come up with, you're not going to be crazy rich. your service or app will be one of many implementations that do very similar things and where people can switch easily. hopefully many people will pay you a reasonable amount to keep it great but it's going to be a lifestyle business, not a sellout and retire or start again type thing.
@_elena Some grey beard tech wisdom here. Back in the day the big tech players would set up a sales channel, invite you to be a partner, incentivize you and then after you built your channel they'd promptly screw you over and steal the customers. You'd know when you received an email about "exciting changes for channel partners". This is the same behavior. Mikes first law of tech business, big tech always screws the channel. Or should we say in 2026 big social always screws the community.
"Minutes after saying "look at all the amazing work from our community," Bluesky said "look how excited we are to eat our young."
Dad told a story about a lawn mower manufacturer in the early 1900s. They made a great lawn mower, and sold 1000 of them per year. They were approached by Sears Roebuck and got an order for another 1000 doubling their business. Then Sears wanted 5000. They borrowed heavily and expanded. Then 10,000. Then 50,000. You see where this is going.
-more-
Sears showed up one day and said they were renegotiating the deal and were only going to pay 75% of the price per mower. The company had no choice, but to accept even though they were now losing money on each unit sold. Then suddenly Sears began offering their own mower, and stopped buying any at all and the company, full of debt, was ruined.
Same as it ever was...
@mastodonmigration @_elena He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing. - Dune
@mike@thecanadian.social do you think this is a result of the corporate atmosphere from back in those days?
I (perhaps inaccurately) feel like as of the 2010s, if you were nimble enough to outcompete an entrenched incumbent, the playbook would be to acquire your company.
@_elena interestingly this was the exact play of twitter - you can see the DNA.
@_elena This is why I'll _almost_ never understand the excitement around the #ATmosphere . It's designed with FOSS aesthetics and private interest profiteering in mind.
Not to say that #ActivityPub doesn't have some pretty big problems, it does. Ones that #Bluesky does a much better job with. But with ActivityPub? It's not designed or built around a private platform first. It was built to be an open ecosystem from its inception.
Bluesky was built to be open as a side quest, not a driving mission.
@_elena it's a mess that keeps growing, and we will be left to compost it, too much #techshit, and we all start to stink - why would anyone use the #openweb with that bad smell. The last time this happened was the #encryptionists with the #blockchain mess, there is a big overlap with #bluesky
@_elena thank you for sharing the article.
The same considerations should be honestly made for the #ActivityPub fediverse as well. So we may address them in time. Not all is well. I am writing a blog post on open standards divergence and increasing unattractiveness of an ecosystem that hems itself into a straitjacket of narrow application areas, by the protocol decay we allow to fester. Combined with inadequate work methods to reconcile the tech debt that this incurs. We must go "back to standards" or have an ecosystem based on enabling technologies that are increasingly unattractive to adopt.
@_elena reading that article I also stopped at that sentence. I totally love the fact that nobody think activitypub is a good place to do VC funding of startups ... It proves it's sane enough <3
@_elena they think algorithmically sorting people *in the context of discursive discussion* can be good. They are wrong
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