Bluesky and Enshittification
pluralistic.netBlue skies darken, lightning flashes, thunder rolls.
It's raining armies of trolls. Forests burn down. Cities drown.
The storm howls.
The wheel of time is moving on, over landscapes barren.
New stars rising, promises of another sun.
Masses warren.
The circle repeats, excitment, fun.
Critical mass reached, trust breached, trigger of the gun.
Another bunnie screeched...
There have been multiple such posts on HN over the past week. For some reason this reminds me repeat spouse abuse victims who tend to knowingly preference relationships that result in violence. They claim one sentiment about lock-in but their overwhelming need to build a brand in an externally managed space will ultimately drive those sentiments into irrelevance.
The only way these posts will ever make sense is if people shift their attention from content/branding towards platform independence they build. I suspect that is just asking too much, but this actually used to be the norm before 2004.
I wasn't aware before 2004 so saying "platform independence" makes my head roll incredulously. But that's probably because the first things I think of are exclusive games and pre-streaming times movies and shows, although I always suspected that there must be some rich peoples TV & Radio that the rest of the us never gets to see or hear ^^ ...
Anyways. The industries can't build platform independent anymore. That's why indie and open source are such a thing in their domains.
And technically, they must be paired with an *absolute* abstinence from mainstream platforms and 2Big Corps in order to keep the subtext and the intended and unintended effects and side-effects of the "brainwash" away, as well as those gangbanging bytes and abstractions, from ads, the messages and the code. Otherwise the cancer spreads in bits and various low voltages over time and through the tiniest cracks in the systems, the brains and the minds.
All digital space is ionized. Channels build up fast and never really dissipate but almost nobody backtracks their origin and mechanisms of action anymore, even though reverse engineering is a thing; just not in the psycho-social and, meh, let's call it neuro-space.
Prediction and prediction markets are thing, though, as are markets for variations/mutations of the mind-virus and, not to forget, markets for methods of conformity enforcement and manipulation of teens and other current and future consumers.
Fuck that shit but that's, mostly, why nothing platform independent will ever happen again. Sabotage of any organic behavior and decision making.
> The industries can't build platform independent anymore.
The rest of your comment stems from that one sentence which is an unfounded assertion built upon an unstated assumption. If you really believe that then this conversation is irrelevant because the platforms are, generally, private commercial enterprises that should modify their terms and delete your accounts as necessary to increase their revenue while you have given up even imagining alternatives.
If you are only a marketing person completely void with any technical competence then you absolutely need platforms to tell you what your priorities are, otherwise you can always self host.
Nice.
How much does a bunch of self-taught coders or students cost, who can proof to you that they can self-host for you?
How would a salesman convince you that's a bad idea?
Why do agencies immediately put you on all platforms? Who anchored this and why?
You want exposure. Where to find that exposure? Why would users/customers get on your self-hosted platform? How would they find it?
What priorities do these platforms have? Short-, mid-, long-term?
I feel, intuitively, that they might make sense if they pay attention to Bluesky.
The general tenor of these postings is "Bluesky will turn to shit because […explanation…]", where the explanation ignores the work done by the Bluesky team. The authors write as though the Bluesky team has never heard about enshittification, or hasn't thought about it or about how to cope. That's unreal, and an unreal premise never leads to insightful conclusions.
I think the author Cory Doctrow (who is actually a published author) laid out his case quite clearly. He doesn't question the intentions or sincerity of the BlueSky team. But from past experience he is not confident that will be enough. We have all been there before. (I am old enough to remember when the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. held themselves to similarly lofty ideals and standards.) But under pressure whether it is financial pressure or political, regulatory or or from investors, employees, the board, competition, etc. Bluesky may very well choose to renege on those promises to their users- This is enshittification. The only guarantee against this is if Bluesky allows users to seamlessly migrate their account (including posts, followers) to another host without any disruption or degradation of their service.
He doesn't question the intentions or sincerity, agreed, but he also doesn't discuss their actions AFAICT. He writes as if Bluesky's actions cannot affect the future of the service.
It seems to me that the Bluesky team is painting the company into a corner, where it'll be able to make a nice profit from a nice service, but can't grow to hire 7000 people, have a 500-strong HR team or a ten-digit valuation.
That misses the point because it doesn't matter. If you need somebody to host your content then they own your content, the corresponding account, and the distribution of that content and absolutely everything else that touches the platform.
Some people need to broadcast on these platforms because the are super strong at marketing, but not strong enough at anything else, and so they are doomed to these kinds of repeated inevitable failures. Its hard to have sympathy for that when absolutely everybody knows that going in, but nonetheless they will ask for sympathy because they can't be bothered with an alternative.
...hasn't thought about it or about how to cope.
Or maybe they have thought about --- and intend to deal with it in pretty much the same way as all their predecessors.
Bluesky is up to their ass in venture capital funding. Ignoring this fact and presuming some viable, unknown/unspoken alternative exists to defy the forces of capitalism they are in bed with is unreal, and an unreal premise never leads to insightful conclusions.
They've been open about how to deal with it — and do not intend to deal with it in pretty much the same way as all their predecessors.
"They" are subject to being replaced --- in which case, everything "they" say now may no longer hold true.
The reality is that the venture capitalists they are in bed with will push for maximum return on their investment.
History suggests that at some point, the VCs will most likely win and the slide toward enshittification begins.
> For some reason this reminds me repeat spouse abuse victims who tend to knowingly preference relationships that result in violence
This is a pretty disgusting comparison.
I completely agree, which is why I wrote it that way. The behaviors in both cases are close enough to me to not warrant distinguishing.
If you know with certainty you will be disappointed in the outcome of a decision then you shouldn't do the things that drive that outcome. Yet, some people cannot be bothered with long term resolution if the familiar circumstances in the short term are present.