Ancestors

Toot

Written by Taylor Lorenz on 2025-01-13 at 14:12

I wrote about FreeOurFeeds, a new $30M plan to take back social media from billionaires https://www.usermag.co/p/freeourfeeds-a-30m-plan-to-take-back-social-media-from-billionaires

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Descendants

Written by chris overcash on 2025-01-13 at 14:22

@taylorlorenz seems like a colossal waste of money. Clearly Mastodon, Pixelfed, Loops, etc. are already perfectly viable platforms that achieve the technical goals of FreeOurFeeds, why not use the money and reach to spread the word and move users over? Just today Pixelfed was blocked by Meta, so clearly they see it as a potential threat to IG.

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Written by Dimitri Dhuyvetter on 2025-01-13 at 14:25

@taylorlorenz I don’t really understand why they use the AT protocol instead of ActivityPub. As far as I can tell, everything they want to build already exists. Why reinvent the wheel just because Bluesky is using the AT protocol?

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Written by fr0g on 2025-01-13 at 15:53

@dhuyvetter @taylorlorenz

I think that might be part of the reason though? ActivityPub already has those things. AT by the way it is built, could have those things (more or less), but currently Bluesky is the only name in town. Couple that with the fact that Bluesky is more popular by orders of magnitude than Fedi currently and it seems like a reasonable strategy for impactfully decentralizing social media.

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Written by Phil Betts on 2025-01-13 at 16:55

@frog_reborn @dhuyvetter @taylorlorenz yeah, the problem they see is not technical, it's cultural. Half the fedi doesn't seem to want to a world square anyway, they want small communities. This approach looks like it's trying to take AT from open in theory (but with massive infrastructure barriers to entry) to open in practice.

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Written by Jiří Eischmann on 2025-01-13 at 18:03

@frog_reborn @dhuyvetter @taylorlorenz you know what an order of magnitude is, right? At the moment there are 4.5m posts daily on Bluesky and 1.6m on the Fediverse. And the latter number is probably not exhaustive due to the decentralized nature of the Fediverse and the fact that it's counted by crawlers.

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Written by Mike Fraser :Jets: on 2025-01-13 at 14:28

@taylorlorenz I'll take reinventing the wheel for 200 Alex.

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Written by Nathan A. Stine on 2025-01-13 at 16:08

@mike @taylorlorenz imagine what Mastodon or Pixelfed or Frendica could do with $30 million.

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Written by Mike Fraser :Jets: on 2025-01-14 at 02:22

@stinerman @taylorlorenz I know right. If the goal was to make a kick ass micro blogging destination and I received 30 mil to do it, 10 goes to @Gargron and the rest goes to a pro moderation and IS team to run a killer Mastodon instance. All the protocol/engine wotk is 90% done..

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Written by MylesRyden on 2025-01-13 at 14:30

@taylorlorenz

Is it just me but do neither of these guys actually look human to you?

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Written by Ev Delen on 2025-01-13 at 14:35

@taylorlorenz

Notably, BlueSky is not decentralized. Parts of the protocol require BlueSky's servers even if you're running your own instance.

It's not decentralized, It's less-centralized.

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Written by Oneironaut on 2025-01-13 at 14:36

@taylorlorenz so they want $30M to reinvent mastodon?

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Written by CallMeRay on 2025-01-13 at 14:39

@taylorlorenz It's pretty obvious why they're going with AT. It's easier to monetize and enshittify.

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Written by MylesRyden on 2025-01-13 at 14:45

@taylorlorenz

The problem here is, of course, mostly social, not technical.

It is similar to the "Year of the Linux Desktop" that never actually comes. There might be some tiny element that Linux is somehow technically "inferior" or "more difficult" than M$, but the real reason Windows maintains its position is the various forms of lock in they have. But a laptop and Windows is already on it. Windows is used at work. You have 10 years of Word documents. Etc. etc. etc.

Even more so with social media. As long as her friends and family are on FB, my SO will be on FB. She already knows Zuck is a Nazi, but every week has her FB Messenger session with her sisters, buys and sells her hobby stuff on FB marketplace, scrolls Reels constantly.

I assume that FB will collapse suddenly when some other massive tech company sets up a similar one stop service that is non-Nazi and everyone jumps at once. Frankly, I think this is a huge opportunity for Apple, but I digress.

But whatever it is, surely FB (and Xhitter) will collapse suddenly when they reach some kind of Malcolm Gladwell type tipping point when "everyone" decides that "everyone" is "over there" now.

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Written by Shannon Skinner (she/her) on 2025-01-13 at 18:14

@MylesRyden

I managed to move my FB Messenger session with my sisters to Signal last year. It can be done! The transition was smooth and we never looked back.

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Written by eobet on 2025-01-13 at 14:57

@taylorlorenz wait, @pluralistic is supporting this and it's NOT based on #ActivityPub? What is the reason for that decision?

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Written by Cory Doctorow on 2025-01-13 at 15:40

@eobet @taylorlorenz

As I have repeatedly written, I would LOVE to use Bluesky but will not until they make good on their promise of adding federation, so that I can costlessly leave if they mismanage the service. This letter calls on them to do so. I like Activitypub because it's federated, not because it's Activitypub. I would like any other service if they were also federated a la Activitypub.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/

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Written by Alfredo Natale on 2025-01-13 at 16:05

@pluralistic @eobet @taylorlorenz I don't understand if federation is really possible between AT relays. Each relay should contain a copy of the whole network, but how ?

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Written by william.maggos on 2025-01-13 at 16:19

@pluralistic @eobet @taylorlorenz

I don't think that's clear but seeing your name made me think again about what I was reading and this reasoning popped up. I have a hard time believing that most of the others joining this effort make that distinction. any chance of working within the group to get it to focus on AP instead, since there'd be a lot less effort involved? you'd just have to promote AP instead of getting AT folks to do so much tech revision (against invested VC interests)?

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Written by EpicBear on 2025-01-13 at 23:57

@wjmaggos @pluralistic @eobet @taylorlorenz Yeah I don't get the buy in to Bluesky at the moment considering we already have a federated technology in #ActivityPub. I just don't see how Bluesky meets the main goal of taking back our public square considering both the underlying AT protocol and their overall current direction of pushing effectively a single instance that's still "too big to fail".

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Written by Leefeller Guy on 2025-01-13 at 15:13

@taylorlorenz Not sure taking back is correct? Taking back suggests previous ownership?Could be me and my semantics?

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Written by clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 on 2025-01-13 at 15:50

@Leefellerguy @taylorlorenz When our social networks online were blogs, UseNet and email, they were not exclusively owned by billionaires.

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Written by Jenica on 2025-01-13 at 15:45

@taylorlorenz what do you think about this being a non-profit as 45/47 declared he will sue or shut down non-profits that fight against him?

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Written by Michael Harrison on 2025-01-13 at 16:07

@taylorlorenz You had me at "non profit foundation"

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Written by gumbario on 2025-01-13 at 16:50

@taylorlorenz So they want to build basically another social media what is like Mastodon. It would make much more sense to support Mastodon and help that grow. Honestly I think it’s a horrible stupid idea of them.

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Written by Kaito on 2025-01-13 at 17:01

@taylorlorenz this is just sad. Supporting ATproto instead of ActivityPub would just lead to further friction.

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Written by Woozle Hypertwin on 2025-01-13 at 17:05

@taylorlorenz I'm told that Mastodon has been mentioned as part of this plan, or invited to participate, but I'm not seeing that in the UserMag article, the project site front page or the GoFundMe campaign -- can you clarify? Thanks. ^.^

cc: @pluralistic (...the only signatory listed who seems to have a fedi account, though I could easily be missing someone)

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Written by Brian Hawthorne on 2025-01-13 at 21:49

@woozle @taylorlorenz @pluralistic Has anyone done a deep dive on the pros and cons of AT vs AP?

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Written by Woozle Hypertwin on 2025-01-13 at 22:29

@bhawthorne @taylorlorenz @pluralistic

I think Christine L-W may have looked into it -- if so, I've got the link stashed... somewhere....... ☁️

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Written by Bruce Acton 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 on 2025-01-13 at 17:12

@taylorlorenz we should start lobbing our governments ( I’m in Canada) to build out government sites.

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Written by wraptile on 2025-01-13 at 17:35

@taylorlorenz VC funded is such a 🚩 how are they going to pay back that 30,000,000 USD with interest without selling out? Bet they're incorporating as for profit but "good for society" meme too.

That being said, I hate being pessimistic here and hope I'm just wrong.

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Written by Brendan Kinney on 2025-01-13 at 17:41

@taylorlorenz Wondering if this could be expanded to incorporate the decentralized Activity Pub protocol (upon which Mastodon is built)?

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Written by smeg on 2025-01-13 at 21:08

@taylorlorenz I want to know why they've chosen the AT Protocol (BlueSky's protocol) instead of the already-open ActivityPub as their chosen standard.

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Written by obscurestar on 2025-01-14 at 00:05

@taylorlorenz Sorry Bluesky. There's an old adage that goes 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.. Hard pass'

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Written by Spy Stuff on 2025-01-14 at 21:40

@taylorlorenz FreeOurFeeds sounds like a breath of fresh air—finally, a plan to put control of social media back into the hands of the people instead of billionaires. A $30M investment in transparency and fairness could reshape the digital landscape. Count me in!

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