Right in the article they are discussing adding ads and premium subscriptions features in the future.
I can already see the timeline for BlueSky over the next few years:
Receive startup venture capital
Provide a useful, user-friendly service
Grow a userbase <-- (you are here)
Add a few more useful features, continue growing
Dominate the market, run at a loss
Add less useful features like ads, premium features, subscriptions
People complain, but most are too hooked in to leave
The useful features added earlier start getting removed, content gets sanitized <-- (Imgur, Reddit is here)
Big fundraising campaign, IPO, or bought out by big corp or the melon husk of the day.
Content quality goes way downhill, actively making life harder for users, volunteers and staff, bots rampant, more stupid features, monetization monetization monetization <-- (Twitter is here)
People leave for another useful, user-friendly service
Any service backed by a business person will follow this timeline. This is why we need to move to self-hosted, federated, and community based platforms. Capitalism ruins everything it touches.
I wonder if because of decentralization the fediverse apps like Lemmy are insulated from going more than two more bullet points further past the “you are here”
That is the hope… Lemmy and other Fediverse servers will still have challenges ahead of it in the future, including combatting botspam, targeted attacks to force servers offline (through DDoS, threats of lawsuit, etc.).
I’m no expert but I’ll go through it.
DDoS can be mitigated, but it’s a scaling issue. Usually it’s a problem for medium sized services.
Lawsuits will fall mostly on individual server owners. And even then, the links are being hosted elsewhere.
Botspam is a huge issue. I expect that to be one main problem. And also monetization. That will also be a big problem.
In the article, they outline how Blue sky is resistant to that path through the PBLLC structure and ability to move your account when you don’t like the web site.
Time will tell if this model works in practice but it could be interesting as an alternative to Twitter without the usability issues normally associated with federation.
I won’t knock BlueSky for trying. I think it will go well to replace Twitter, and run strong for some years. I’m still a bit on the skeptical side, especially until we see the ActivityTracker protocol on a non-BlueSky server in action, that BlueSky won’t be bought out and puppeted by some wealthy group.
That is also part of people’s worry if one instance gets way too big on Lemmy, Mastodon etc. There is potential to change their federation scheme, closing themselves off from outside servers through unique features made incompatible to federate, eventually returning to a centralized model of its own.
Right in the article they are discussing adding ads and premium subscriptions features in the future.
I can already see the timeline for BlueSky over the next few years:
Any service backed by a business person will follow this timeline. This is why we need to move to self-hosted, federated, and community based platforms. Capitalism ruins everything it touches.
I wonder if because of decentralization the fediverse apps like Lemmy are insulated from going more than two more bullet points further past the “you are here”
That is the hope… Lemmy and other Fediverse servers will still have challenges ahead of it in the future, including combatting botspam, targeted attacks to force servers offline (through DDoS, threats of lawsuit, etc.).
I’m no expert but I’ll go through it. DDoS can be mitigated, but it’s a scaling issue. Usually it’s a problem for medium sized services. Lawsuits will fall mostly on individual server owners. And even then, the links are being hosted elsewhere. Botspam is a huge issue. I expect that to be one main problem. And also monetization. That will also be a big problem.
In the article, they outline how Blue sky is resistant to that path through the PBLLC structure and ability to move your account when you don’t like the web site.
Time will tell if this model works in practice but it could be interesting as an alternative to Twitter without the usability issues normally associated with federation.
I won’t knock BlueSky for trying. I think it will go well to replace Twitter, and run strong for some years. I’m still a bit on the skeptical side, especially until we see the ActivityTracker protocol on a non-BlueSky server in action, that BlueSky won’t be bought out and puppeted by some wealthy group.
I can see a potential path for it’s downfall.
That is also part of people’s worry if one instance gets way too big on Lemmy, Mastodon etc. There is potential to change their federation scheme, closing themselves off from outside servers through unique features made incompatible to federate, eventually returning to a centralized model of its own.
Enshittification