Bluesky vs. Mastodon is not as black and white as many seem to think.

Let me explain why. 🧵

1. A Twitter founder funds and advises Bluesky.

Okay, a Twitter founder (@ev) runs a for-profit instance, and another (@biz) has offered to advise Mastodon.

2. Bluesky accepted VC money.

A VC firm owns 3 of the top 5 largest Mastodon servers

3. An evil corporation (Twitter) helped develop Bluesky.

An evil corporation (Google) helped develop the Fediverse

I have further thoughts here...

I have many, many reservations about the direction that Bluesky is going.

I also have many, many reservations about the direction Mastodon is going.

I don't like the AI and algorithm-direction that Bluesky is going.

I don't like Mastodon's slow development towards user discovery is going, and how things like full text search and quote posts aren't here.

There's a lot of criticize, but I admire anyone who releases working code. But let's get to the real crux of where I think this is going.

First off, I have a personal and financial stake in the success of ActivityPub: Things that I'm doing right now:

1. Developer video/audio software that federates through ActivityPub
2. Building a federated managed hosting service
3. Building a federated crowdfunding service
4. Running 5(!) servers, 3 which are open to the public
5. Reporting on every new development here on this account

I'm pro-ActivityPub.

I'm also not going to chase after the shiny new thing. We've seen lots of hyped social media platforms come and go.

Remember BeReal? Clubhouse? Horizon Worlds?

The Tech Press all breathlessly reported on each of them as the Next Big Thing™ -- and then they fizzled.

The Tech Press aren't visionaries. They just report on the zeitgeist.

Guess what? In the world of tech the zeitgeist changes from week to week.

The other thing is, it's easy to look at the present and believe it's somehow indicative of the future.

A year ago, nobody gave a damn about Mastodon. Now it's the frontrunner.

Things change on a dime, and not in the way everyone quite imagines.

But one thing I've been absolutely sure of for the past 5 years is that decentralization is the future of social media, and will change the Internet itself.

However, at first, I made missteps too...

When I first thought about decentralized social media, my vision was *not* the Fediverse, but something else entirely:

Peer-to-Peer social networking.

To make social media completely free, resistant to centralization, I began work on a peer-to-peer messaging app with microblogging capabilities.

It made it to alpha, and we managed to send and receive messages to recipients on phones.

But I after to trying to pitch decentralization to everyone, I found tremendous resistance.

Understand that I spent 3 years working really hard on that peer-to-peer app.

But I was working on it in a climate of everyone believing Big Social had a lock, and that it was "wrong" to move people away from centralized services.

That, and I didn't realize that crypto pretty much poisoned the well, and few people were willing to consider decentralized and peer-to-peer social media unless it had a blockchain attached to the project.

This isn't just a trip down memory lane, I have a point...

Eventually, I had to give up on my peer-to-peer social media project.

Why? Because like it or not, server-to-server federation moved the needle closer to what I truly wanted: decentralization of social media.

Idealistically, I don't prefer servers. They create a social hierarchy.

But server-to-server federation is still better than one entity owning all our social media.

And sure enough, I was right. Millions of people did migrate to the Fediverse.

So I put my efforts there.

Now remember, am I completely sold on ActivityPub or Mastodon or the Fediverse?

No.

But the Fediverse does something incredibly important: it validates that social media can and should be decentralized.

It doesn't do this purposely. There's clear problems. I don't think anyone, including people who participated in the working group at the W3C, believe this is the best outcome.

But it's a better outcome than the alternative: further centralization.

Now ActivityPub has done something even more important. It caught Silicon Valley with their pants down.

Prior to last November, Silicon Valley's entire attention was on crypto and AI. Mastodon and the Fediverse wasn't even on their radar.

And now Mastodon -- with an operating budget of ~300,000/year -- has pretty much shamed the tech bros.

Well, now the tech bros must respond, and Bluesky is their response.

But this isn't a bad thing either.

Bluesky has gone into beta at a time the product is clearly not ready. Features Bluesky doesn't have:

1. DMs
2. Hashtags
3. Edits
4. Lists
5. Embedding

It had to add blocking yesterday or else face a mutiny from its users.

And it hasn't federated yet.

Why? Because if it didn't release, it would be ceding more and more to Mastodon.

And now it's using Silicon Valley's bag of tricks to build a hype cycle.

Now while I don't think much of Bluesky as it currently exists, I'm going to acknowledge one thing. They've keyed in on many of Mastodon's drawbacks by offering:

1. Quoted posts
2. Full text search
3. Easy sign-ups

Is this a coincidence? Nope, they're offering what Mastodon doesn't in their MVP -- and I don't blame them.

To be fair, Mastodon is offering things Bluesky isn't too. But that's not my point.

My point is that Bluesky is attacking Mastodon's weaknesses.

Now some people may see Bluesky vs. Mastodon as a war.

And Bluesky and Mastodon themselves may see this as a war.

But we, Fediverse participants, can win.

For one thing, Bluesky has released AT protocol with an open source MIT license. Yes, corporations don't do this unless they intend to use it with a proprietary product.

But AT protocol is still open source, and we can use it.

For one thing, it's clear that AT protocol offers a chance to use nomadic identity.

That's progress!

Here's the deal. AT protocol being open source means we don't have to use Bluesky. We don't have to talk to them.

We can benefit from it on our own terms -- and we should!

Just as Google helped the development of OStatus, the precursor of ActivityPub, we can take AT protocol and develop further with it.

Hell, the MIT license means it's compatible with the AGPL.

But AT protocol also means that more people -- many who would never use Mastodon -- will leave centralized social media like Twitter and migrate to decentralized social media.

Bluesky doesn't fill me with joy.

Yet Bluesky is an objective improvement over Twitter... if it federates.

If it doesn't federate and this whole decentralization spiel is a lie, then screw them.

But if they're serious about decentralization, hundreds of thousands of new people will join the Fediverse.

With all this rush to Bluesky, though, there's a few things that people aren't considering:

1. People on Bluesky are interested in the broader Fediverse. I should know -- I talk to them.

2. Misskey/Calckey are growing at an obscenely fast rate right now, and nobody's talking about that -- especially media

3. If you think Bluesky is hyped, wait till Barcelona comes along. That will probably use ActivityPub.

And again, this is why this whole "war" of decentralized services becomes ridiculous.

Because what will happen when Barcelona joins the Fediverse?

Well, now Bluesky won't be the Evil Empire. They'll might be regarded as the Luke Skywalker going against the Evil Empire.

And when Barcelona joins the Fediverse, we'll all have a big debate, some of us saying moral people should never talk to Barcelona, that it has no redeeming quality.

Meanwhile, millions of people will join the Fediverse -- which is a substantial improvement over them being stuck on centralized social media.

I don't like Meta. They're terrible. They're a shit stain on society.

But now they're feeling the pressure to decentralize.