If you were chased here from Twitter, it's just possible that you won't be aware that a lot of people are now leaving Twitter (or X if you must) for BlueSky. I mention this because I personally very much valued having a thriving maths community on Twitter while still being part of the wider world, so to speak. My experience here, which may be as much my fault as Mastodon's, is that there are lots of interesting people but not quite the atmosphere that I liked on Twitter. It would be a bit cheeky of me to suggest deserting Mastodon, but perhaps you might like to consider trying out BlueSky -- I would be very happy if we could use it to recover what Musk stole from us.
@wtgowers - thanks for pointing this out. I miss you!
What do you know about the corporate structure of BlueSky and the guardrails against it eventually getting "enshittified" as pressure for stock returns forces the extraction of value from its users? I put a huge amount of work into posts on math and physics. Having been burnt twice, by Google+ and Twitter, I will not again spend my time contributing value to a corporation that can eventually go bad. I've decided the "good atmosphere I liked at Twitter" was like the cow enjoying hay before the slaughter.
Btw, speaking very egotistically now, if you want to read my stuff in occasional concentrated doses, you can read it here:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/diary/
I put my stuff there so I have it under my control no matter what happens.
Cory Doctorow has written about Bluesky and enshittification
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
@jsdodge @wtgowers - Thanks! I probably read this once before but had forgotten most of it. I think @pluralistic says it just right:
"I appreciate that the CEO of Bluesky, Jay Graber, has evinced her sincere intention never to enshittify Bluesky and I believe she is totally sincere:
https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-wont-enshittify-ads/
But here's the thing: all those other platforms, the ones where I unwisely allowed myself to get locked in, where today I find myself trapped by the professional, personal and political costs of leaving them, they were all started by people who swore they'd never sell out. I know those people, the old blogger mafia who started the CMSes, social media services, and publishing platforms where I find myself trapped. I considered them friends (I still consider most of them friends), and I knew them well enough to believe that they really cared about their users.
They did care about their users. They just cared about other stuff, too, and, when push came to shove, they chose the worsening of their services as the lesser of two evils."
@johncarlosbaez @jsdodge @wtgowers @pluralistic my distrust on the future of Bluesky comes from the lack of clarity on their intended future business model + that their current burn rate is likely too high for them to operate without more rounds of investment, and they already got tens of millions from VCs including the $15m series A from last month by Blockchain Capital: these people are not looking to create a decentralised network but to 10x (at least) their investments, how will this happen?
@trobador @johncarlosbaez @jsdodge @wtgowers @pluralistic It looks like there may additionally be some troubling connections (including to Russian state media) with their series A funders. That in addition to the basic structural dynamics of corporations and venture funding probably constitute a reasonable basis for at least some caution.
