The bubble popping doesn’t have to do with its staying power, just that the days of, “Hey, I invented this brand new AI that’s totally not just a wrapper for ChatGPT. Want to invest a billion dollars‽” are over. AGI is not “just out of reach.”

I’m not even sure it can, unless they want to pay server operators. Who would do that for free for a for-profit company? And if they’re ultimately supported by the top, they’re still centralized.

Not that it’s super expensive to run a server, but it ain’t free; at least in a place like the Fediverse, every transaction is voluntary all the way down to the financial support, because any part may choose to participate or leave as they see fit.

I don’t see how BlueSky can replicate that and still chase profit.

Asking the important questions

Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to embody your values and preferences with stunning accuracy.

Okay, but can it embody my traumas?

Yeah, still a net positive. Not complaining, just informing.

I’ve just seen the “it’s federated (eventually)” and “it’s a public benefit corporation” tossed around on occasion like they’re exonerating evidence, and I would hate to see people get tricked into a false sense of security.

…as a public benefit corporation.

I would encourage everyone to read about what a Benefit Corporation is. It’s still for-profit, but being public benefit gives the officers a little protection from shareholders suing them when stock performance goes down. In theory, this protects them from being driven solely by profit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

However, there’s no real guidance or oversight on whether a company still qualifies for that designation. They can self-audit, they can vote to change to a normal corporation at any time, switch back again, etc. This is not a different tax classification, this is a corporate board promise, and I have no reason to think they’ll stay a public benefit corporation, even if they have the best intentions right now.

That’s why some people just create their own instances.

True! I forgot about that. Other accounts have used similar functionality.

That’s cool. Well, I wish them well. Hopefully they can make something that’s good for people and not just chase profits.

Mastodon devs didn’t care to cease the moment

And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to.

That’s up to us. Convincing people to join the Fediverse and showing them better alternatives to their favorite platforms (and teaching them how to use them) is our collective job, not some group of hobbyist devs.

Plus I think explosive growth would change the vibe of the Fediverse in a negative way, since most people expect it to be free (i.e. “I am the product”) and shitty (so always taking offense). I’m fine peeling people away over time.

For groups, I don’t know if Mastodon will ever get that or not. Friendica exists, it’s more analogous to Facebook than Mastodon, and it already has groups and public/private forums. I’m not really sure if that would be a great addition to the microblog format of Mastodon, anyway, so I don’t really care if it never comes.

musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him,

Yeah, certainly, or some other billionaire. I think it goes without saying that most of us here understand the flaws with centralized services.

I’m not saying it’s the best choice ever, but I’m hopeful that the choice to leave Xitter might do positive things to people’s mentality when BlueSky almost certainly repeats history. It’s not likely to happen right away, as even an offer to buy would take time to approve, so for now, I’m taking it as a net positive.

The Fediverse will continue to grow and change in the meantime, and we’ll all still be here to help them migrate to better things in the future.

People aren’t going to be convinced of social/communism overnight.

I celebrate the move to BlueSky as positive in that they are no longer propping up an apartheid tech bro who’s now running a meme branch of US Government, and also because many of them are doing the thing they were scared to do before: leave. They now know how that feels and what it will be like rebuilding friend groups and such.

It’s not the anti-corpo step many are deluding themselves to believe it is, but getting out of the muck and learning how to take the step to change something are both things I see as positives that can be guided to better things in the future.

1. That’s lazy journalism. There’s a functional search bar as well as trending hashtags.

2. There will never be suggestions by design, but there’s accounts like FediFollow and guides on how to get started with Mastodon. If you meet those people in the future, tell them to follow hashtags for topics they like, and encourage them to start using hashtags. They’ll find people that way.

3. This is also by design: there’s no suggestions, because there’s no algorithm. You decide what goes on in your feed (boosting is another important part of that). If you’ve looked at everything, explore a new hashtag, follow more people, check the Local or Global feeds, or Satan forbid anyone actually take that as a sign to take a break and go touch grass.

or it sells out to another already established billionare that abuses the power of media control etc…

This cannot be overstated. That’s exactly how Elon ended up with Twitter, and nobody should think for a second that there aren’t richer, more tactful billionaires who could keep people credulously swimming in the propaganda in order to make their power plays.

I give it four years before their first enshittifying changes are announced.

It really depends what you’re after. You’ll find cool people by following hashtags, certainly, but if there’s somebody in particular you like, follow the person, too. Do both.

Also, some people bring their bad habits from Xitter and the rest, so it helps to have all the options.

Tldr, to help fight patent trolls:

They’re asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology – referred to by patent lawyers as “prior art” – that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information.

They use this info to essentially undercut and invalidate the patent trolls’ filing, killing their ability to file suit on that patent again.

There’s also a contest with a $3000 prize for anyone who can help kill a current one on their plate.

https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/s3vQkRdTC6coNkjyx

I feel like there was a YouTube Premium series that paid homage to the original story, too, but I don’t remember the name of the show.

and try to effect the conversation,

And these people are insane. Elon has total control over the narrative, and the people that believe they can “throw sand in the gears” with some quippy xeets are delusional.

At least they’re moving, but fucking Christ; far too many people have main character syndrome.

When do we get the Home Assistant who falls in love with its owner and tries to kill their partner out of jealousy?

"States should decide everything!

…no, not like that!"

(Note that hypocrisy is fully expected, but they don’t get a pass from me pointing it out simply by virtue of it being their expected MO).