Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Bluesky and enshittification; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Bluesky and enshittification; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…
1/
reshared this
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Next weekend (November 8-10), I'll be in Tucson, AZ: I'm the Guest of Honor at the Tuscon science fiction convention:
tusconscificon.com/
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Bluesky and enshittification: No one is the enshittifier of their own story.
mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11341347…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Hey look at this
* Vanishing Culture blog.archive.org/wp-content/up… (h/t Chris Freeland)
* The Rookie: W. Kamau Bell on Olivia Rynberg-Going of the DOJ washingtonpost.com/opinions/in… (h/t thepublicdomain@mastodon.sdf.org)
* Hey Brendan Carr, Next Time Link To Our Article That Proves You’re Full Of Shit, Coward techdirt.com/2024/10/24/hey-br… (h/t Gregory Charlin)
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#20yrsago Diebold voting machines hacked web.archive.org/web/2004110208…
#15yrsago Newspaper columnist quits over paywall nytimes.com/2009/11/02/busines…
#15yrsago Congressional record exposes military officers to identity theft, covers up web.archive.org/web/2010050612…
#15yrsago Hallowe’en night out as floppy disk and XKCD Cory flickr.com/photos/24876360@N03…
#15yrsago Mechanical computer uses matchboxes and beans to learn Tic-Tac-Toe shorttermmemoryloss.com/menace…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#15yrsago Elegy Beach: sequel to Ariel, a sword-and-sorcery post-apocalyptic adventure story about the reinvention of software in the age of magic memex.craphound.com/2009/11/02…
#10yrsago UK cultural institutions leave their WWI cases empty to protest insane copyright web.archive.org/web/2014110505…
#10yrsago FBI secretly seeking legal power to hack any computer, anywhere theguardian.com/us-news/2014/o…
#10yrsago 42 rich white people account for 1/3 of Super PAC spending thenation.com/article/archive/…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago Philadelphia schools have $5/student/year for supplies salon.com/2014/11/01/we_must_s…
#10yrsago Mechwarrior dad/baby costume youtube.com/watch?v=QIln1LTtvz…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Yesterday's threads: Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever; and more!
mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11340806…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
My latest nationally bestselling novel is "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench:
us.macmillan.com/books/9781250…
Signed copies from Chevalier's Books:
chevaliersbooks.com/product-pa…
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My latest nonfiction book is "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" from Verso Books:
seizethemeansofcomputation.org
Signed copies available from Book Soup:
booksoup.com/book/978180429124…
Both are national bestsellers!
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
craphound.com/shop/
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Upcoming appearances:
* TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
tusconscificon.com/
* International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/p…
* ACM Conext-2024 Workshop on the Decentralization of the Internet (Los Angeles), Dec 9
conferences.sigcomm.org/co-nex…
* IA et “merdification“ d’internet: peut-on envisager un nouveau web? (Remote), Dec 12
unige.ch/comprendre-le-numeriq…
* ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
issala.org/event/issa-la-decem…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
cloudfest.link/
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Recent appearances:
* Enshittification Was a Choice (SOSS Fusion)
youtube.com/watch?v=KCSelmMUO0…
* Maximum Iceland Scenario (@TWiT)
youtube.com/watch?v=P5MkCwktKz…
* Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (@digitaliafm)
digitalia.fm/744/
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Next weekend (November 8-10), I'll be in Tucson, AZ: I'm the Guest of Honor at the Tuscon science fiction convention:
tusconscificon.com/
eof/
Dr Suzanne she/her
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Patrick Leavy
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •EXCELLENT article!
Have you had a look at #Nostr too? It can be bridged with #ActivityPub and it appears to be totally resistant to #enshittification by design.
A little bitcoin-bro heavy in these early days, but it can outgrow that I think.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Cavyherd
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I've been feeling the pinch of enshittification. The majority of my crew seems to have landed on Bluesky, & I keep thinking about joining them over there.
And then I hear about some fresh nonsense that the people in charge decide to perpetrate.
It's colossally frustrating, bc that's also where most of my brain trust is. I NEED to be able to ask them for questions & advice—and I can't. I feel like I'm trying to function in this world with half my brain tied behind my back.
John Deters
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow
in reply to John Deters • • •John Deters
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow
in reply to John Deters • • •aeroplain
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow
in reply to aeroplain • • •Emanuel De Rossi likes this.
aeroplain
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •This is not the case. BridgyFed mirrors your Mastodon profile on Bluesky, and vice versa. Functionally, it's like another Mastodon instance (except every user has to opt-in to federating with it, and sometimes there's a delay).
@snarfed.org would you like to weigh in?
Emanuel De Rossi
in reply to Cory Doctorow • •@Cory Doctorow The bridge with Bluesky works very well and you don't need a Bluesky account. The first time I followed it the request remained pending, but after the first time everything went well. I really like this system to see what happens on Bluesky without being on Bluesky
@aeroplain @Bridgy Fed for Bluesky
aeroplain likes this.
T_X
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •"Whenever you take a measure during a moment of strength that guards against your own future self's weakness, you enter into a Ulysses Pact – think throwing away the Oreos when you start your diet."
This reminded me of a construct some initiative came up for houses here in Germany: Mietshäuser Syndikat ("apartment-house syndicate"). It prevents the privatization of a house. You manage your house but the syndicate can veto selling it.
syndikat.org/en/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mietsh%C…
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Jari Pennanen
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I don't think it's a single server anymore, they seem to have a lot of 'federated' self-hosted PDS though. Story isn't fully complete on all details, like OAuth, alternate UIs etc, but that data part is federated I think.
You can browse through self-hosted PDS via this: pdsls.dev/
If you click through those instances, data comes from *their* servers and not Bluesky's. You can check Chrome/Firefox network tools.
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •@Cory Doctorow I have created some accounts on Bluesky, even if I manage them through the Friendica connector. In practice, every post I publish here in the Fediverse is also republished on Bluesky (even when I publish from Friendica I can create hyperlinks, which I can't do if I write directly from BlueSky!).
the problem is exactly what you say: no one can guarantee me that one day Bluesky will become closed.
It is convenient for shareholders to close the fences and the very recent case of Reddit demonstrates this: after the indignation of a small noisy minority that had argued against the closure of the APIs and against the milking of users through artificial intelligence, not only was there no crisis for the platform, but in fact a few days ago it managed to go into profit for the first time in history
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ • • •@notizie "the problem is exactly what you say: no one can guarantee me that one day Bluesky will become closed."
Why not run your own PDS? Why not run your own relay? There are multiple PDSs and mutliple relays. Anyone can run them.
Most people on Mastodon trust someone else with their data. Unlike ATProto, they can't move it to another server. If the server dies, it's gone. If the admin goes rogue, they can do whatever they want to it.
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 Sorry if I explained myself badly, but I made a translation error: I didn't mean to say "Bluesky will close", but "Bluesky will become a non-open platform".
The problem is therefore not in the persistence of Bluesky (nothing is persistent), but in the fact that one day it could become a platform usable only with a premium profile
@Cory Doctorow
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ • • •Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 is there currently a way to create your own BlueSky server? and how free is it to use compared to the centralized power of Bluesky inc? I haven't had a chance to check out these technical aspects yet, but if you're knowledgeable enough, could you give me some answers?
@Cory Doctorow
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ • • •@notizie Yes. Note that Bluesky isn't grouped into single "servers" that do everything and are governed by an all-powerful overlord; it's split up into many servers that do specific tasks.
If the analogy for ActivityPub is of forums, the analogy for ATProto is personal websites on the internet. Your "webhost" (which may be yours, or shared) is called a PDS (Personal Data Server). All of your posts, and even all comments on other peoples' posts, are stored on your PDS.
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@notizie
Your "IP address" by which your posts are referenced is your DID (Distributed Identifier). So even if you change "webhosts" (PDS), your old data continues to be available. It's cryptographically signed to verify it's authentic.
Your "DNS", equivalent to a Mastodon handle, which points to your DID, is a literal internet domain. Most people just use a bluesky.social domain, but you can use your own domain (verified by hosting a file on your domain), ...
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@notizie and thus it provides a user-verification methodology. E.g. if someone's handle is CDC.gov, you can be certain that they actually control the CDC.gov domain.
If you have a bunch of "personal websites" (PDSs), then how do they fit together? You need a "Google", e.g. an indexer. This is called a Relay. And just like you can have multiple indexers on the internet (Google, Bing, etc) you can have multiple relays.
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@notizie
Lastly, in the analogy, what's a web browser? That's the "AppView". This talks to one or more Relays and puts together your view of the network.
Just like on the internet, there can be a variety of different services. You can have user-made Feeds (analogy: RSS feeds) which the user can pick from to decide what goes in their timeline, in what order; and also Labelers (analogy: spam filters), which can tag any content anywhere on the network with labels, and users...
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@notizie can subscribe to their labeling services to decide what to filter out. A given appview may (for legal reasons) mandate at least subscribing to certain labels from certain labelers.
So when you say you want to host a server, you first need to decide which type of server / servers you want to run. A PDS with one user is *very* lightweight; you could run it on a 286 on a 56k modem ;) A relay by contrast is equivalent to running one of the moderately large Mastodon servers.
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ likes this.
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 • • •@Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦 Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I see something similar to Hubzilla's Zot protocol and its nomadic accounts
@Cory Doctorow
Bill Bereza
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Bill Bereza • • •@Bill Bereza
this But, excuse me, but it's an optical illusion: in fact, seventeen years ago, email providers all had a clear business model, based on the drainage of personal data.
Those that existed 17 years ago were also almost all linked to giant corporate conglomerates...
If you had started using webmail services in the nineties, you would have realized that most of the webmail service providers active in that period no longer exist.
(PS: however, my previous post has a translation error that compromised its meaning: I did not mean to suggest the closure of BlueSky, but simply the possibility that it could become a non-open platform)
@Cory Doctorow
Matěj Cepl 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ likes this.
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Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ and Cory Doctorow reshared this.