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my core concern is that very rapidly there became an identification of bsky interests with the interests of the protocol in general, despite all the lip service to “the company is the future enemy”. like they knew cognitively what could happen but at nearly every single point that truly mattered
(okay this is entirely unfair, i wasn’t around for decisions, and obviously id mainly be exposed to choices that went in one way over the other) there was an approach of “well we just have to do this to stay afloat” or “we would be foolish not to ride this fortuitous wave of new users” and
protocol concerns went to the backburner. not to be dramatic but this really is the exact same dynamic of ML parties in relation to the proletariat, like yea ostensibly the app’s success could lead to the success of the protocol, but clearly these two interests aren’t one and the same.
and regardless of humble beginnings, that’s not where we are now. mao isn’t a poor rural kid anymore and is now a part of something larger, operating according to all sorts of mute compulsions. sure the history is important on the one hand, but it feels potentially obscuring as a contribution.
idk, it sometimes just gives “prolonged birth pangs” ad nauseam vibes. just give it more time, you’ll see, it’ll all come to fruition. and sure, maybe, but i’m pretty squeamish and untrusting. obvi i love all the folks working there (okay like 3 of them) but we’re operating at scales and logics
that go beyond individual intent, which is kind of the point. and no one’s like evil or whatever, they’re just kinda trapped it feels like.
and like, i don’t really have the answers here because im not a great political theorist of optimal capitalist corporate structure. would it have been better to spin off protocol as a separate entity to maintain that separation (similar to original twt inception LOL)?
funding would be wacky but you could set up some split thing, tho i imagine it’d get hella complicated with funding and it’s intended purpose. i’m not really gonna pretend like i have a ton of insight in this domain so im gonna stop pontificating
this got way off track but one last thing i wanna mention is the unbelievably massive gulf between bsky and literally any other app. where like the reference appv and every other existing app arent operating at anything resembling the complexity,
and it feels like there’s a lot of underestimation of how much inside baseball benefits there are and it’s frustrating how opaque things are. zeppy is cool! but also like lowkey in ruins atm and i don’t think that’s an individual failing.
idk despite all the hemming and hawing in some corners here about power and political-adjacent theorizing, no one really has any clue what they’re talking about. which is fair on multiple grounds, and to build anything at all you kinda just have to take the leap, but at minimum
i do wish there were a more developed vision of what the path to “future enemy” looked like to these people because it’s kind of a cop out to be like “waow ya we’re gonna be so evil one day” and take no preventative measures bc you don’t understand the process.
which is again going to appear unfair bc ofc they’ve thought about it, but we needed more than dorm room speculation
shrug this is boring, gl proto
oh and last thing re:conflation of interests/success, it’s funny how that less categorical form of centralization on bsky the app leads to weird situations where the success of the app leads to direct conflict of the success of the proto. pds/client userbase and impl details have outsize influence