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People brigading @Cory Doctorow because he supports a thing they don't like.

I get why people proping up bluesky sucks, and why people are mad.

But fucking. Ok. If there's anyone who has earned benefit of the fucking doubt it's Cory Fucking Doctorow. And if you believe he made a bad call after reading his piece on it, I get it, but imagine dismissing him this hard for one bad take. Damn. Fucking bonkers.

@Cory Doctorow

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in reply to silverwizard

shellsharks
shellsharks
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I at least like to hope that my take/response to his writeup was a bit more measured/even-minded. I think he makes perfectly good points, but the threat modeling senses kick in around his "fire exit" analogy (which is his main point behind defending FoF). It just doesn't seem sufficient to have a single fire exit, or even 10, if you want to defend against friggin' billionaires. I hope they can prove out decentralizing Bluesky/AT at a cost that would be truly billionaire-resistant. But if that fails, at least the wildly unpopular Fediverse will still be around 🤭
in reply to shellsharks

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@shellsharks Yeah! I don't want people to think Doctorow is above reproach. I also think he's wrong here! I think it's acceptable to build fire exits, and probably we do need to give up on regulation as a concept that exists in the American sphere of influence.

But people are acting like Doctorow having a well considered stance makes him no longer a useful commentator, which is wild. Doctorow knows his shit better than most of us put together.

@shellsharks
in reply to silverwizard

shellsharks
shellsharks
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Interesting. I don't think I've seen that in my feeds quite yet. A testament to how well I have things curated I'll say 😜
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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A bunch of richos have decided that Bluesky is special and cool because there's no billionaires involved, and they're working on building apps on top of AT Protocol - pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/con… freeourfeeds.com/

Basically the idea is that if you make a bunch of frontends, then bluesky will be billionaire proof. In theory, they could then work with AT Protocol alternate relays, assuming that becomes feasible I guess? Doctorow is like "yeah, this is probably good" and now there's people under every Doctorow post being like "Yeah but he thinks Free Our Feeds is smart so he's bad"

in reply to silverwizard

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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@silverwizard Yeah, "rich people against billionaires" doesn't sound as good as they'd like.
@silverwizard
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@Hypolite Petovan I mean - the war between millionaires and billionaires is a pretty complicated thing going on.

I'm in a situation where I'm going to become a millionaire at some point by dint of birth, and it's weird, I feel a lot of guilt about it. And despite this - I don't feel any kinship with the idea of a billionaire. Billionaires are these weird *monsters* - they don't feel like people anymore, they're just these warps in reality that reshape our fucking world to their (somehow always Nazi) whims.

But yeah - like - Mark Ruffalo does not have any sort of world shaping money - but has enough to try to make a new social media company - it makes sense - but like - yeah - Mark Ruffalo probably shouldn't be the place we put our trust in our digital future.

@Hypolite Petovan
in reply to silverwizard

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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@silverwizard I wasn't particularly unsympathetic to George Soros, but seeing what other billionaires have done with their wealth in the past 5 years, he's earned my respect for becoming a relative outlier even though he hasn't changed course that I know of.
@silverwizard
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@Hypolite Petovan Yeah - Soros and Buffet have successfully been less shit than so many people which is ... clearing a very low bar, and often barely clearing it, but at least they did!
@Hypolite Petovan
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