on how the last weeks have shifted the threat model for open social networks: from fighting platform decay to the threat of authoritarianism
It feels like the fediverse is more important than ever with all that’s going on.
They could probably shut down bluesky easier than the fediverse
Although similar to the Fediverse’s ActivityPub, ATProto is set up at least in theory to prevent that in that someone could set up their own ATProto PDS, plus third-party AppViews are a thing as well, for example, I’ve been using Klearsky lately because the default Bsky app is kinda slow.
ActivityPub still beats it in practical application that it’s fully self-hostable and you basically own your Fediverse instance where ATProto still has to associated with Bsky somehow, although ATProto has been trying to decentralize further lately.
I’ve been mulling in the back of the mind over migrating to one of the independent PDSes because of what the main Bsky PDS is trying to pull lately.
They just need to seize bsky domains and it’s essentially cooked. The fediverse isn’t so easy to attack, they’ll have to go after hundreds of instances.
You can not solve all issues of (authoritarian) society with pure technology. State actors have more funding for the hunt and development of new technology for (targeted) surpression. At a certain point instance admins of social networks can not hide.
When people are forced into a corner, the only winning move is to eliminate the fascist.
Avoid dependence on app stores so if an app is removed from Play Store it doesn’t matter as much.
Increase privacy - closed groups.
It needs to be possible to move an instance to another domain if an old one is blocked/revoked.
The Bluesky-ization of the American left’ is the worst title ever so lazy
censorship and the crackdown on political places has been taking place forever on liberal platforms
