genuinely fascinated by people who watched the Twitter implosion up close say "enough about your protocol, we want that exact same power dynamic replicated on Bluesky" if all you want is "Twitter 2" you guarantee what happened to Twitter 1 will happen again

we should keep this in mind when forming America 2, re: capitalism

The problem is not Twitter per se is Elon

I think it's more that people are seeing that exact same power dynamic replicated on Bluesky-the-platform, and the way response of "the protocol gives you tools to build something different" is getting packed means that it's coming across as "if you don't like it, too bad".

I think it’s an inevitable pattern as long as the people who run the infrastructure of public discourse also set themselves up as the unelected arbiters of what constitutes acceptable discourse. If the community’s only way to influence the monarch is to yell, they will do so. 1/

Eventually the AT protocol and/or Fediverse will make leaving a viable second option, but it’s not a whole lot better to go from one monarch to a wide choice of monarchs. 2/

Breaking the cycle requires at least some social platforms to give their community real power over norms and enforcement. In other words, democracy. 3/

Doesn't that also come with rules, limits and enforcement? I think these things are necessary, I just think its often downed out in discussions by some ideal of an idealised future

Yup. There will still be conflict and angry, disappointed people. At least with democracy there is transparent debate over the rules, due process in enforcement, and the hope of getting your way by changing who is in control. That’s as close to ideal as our species has come up with so far.

I can't disagree with you there. I'm just used to a more libertarian framing for federated services

Have you heard of “implicit feudalism”? It points out that the server-admin-based roots of computing mean whoever runs the service has king-like power. That’s not very libertarian, and arguably conditions people to living under authoritarianism.

[I write about this stuff a lot in my newsletter]

www.platformocracy.com/p/explainer-...

www.platformocracy.com/p/explainer-...

thanks for the thoughtful replies and links, I'll give them a read

Thanks. Sorry for the link spam, I just got excited.