cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24751597
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24748390
https://bsky.app/profile/freeourfeeds.com/post/3lfmvqip7zk2v
tldr, it's a new foundation launching with an open letter signed by:
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emerita, Harvard Business School and author of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’
Mark Ruffalo, Actor
Alex Winter, Actor and filmmaker
Audrey Tang, Former Minister of Digital Affairs, Taiwan
Roger McNamee, Businessman and author of ‘Zucked’
Brian Eno, Musician
Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative journalist
Cory Doctorow, Blogger and journalist
Akilah Hughes, Writer and comedian
Sebastian Soriano, Former Chairman, Arcep
Rosie Boycott, Member, UK House of Lords
Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament, Greens/EFA
...
Bluesky has expressed a clear interest in public governance of the protocol they have developed. We are establishing a Foundation to help steward this process, to ensure that the AT Protocol remains capture-resistant and is instead governed in line with a thriving public interest and open community.
Or they could use ActivityPub
have you read about why they didn't?
Whatever reason they don't isn't a very good one when there's already excuses being made around AT proto not being scalable beyond a single app.
ActivityPub works today and we are using it right now. There's basically no incentive to make a new protocol if you aren't willing to support more than 1 platform that uses it.
I'm not even a bluesky hater, but you have to question why they're choosing to reinvent the wheel other than disliking the lack of agency that comes with making a (essentially) proprietary protocol. You have to wonder if they ever truly plan to federated at all or if it's all just lip-service.
Federation and decentralization is not what the users of bsky want. It's (for some) a nice to have thing but way down on the list of what they value.