In this case the technical concerns are also ecosystem concerns:
BlueSky’s protocol depends on large scale indexers or relays which index the data from the PDSs and transform the nominal decentral streams into a firehose. That firehose then get’s labeled and filtered – and those services again must be somewhat Twitter-scale just to survive that firehose.
Now there seem to be alternative relays (and alternative labelers/filterers), but my concern is less with the man in the middle but the needed scale for the man-in-the-middle.
I think because of this need for scale inherent in the protocol there will only be very few of them, only by very well capitalised companies. If Twitter is a monopol, an AT protocol network will be an oligopoly, possibly a cartel.
I’m astonished that so many technologists who grew up in the more indie 90s and 2000s, in the time of the blogosphere, of individual servers, loosely joined via protocols, don’t seem to see that – or don’t seem to care.
BlueSky’s protocol depends on large scale indexers or relays which index the data from the PDSs and transform the nominal decentral streams into a firehose. That firehose then get’s labeled and filtered – and those services again must be somewhat Twitter-scale just to survive that firehose.
Now there seem to be alternative relays (and alternative labelers/filterers), but my concern is less with the man in the middle but the needed scale for the man-in-the-middle.
I think because of this need for scale inherent in the protocol there will only be very few of them, only by very well capitalised companies. If Twitter is a monopol, an AT protocol network will be an oligopoly, possibly a cartel.
I’m astonished that so many technologists who grew up in the more indie 90s and 2000s, in the time of the blogosphere, of individual servers, loosely joined via protocols, don’t seem to see that – or don’t seem to care.