Blue Skies Over Mastodon (with Erin Kissane and Tim Bray)
Thank you very much everyone for joining us. So, Aaron, thank you. Especially, I went I saw Tim, tooted out your, your terrific piece. I gotta say, I I am in love with the title of this piece. We I I mean, it it's it's kinda masterful, honestly.
Speaker 1:I just feel you must have been very satisfied with the title. Is is that a I'm thinking I just okay. Let let me just, let me expand on this for you so you don't have to appear like a a a a narcissist here. Let me just actually the the high praise of this thing. I love the juxtaposition between a blue a beautiful blue sky and the kind of the the this kind of ominous foreshadowing of these skies hanging over mastodon.
Speaker 1:It's just you you've you've just captured this juxtaposition
Speaker 2:but thank you.
Speaker 3:It's also, with William Gibson joining shortly after I read the post as well and given the famous, you know, evocativeness of the sky and, the start of,
Speaker 1:the
Speaker 2:Dead channel.
Speaker 1:I also
Speaker 2:felt great.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. And all all credit to the, heavy allergy medication that has been involved in surviving the Pacific Northwest allergy bomb.
Speaker 1:If this is the result of allergy medication, you may need to kinda pass it around a little bit. This is some good stuff. Good allergy medication. Because in particular, I also think that, like, the so you open this piece, by, the the the vegetarian sausage. Is that the actual label from the sausage?
Speaker 2:That's the label. I was I was so delighted to find it, you know, for people who aren't actually seeing it. I I hadn't seen it since I was a little kid, so, I I found a scan in like, a Google Books scan of some kind of comprehensive reference of vegetarian and vegan businesses from the, like, 19 seventies through eighties, which exists, and I wish I owned the book, because this is amazing. And yeah.
Speaker 1:Were you on a multiyear quest for this? How did you I mean, it just, like, doesn't doesn't feel like a a tome that you kinda casually dip into because you're looking for that, that label from your youth.
Speaker 2:I spend a lot of time on Google Books. That's, like, my main hangout. If Google Books were the social network, that's where I would be. No. But I didn't even I I'd forgotten the the little pig.
Speaker 2:But as soon as I saw the little smiling pig with the flower necklace and the little twisty ears, it was just like, oh, man. I genuinely have not seen this since 1983. But, yeah, there was a lot of soy sage in my house. And, and and I I I don't think I I had any interest in it as, as, like, revisiting that sense memory until I was trying to find a figure for the vibe, that it it seemed like was happening on Mastodon. So then everybody had to think about carob chips, and I apologize.
Speaker 1:It was so vivid, the description. And, I mean, does the little pig give you the smiling pig? Does that give you, like, a fight or flight reaction? I mean, does that do you do you I I mean, I just I I think speaking out of, I think I can speak on behalf of both of us. I mean, we we we did talk last time about our quest to eat horse in Belgium.
Speaker 1:I mean, we this is we are at the opposite end of the vegetarian sausage spectrum.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. I think I think I've eaten a horse in Japan. No. I actually am not I'm not, vegetarian at this time. I'm I'm vegetarian friendly.
Speaker 2:But yeah. No. I actually love this pig. Like, who could not love this little smiling pig? It's a great it's a great pig.
Speaker 2:The typography gives me fight or flight. The the typesetting there, the the that typeface that soy sage has written in just gives me the real skin crawl. But, yeah. Yeah. It's just Weird.
Speaker 1:It's sad for those of you
Speaker 2:who can't see anything.
Speaker 1:No. He well, so I I grew up in Colorado, so in the in the eighties. So this is fine.
Speaker 2:I I Newer.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is 0. Brown 0. Brown 0. Intense vibes. Intense vibes.
Speaker 1:I don't know
Speaker 3:for me.
Speaker 5:Care of culture. Social. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes. So but this this piece was was terrific, and we and I I think a great way to talk about what we've seen I because in the last, 72 hours, it's been, we it feels like we've kinda gone through an interesting potential inflection point. And so, you should know that that our colleague Steve Glabnick was here. So Steve, when when the the kind of great Twitter exodus was was really underway, Steve was biding his time. And I and I felt like, alright.
Speaker 1:This is gonna be it'll be an interesting indicator when Steve when when Twitter finally gets to the point where Steve has to, consider something else. And, Steve, that happened, this past week. Right? I mean, this was something Thursday's been it's
Speaker 3:It's weird and kinda sad. I so much of my life has been focused around Twitter for the past 15 years that it dying is just, like, devastating. Like, I don't know. It's it's really weird to, like, say that Twitter is that important, but Twitter is legitimately, like, that important to my life. Most of my like, I signed up right at the end of college as I was starting to, like, become an adult, and Twitter has, like, been with me that whole time.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, seeing it go sucks, but also as opportunities for new cool things. And I definitely like a lot of this a lot of this latest, like, exodus for me and part of the reason why I haven't left is, like, me and my college friends got mad about Twitter's API policies in, like, 2012 and made a federated Twitter clone. And so I that did not work out for various reasons, but, like, I've seen this story happen a couple of times before.
Speaker 1:Before or after the unicorns that you were experimenting with? I mean, after really? After okay. This is interesting. This is, like, I feel like Wild wild
Speaker 5:youth. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Wild youth. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's appropriate.
Speaker 1:I it should probably you do a social network after a unit kernel. Feels like that's the right sequencing there. So, okay. So you'd and you had seen some so this is part of the reason
Speaker 3:why It was built on activity pub and, like, did all that stuff back then and, like, that was, like, a whole thing and, like, you know, it's turned out as hard to run a social network. And Yeah. You know, like, the reasons, like, we just want Twitter, but 2 weeks ago without all this crap on the page is, like, not a good enough reason to get people to switch, and you really need social connections. Like, so if the networks require your friends moving over, and so, like, as I had more and more friends that were not, like, literally part of my friends that made this, it just became not usable because when I wanted to talk to people, they were actually on Twitter. And so I had to go back, and so I did.
Speaker 3:And so that's, what's been like kind of weird and sad too, about kind of the, like everyone leaving Twitter for various places is that, you know, a lot of my friends are, like, quit Twitter early and went to some other platform, and I haven't been in seeing our posts for a long time. And that kinda stinks.
Speaker 1:And when you say early, you mean in the post Musk era, What are the kind of Yeah. Early out this year?
Speaker 3:I mean, like, the I mean, like, the first giant migration to Mastodon is what I mean. Like, because I didn't I have a Mastodon account. I don't use it. It's fun to get emails when people, like, find me via various tools and, like, sign up, but I don't I don't, I didn't use it a whole ton. And I didn't start using it after this migration, but I know a lot of people did.
Speaker 1:Okay. So did you happen to listen to the Oxide and Friends we did with Tim, when Tim left Twitter on and and, did you happen to relisten to that recently?
Speaker 5:No. I haven't listened to it that recently. No.
Speaker 1:So I ended up relistening to it just yesterday because I was I was kinda carting the kids around. And, Tim, you I mean, we were praising your impressions on on that, in that space, so I guess, sort of that discourse. I guess it shouldn't been a surprise, but it was really interesting to go relisten to that. And so, Aaron, just for your context, Tim wrote a blog entry on why he was leaving Twitter. This is, like, November.
Speaker 1:And we we had this interesting conversation about Twitter and Mastodon and social networking. And, you know, you begin to see and a lot of what your piece hits on, you see some of those early things in that conversation. So you see, I mean, Tim talking about Tim, you were talking about all of the the problems of federation, but you're also talking about some of the concerns that you had. And those concerns ended up being really, I think, borne out. I mean, I think that there there are a bunch of and Tim, you even mentioned blue sky, in that, that conversation you were talking about how, you know, your key, this is one to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1:How has your thinking kind of changed since then? And when, if at all, I mean, I know that you, that you're obviously all still very in, defed for sure. But I also noticed that you were on Blue Sky. What's what's kinda your take on on on what we saw, this past week?
Speaker 4:Well, I'll tell you. But, you know, just by way of potential consolation to Steve there, we should all bear in mind that in this particular multiverse, one of the many alternative futures is that Elon gets bored or the bankers drive him into bankruptcy, and Twitter becomes interesting again. That is
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's not entirely impossible.
Speaker 1:I think that's not entirely possible that Steve buys Twitter. Like, let's face it. Steve goes to Steve buys it on the courthouse steps. No one else is there.
Speaker 3:I But yes. As the person who, if you wanna give me the raise that will allow me to afford to buy Twitter, then that would be, fantastic.
Speaker 1:That's okay. Now is the time to announce it. We're giving everybody a $44,000,000,000 raise. So congratulations, everybody. Don't don't spend it all in one place.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 4:You've gotta gotta hold on, Brian, because that raise is getting lower every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's true. That is true. The bar is definitely getting lower. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I yeah. That but, Tim, that's true. That's one of the scenarios that you actually outlined when we talked.
Speaker 4:Yeah. To to to, you know, to address your point, well, it's interesting times we have, and particularly in the last 72 hours, you know. The ground is shifting under us. This could be an inflection point. We may be seeing, you know, the the first day of the rest of social media deciding what it's gonna be right now.
Speaker 4:So it's it's certainly interesting and kind of engrossing. And I'm trying to keep on doing other things I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm kind
Speaker 3:of fascinated by
Speaker 4:all this. You know, I think the one thing that that I became convinced of late last year, and I still believe passionately, is that there is no chance that any single big company can become the next Twitter. You know, that was just a sequence of good luck events and being in the right place in the right time and having some smart people there and so on. But, you know, it just isn't isn't wholesome, and it's just not investable, and it's not gonna work. So so I passionately believe that one way or another, the only same future for social media is federation, with with, you know, a protocol based thing, where it works like the Internet, works like email or something like that, where anybody can set up a box and start playing.
Speaker 4:Not nothing else remotely makes sense. Now okay. So given that, we have 2 candidates before us. We have the fediverse based on activity pub, and we have blue sky based on the still moving target, not completed yet, AT protocol. And the thing that comes to my mind is there's an old, you know, financial thing.
Speaker 4:So, you know, you you buy on the rumor and sell on the news. And and and right now, you know, Blue Sky is the new kid on the block with with with all this magical stuff. But, you know, it's it's not there yet. Right? You know, they've got they've got this, notion of the DID based identity, and that's not there.
Speaker 4:And they've got this notion of federation and and so on and so forth. None of it is actually really there yet. You know, it's, composable moderation policy, sounds wonderful. Not there yet. And then, hey.
Speaker 4:Just for equality, today, Mastodon announced that they were going to be bringing in quote tweeting and lists and improved onboarding experience and so on. So they're also talking futures. So it's whose futures are you gonna bet on right now? And I don't know. I'm not smart enough.
Speaker 1:Which is honestly great. I mean, that that there that we were getting some kind of innovation in the space. And so, Aaron, this is all a good segue into into your piece. So do you wanna talk about the origin of the piece a little bit? And, they because I think you you really laid out very well what we've seen happen with Blue Sky and kinda where mastodons come
Speaker 2:from. Yeah. Sure. I can try. I mean, it I will cop to being super opportunistic about this because I'm gonna take every chance I can to kind of beat the drum about making our networks more welcoming and and inclusive, like, in a in a deep way.
Speaker 2:Making it easy for people to come in, but also making it feel nice and not annoying to use the thing. Because on one hand, I'm selfish, and I like my mastodon feet a whole lot better when there are more kinds of people on it. And and then the other thing is, you know, working on this, trying to make, parts of the Internet better business for a couple decades, and I'm still kind of on that. I don't think we should just make things for people who are like us. You know, I'm a nerd.
Speaker 2:I like Mastodon because I'm a nerd, but I I like a lot of people who aren't who aren't tinkerers. And so it felt like the blue sky, still closed beta, blowing up sort of the way it has, was a good a good hook, ideally for getting some attention on that stuff that at least from the outside because I'm not I'm not, in there every day on the GitHub with, the core Mastodon project. It's it's felt like things were moving really slowly. It's like, the timing turned out to be extremely funny to me that there was, like, an official blog post when I woke Oh,
Speaker 1:yeah. I mean, it's just like, wait a minute. I'm getting a promotion now that I just told you that I'm gonna quit? Hold on. Oh, wait.
Speaker 1:The the way what is that? What's going on? Miss Holly
Speaker 2:I mean but I the thing is, like, I still the the post was never intended to be, you know, like, I I think Mastodon stinks and I'm leaving. I I like Tim, like, I have no idea what's gonna happen with blue sky. I actually don't think anyone knows what's going to happen with Blue Sky. And one of the things that concerned me a little about the conversation that I saw in Mastodon was a lot of people were really certain that they knew what was gonna happen with Blue Sky. It was all gonna be terrible and everybody who got involved should be shamed in advance for thinking about going there.
Speaker 2:And that just that I mean, that bums me out because I don't think I don't think we know. I do think it's totally fair to be leery and be like, you know, I hated Twitter, therefore, I'm not touching anything that Jack's ever, you know, got his his fingers on. You know, fine. But it it felt like such a huge response, at least in the part of of, you know, Mastodon that I'm on, which is super subjective. Just to kinda write write all of this stuff off before anyone gets to look at it.
Speaker 2:And I was like, I feel like we should be doing something better than shaming people because I don't think, you know, the the moralizing argument is actually I don't think it has a lot of mass appeal for things like networks where people wanna hang out and look at their friends' pets. So so, yeah, that's, I mean, that's what happened. I was also supposed to be doing other things this week. We were also doing things.
Speaker 1:Don't worry. We're we're we're we're shipping a computer right now. This is, like, the last thing we should be doing. So don't worry. You're in a Seriously.
Speaker 1:Space in that regard. Yeah. But but it is it is it is transfixing because it's important. I mean, I do agree, Steve, to what you said at kind of at the top. I mean, I feel that, like, social networking is really important.
Speaker 1:It's important to how we meet people and organize, and it it's important to how we inform ourselves. And so I think it's it is I don't think it's wrong for this to be important. I think sometimes we feel ashamed that it's important, but it is important. And what I loved about your piece, Aaron, is you really just kinda described what a bunch of what has happened. And I I I felt like and in particular, I liked the fact that you were just taking it apart a bit on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1:Because I do think it is a mistake to say, well, this is VC funded, so therefore, it's going to be, you know, another Twitter. It's like, well, you gotta look at the details here. And in particular, something that you called out that I also observed is the the CEO of Blue Sky, Jay Graber. She's really interesting. I mean, her, the way she has just engaged to me is Yes.
Speaker 1:Really interesting. And it, like, was and, Adam, I don't know if you saw this as well, but it is this so much reminds me of, and I and Tim and Aaron, I know Steve, you may have been too young for this, but that summer of 2003, the Friendster summer of 2003. Adam, I know you remember this because Totally. I I mean, you and I were both I mean, we're I mean, it was so much fun because this is like social networking. And and do you remember that the, like, the people, the users of Friendster were having an absolute ball.
Speaker 1:Totally. But but Jonathan Abrams was a lot less into people having fun on Friendster. Like, Jonathan Abrams. And this is not like, I'm not speaking pejoratively here. This is just factual.
Speaker 1:Jonathan Abrams invented friends here to meet girls. So the anything that was kind of so you creating, like, of the lamppost on the the corner as a character on Friendster was definitely contrary to and do you and do you remember him, like, deleting people, like, creating their cats and so on, and people are deleting
Speaker 5:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird.
Speaker 5:Weirdly no fun for the thing that was supposed to be fun.
Speaker 1:It was weirdly no fun, but it was, like, super fun. I mean, he couldn't actually and it was, like, the fact that he was trying to be, like, the the assistant principal disciplinarian of French terminated in some ways even, like, way more fun. Aaron, I don't know if you were, if you were kinda online at this point, but it was a ball. But he was actually he was fighting his users
Speaker 2:and Which I kinda loved at the time. Like, how can you not love that that dynamic?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, you I did definitely I were like, my my wife was definitely, like, loving creating, like, to see how many animals she could create before he destroyed them all. I mean, she it was that was a literal cat and mouse game. Yeah. It was.
Speaker 1:It was fun.
Speaker 5:Was the thing the thing was, like, becoming unusable, I think, because there like, he was just overwhelmed with activity and connections and nodes, and, there he was probably desperate to get all the, you know, junk out of there to so that the real accounts could sort of be usable.
Speaker 1:Yes. And I contrast all of that to Jay's the way she's handled herself through this has been so much fun. So if you don't know about the health thread, there is a, I mean, it's one of these things. It's like, I feel like I'm kind of explaining a stupid inside joke, but it is definitely very funny. You effectively have a, a robot doc, an AI doc that loves to engage with burdock that loves to engage with folks.
Speaker 1:And it and I believe another bot happened. It's were the ones that initially started engaging one another on this thread. This thread became to the point where that it was unloadable. So if you got mentioned in the thread, you'd get notifications, but you can't quit. And it would be not surprising for a CEO to be kinda flipping out about this and telling people that like, stop, like talking to burdock and like, oh my God, everybody like, but she just hacked right into it.
Speaker 1:And it was, I thought felt like very transparent about where they were and weren't, but also just like it, it really listened to users. And I think the the kind of Naples Ultra of this is the origin of ski. Right? Which is the the and I don't know, Steve. You you know, you're a blue sky o g, so maybe you can, walk us through the history of
Speaker 3:these people. That showed up 48 hours after me don't
Speaker 1:know what they're talking about. On Tuesday.
Speaker 3:I've been here for 2 whole days before you all. So yeah. No. It's very funny.
Speaker 1:You know, let let me pile
Speaker 4:let me pile on briefly on on the subject of Jay. I don't know how much of the history people know, but but she got that job by more or less pure force of will. She she she had the idea. She she got the idea and just bludgeoned them with this is what you need to do. This is what you need to do.
Speaker 4:I wanna do this. And and and I I'm I'm just very, very impressed with Jay Graber. I, you know, I think, very interesting person and a super interesting part of the story. And whereas I remain, you know, somewhat unconvinced of the whole blue sky idea at some point on the for some anyhow, for a variety of reasons, They're good people, I think. You know, you hang out with them a bit, and they are sincerely trying to do a good thing in the world.
Speaker 4:And and I'm actually kinda kinda pissed at the the Macedonians who say,
Speaker 1:they're all a bunch
Speaker 4:of evil, libertarian, yadayadayadas, you know, who are trying to take over the world. Well, no. You know, that that's not what's happening there. And and it's it's adding spice to the story,
Speaker 5:the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and, Erin, this is the point you made too. Right? That, like, actually, like, you look at the in particular, execution here really matters. And you look at how she and Blue Sky engaged when they had their first kind of folks that were being as as Yusuf. I think you called them, like, a for real a for real Nazi.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Straightforward. I'm a Nazi Nazi. Those those are easier to deal with.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Not a crypto Nazi like Nazi Nazi. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nazi Nazi. And do you wanna describe kinda how she dealt with that? Because I, obviously, I was a huge fan of the way she dealt with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I they they did have a plan for for that that, and I think there are a lot of rumors that fly around because it's a closed beta. And and it's funny because it's a closed beta, so, like, there's very little information. And I think the temptation to just fill in that gap is irresistible. So people do kind of, tell a lot of tall tales about what's happening, I think, on Blue Sky.
Speaker 2:But one of them was like, Blue Sky is is overwhelmed with Nazis. And I saw, you know, the the guy who's the Nazi came on, and the people reported him because there was a reporting function. And then, you know, the Blue Sky team banned him. And then something that I think is actually super interesting is that they're keeping track of who invites whom. So the person who invited the regular straight up Nazi, got their posts sort of made less public or demoted in in ways that I didn't actually entirely go into.
Speaker 2:But then, you know, the then Jay hopped on was, like, this is what we did. And we did it based on this policy that we have written here, which again, you know, I think that is of a piece of the team generally showing a lot of grace under pressure, but also in some cases, more preparation than people think they've done. They've done a lot of thinking clearly, but they're still making the app. So there's a lot of judgment flying around about how dare they launch this thing. You know, how dare they do this without having the blocking function working.
Speaker 2:You know, how dare you have a closed beta without this and the other thing. Which, fine, you know, do whatever you wanna do, but, I I I I don't myself feel like it is, that we've seen anything that suggests that these are people trying to do evil, or people who, like you said, aren't listening. I it's it's super interesting to me because I saw a lot of folks that I know from Twitter. And I mostly got off of Twitter, like, a long time, like 2018, because I'm kind of a sensitive plant, and it was too much for me. But, I was on for work for a couple of years doing, like, some pretty super stressful stuff in 2020 and 2021.
Speaker 2:And then I this is, like, gone. So when I got on Blue Sky, I was seeing a bunch of people that I love who I haven't seen since I was on Twitter. And they were openly discussing the fact that, you know, things are pretty busted. There is the hell thread, and there's, like, just things going wrong inside sometimes going down and weird new error messages. But that they actually felt more hopeful and safer there, even with those things busted than they did on Mastodon, which it it's kind of wrenching, you know, because
Speaker 1:Wrenching.
Speaker 2:Yep. I also think Mastodon has a ton of potential. But I hear, you know, I hear what they say. And and part of it is, you know, like, I went on Mastodon and I had a whole bunch of just, like, really tedious conversations about how I was, you know, dumb or bad or, you know, morally vacant for not appreciating, things as they were or, you know, whatever it is. There were a lot of people who tried to get on Mastodon, bounced off, went back to Twitter and worn people off.
Speaker 2:So I don't know. Part of it is each network has its own echo chamber in its own weird way, and there's a lot of tribalism And and and I think that's all understandable. But to me, it was like, what an incredible opportunity to see people talk about what they need and what matters to them and what actually makes them feel listened to and safe. And that's gold. Like, these are people having these conversations in clear because they wanna have better things.
Speaker 2:And I think anybody who wants to make a better network or, you know, any kind of sociability tool of any kind should be attending to this stuff. So that would I don't know. It's been super interesting to watch and also, like, blue sky has been hilarious all week. So that's just
Speaker 1:It's been hilarious. Well, in in the and I I think no one would accuse Mastodon of being hilarious. I mean, even even I think Arden, which I think is actually, it actually reflects a deeper problem. So, and I, and I had this, this skeet describing how, like I've laughed out loud more over the health thread than I have over my time on Mastodon. And there actually is a deeper problem.
Speaker 1:And part of that deeper problem is that, you know, humor has edge to it. And, you know, it is, being in a place where you can be funny. It's gonna there are gonna be certain dynamics about how, like, what that kind of a space is. And it's very funny. And I I think that the the, like, that's not an accident.
Speaker 1:I think you're gonna start to see, especially, you know, part of the challenge with Mastodon is, you know, as you said, Aaron, you're a nerd. I'm a nerd. But right now, like, there are a bunch of of constituencies that I follow that are I mean, ultimately, like, I unblocked my Twitter account for actually two reasons. One of which I'm disgusted by, but it's just like, I'm sorry. This is just not the better angels of my nature.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, Abraham Lincoln. I my because my account was locked. I wanted to and I thought it was, like, healthy for me because, like, this is good. Like, I'm not dunking when I would be dunking. And then there was just this absolute layup dunk on Sam Altman that no one seemed to be taking.
Speaker 1:I'm like, surely, because they, they had the open AI outage where he blamed unnamed open source software. And I'm like, surely someone has asked ChatGPT the wisdom of doing this, and showing that even chat gbt knows that you should not be blaming open source software for your outage. And I'm like, nobody else has taken this dunk. And I'm like, I cannot take this dunk as a locked account because it won't go viral. And so like, I'm going to unlock my account for the, this like terrible aspect of my own humanity.
Speaker 1:So I feel disgusted. I feel also vindicated because that dunk very much did go viral. So I definitely that tweeted numbers for sure. So but so that I okay. That I feel gross about.
Speaker 1:But the other reason that I that I unblocked my account is because my, my son's a college baseball player, and Twitter is kind of like a LinkedIn for college athletes. It's where they are communicating with there's a they they don't wanna get into all of of athletics, but, the, and to not be on I mean, you you at some degree, you, like, you kinda have to be on Twitter because that's where that audience is. That audience is not going to Mastodon. His like, his college baseball program is not gonna go to Mastodon. And, like, there's absolutely no way the the, you know, the, the Oakland Athletics.
Speaker 1:Yes. The Oakland Athletics. I'm gonna say that's not moved yet. They're not gonna go to Mastodon. And the the I there needs to be a a another kind of a social network for those folks, and I think that, you know, that's all kind of caught up in the fact that, like, Mastodon's not funny.
Speaker 1:It's not. There's a level at which you need to be fun to be attractive. And I I think that that's Mastodon has got a lot of great attributes, but it has struggled in this regard.
Speaker 4:So I I I wrote a a couple of posts, today or yesterday saying the word I would use is earnest. Mastodon is kind
Speaker 3:of earnest.
Speaker 4:And, I think that is almost consciously a side effect of everybody's terrified of the bad things that can happen. And it is absolutely the case that the community of moderators, which I'm one, by the way, has a hair trigger approach. Hit it with a hammer if it smells bad, then hit it with a hammer again. And Yeah. That attitude is perhaps a little bit suppressive of of transgressive fun.
Speaker 4:But in my heart, I I I I support it, I think. I I think we need to on that side based on the lesson of every freaking previous social network. Right.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. And I think I see where it's coming from. Yeah. I just so know that I've yeah.
Speaker 4:I also have enjoyed the last few, 3 days of, of shitposting on on Blue Sky and asking stuff. But, you know, you do have the case of of of Ask Photos next to AOC. And I just wonder how how sustainable that really is. And and and, you know, these type of people are for the moment, you know, moderating by hand. You know, the Mastodon tools may not be that great, but I don't think they have any.
Speaker 4:So So
Speaker 2:I just got tweaks,
Speaker 3:like, a couple hours ago, and so we'll see how it goes. Supposedly, they are now out of the what's hot feed, in particular.
Speaker 1:We do what what happened to what's hot feed?
Speaker 3:So so they, like, they, like, introduced, like, a AI classification for, like, nudity and then use that. Like, the what hot feed has historically just been, like, number of likes greater than 57. Now I think it's 12. But they've added in, like, a classifier to, drop those posts from the what's hot feed. Obviously, it can't be a 100% accurate all the time, but, like, that's the the intended, like, current trajectory of that.
Speaker 5:When I signed up for Blue Sky, I feel like it was peak ass. Like, nothing in what, what's hot except for and and I was like, what what am I doing here? And and my wife kinda looked over my shoulder and had the very same question. What are you doing here? I'm like, it's It's for work.
Speaker 1:It's right. Yeah. Exactly. This is this is what I do for work now. I I scroll through.
Speaker 1:What is this? I don't know where you at at one point, you were, like, between that and then, like, getting these various error messages when you it's like, I you quoted me one of the error messages. You're like, I don't know if this at work. Like, why am I am I here for the error messages? Stack Overflow.
Speaker 5:It was like, I'm I'm, you know, Stack Overflow cannot load thread. I'm like, I I do get enough of that at work. Like, I was I was dealing with the Stack Overflow on Friday or something that I couldn't sort out.
Speaker 1:Right. Really don't need this now. Yeah. So that's interesting, Steve. So kind of a late and I because I think that the yeah.
Speaker 1:The, when the fact that that's kinda happening unapologetically is interesting too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, they always well, I think that the the way moderation works in Blue Sky is like a very interesting concept, and I'm excited to sort of see it play out. But, like, you know, you already have like, if you if you, what's that domain again? Skyline.gay, you can, like, literally get a curated feed based on what you want by typing in what you wanna see more of or what you'd wanna see less of, and it asks chat gpt to not to filter the post correctly and then, like, shows you just that feed. I think that's more of a client side rendering than it is, like, actual plug and play moderation features.
Speaker 3:But, like, the intention is that, like, you'll be able to say, like, I'm running this instance, and I wanna use this moderation feed to moderate this instance and get it from somewhere else and be able to do stuff like that so that people can build, like, this is my community moderation strategy, you know, and, like, do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Moderation or curation. Like, actually, this is what it
Speaker 4:the term they use for that is composable moderation. And I think it's it's a super powerful idea. And, one of the really super interesting things about the blue blue sky concept now it's not actually built yet, but let's give it a chance. It might be interesting. You know, in contrast that to the thetaverse, where the curation you get is a function of the of the instance you're on, which is less flick proportionally, conceptually.
Speaker 4:But I don't know. Might turn out to work okay.
Speaker 1:Well and I think that when I was relistening to the conversation we had in November, Tim, something that you said that was very prophetic is like, hey. People want an algorithm. Like the idea that like, no, no, no, there is no algorithm. It's just the timeline. It's like, well, that is not necessarily gonna bring you and Adam had made this point too, that Adam Jacob had you know, it's like, that's not necessarily going that's not the content that I necessarily want see, that I actually and that you're just kinda selecting a different kind of algorithm, one that's just, like, extremely rigid, that is just, like, in time order of everyone that I follow, which is, like, okay.
Speaker 1:Fine. But I actually want some curation. I want the ability to search. I want the ability, like and I and, Tim, I think it's really interesting when you said that the you know, there's this kind of, reaction. And part of the reason that Mastodon is so earnest is because of this reaction to an unfettered Internet, which we've seen.
Speaker 1:And I feel it's like that there's some of that on the algorithm side too. It's like, because engagement has been used for ill by so many companies, like, we're gonna have no engagement. Like, yes. No engagement. I sup wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Hold on. No engagement. That's not very engaging, actually. That's not it's actually just not, like, that fun now to not have known I, like, I I want to actually so I do think that is really interesting to have this idea of, like, being able to to pick different algorithms, and to have different providers. And I the I'm Skyline dot gay thing, I think it's it's it's maybe the first of many in this regard, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing you
Speaker 3:mentioned yeah.
Speaker 1:It that's a plan. Right? Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that's a plan. That I
Speaker 1:Sorry.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. Please go ahead. I'll let you finish your actual question.
Speaker 1:We will the yeah. And I well, it takes us a slight introduction. But one of the things that you had said that that, I wanted to come back to, because I think this is a really interesting point, is this system where they they know who you have invited. And, and I know that it's a consequence of being in a closed beta, but I think it is a a kind of a more interesting analog to, like, an actual you know, you go to a party. You're at that party because you know someone who knows someone who's there.
Speaker 1:And if you start misbehaving, it reflects poorly on them. And, you know, there are I you know, I I not that it's a not that it's a well known social network, but Lobsters with the Hacker News alternative. I know Lobsters does this. And it's it it it's kind of interesting that you can see, and that's kind of like locked in about, like, you know, who, how did you get here, and what does that graph look like? Aaron, do you
Speaker 2:think that's example
Speaker 3:of how that itself is not good enough to make a successful community?
Speaker 2:Like, yeah. I you
Speaker 1:know, if you're using lobster Please make your actual question. Excuse me while I while I use lobster to demonstrate why this is such a good system. Well, I mean, Ernie, because I thought that was a that you you know, you mentioned that. And I think that that's kind of interesting. And it'll be interesting as do do you think that that's gonna have a way?
Speaker 1:Do you think that can moderate things a bit?
Speaker 2:Penny, I I don't know. And I don't know. But I do think it's super interesting that they're trying that and that they're using that as a lever on their closed beta. To me, like, the the the most interesting thing about Blue Sky is that they're trying a bunch of stuff that I have not seen tried or not tried at scale. Some of it's a tweak on existing things.
Speaker 2:Probably if I knew more, I would know that all of it is a tweak on something else. But this configuration looks like it has some some new pieces to me. And, you know, just just having things like skyline.gay pop up so quickly, it feels like they are experimenting with new ways to get at these genuinely really difficult things. And something that I've seen a few people talking about, especially, over the last couple days on Blue Sky is, you know, moderation isn't solved. Like, the Fediverse has not you know, it's not the the Fediverse handled moderation, and now we none of us ever have to think about it again because it's so good there.
Speaker 2:You know, this is this is this remains, a really difficult problem. It's handled in so many cases by shunting the worst work to, you know, workers in Kenya or somewhere else Right. Who, you know, spend all day looking at atrocities. Like, that's that's that's not solving moderation. And so I think, you know, getting into to me, the most interesting thing is, like, we as humans interacting lots of kind of cultural patterns offline all the time.
Speaker 2:And something like blue sky saying, okay. Well, if you invite the Nazi, then we're gonna push your post down for a minute. Shows a real attention to some of those offline as you say, like, if you bring if you bring the asshole to the party, then someone might make you both leave. You know, that's just it's an attention to human cultural patterns that we already have some fluency with showing up in interesting ways online. And I think if you assemble enough of those things, and and experiment with them carefully and, you know, it won't ever be careful enough for some people, and that's also totally okay.
Speaker 2:But, like, I just think that's we need to try more things. Yeah. So that's been that's been good to see.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that I and I I that's a great way of summarizing it too, in terms of like, we, these are messy human problems, and it feels like there's unlikely to be a silver bullet. It's gonna come down to a lot of execution and hard work. But But, yeah, let's experiment with some different things. And let's see what different things look like. And, you know, and I think you tend to go back to your point about about Jay is like a really interesting person.
Speaker 1:And I it has, it certainly has made me I mean, not someone that I had been following. I, like many people on Blue Sky, definitely follow her now. I it's been really interesting to kinda watch her. And because this is a problem that she wants to solve, but the best possible way and seems to be also self aware enough to know there's not gonna be one way of doing this. It's gonna be it's gonna require some experimentation.
Speaker 2:This gets back to your point, Tim. Right? But there isn't gonna be a replacement for Twitter.
Speaker 4:Yeah. In an ideal world, you know, you there really would be a bunch of people doing clever, interesting new things in the field of of moderation and and curation. I noticed, you know, on Blue Sky today, Brianna Wu, stuck her head up and and was saying, okay. Let's get some people together and start thinking about how we would, you know, build moderation tools and moderation algorithms and so on. And there's, another cabal of people called IFTA, IFTA, I think it's called, IFTA.org, who are gonna be launching in the next couple of days, who are also thinking about the same thing.
Speaker 4:Could you build a large scale, nonprofit, foundation funded moderation factory or something like that? Yeah. And it's not too hard to believe, although I I hesitate to say something like this. I'm gonna get laughed at. Maybe some of the LLM models would be quite useful in in in doing moderation at scale.
Speaker 4:So For sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that, yeah.
Speaker 4:I personally think that the technology is not that interesting. The technology is boring. We know how to do this. You know, the the the the ugly parts in activity pipe will get fixed and, you know, blue sky, I'm sure the AT protocol will eventually be made to work. You know, we can do that.
Speaker 4:So I think the interesting problems around, around social media are the economic problems. How do we pay for it sustainably? And how do we do moderation, provide a safe, friendly, pleasing environment where you can be a little bit transgressive now and again without letting the Nazis in.
Speaker 1:Totally. And I think that even this is actually a good segue, Steve, to you and, actually, you've been exploring kind of the the technical side of this. And, there's there's some there there. I mean, it's and, you know, Tim, you had said this in November, like, hey, folks, go look at activity pub, go look at at the AT protocol. Like, this stuff is actually there are specifications.
Speaker 1:You can go read it. You can actually build stuff against it. I was watching Joe Beta did a livestream yesterday where he's going into and and taking it apart and running the, the the Go CLI, and it was pretty interesting. Stevie, the the you've been diving into this. What, what have you found?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think it's actually also great off the previous part. Like, part of this experimentation aspect is really made possible even more by the data portability aspects that are, like, in the technical foundations. So, like, I'm I'm excited about that even though, like, I'm not necessarily a huge, like, federation or run my own instance kind of person. But one of the cool things is if I do decide that, Blue Sky, itself, say they do a terrible job with moderation and that they they mess it up, I can just, like, take my stuff and go to another server that I feel like does do that correctly and do that with no loss to, like, how my account works or, like, where all my data is.
Speaker 3:I think all of that is, really interesting.
Speaker 1:This is really, really, really important point. Steve, I won't allow you to elaborate, but this I just wanna underscore this point because this is a really important point. And, Aaron, I'm sure you've also seen people surprised on this on Mastodon, where because, oh, it doesn't matter which instance you sign up for. You can always change it. It's like, well, you can change your instance, But actually, until you did this, you did change your instance.
Speaker 1:And, like and the data doesn't come with you. Right? I mean, it's like it it's you've gotta like, this is a big deal because that data, it's that you got data gravity, right? With the with that and, it, So this is a major product we can make.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I think it's, yeah. It it's one of the sort of, gotchas, on Mastodon as it as it works now. And you can kinda carry some of your data along in buckets as you go when you switch instances. But, like, I joined a essentially a random instance and just lucked out in that I found one that was big and tightly moderated. And I had plans to move to a different instance, and I probably am never going to because I'd I'd lose my post history.
Speaker 2:And, you know, not that my posts are all gold, but it it just seems kinda silly to break the conversation unless I have a really good reason to, you know, like a local instance that made a lot of sense. I do see people, you know, and they're on Mastodon. They're I, you know, I I don't know, you know, how how accurate any of these assessments are. I've seen some concerns about execution on, you know, how the portability is actually gonna play out in the real world. Like literally the data stores questions about, you know, which things are going locally, if they wind up being centralized into standard data store servers, do you run into centralization problems?
Speaker 2:I don't know. You know, I can't really evaluate those assessments, and I don't think any of us probably can until the rubber hits the road with Blue Sky, and you can start moving
Speaker 1:things forward. Long time to sell people oxide racks. Though, please, let's not get in the way that too
Speaker 2:much. Let's be Which are the devil, apparently. You know? So, yeah. No.
Speaker 4:So so as far as Steve,
Speaker 3:I did gonna work.
Speaker 1:I I did didn't mean to sidetrack you there, Steve, but you just oh my god. It's such an important point that I just really wanna underscore that because I don't know that people realize that who are not on Mastodon. And this is a, an issue that I think is very current for folks on Mastodon. Like, boy, how does this actually work? So this is a big
Speaker 3:deal. Yeah. I think this is, like, what I hit on in the last couple days. And, apparently, the devs told me it's how they talk about it too. So, I'll use my own words to describe it like this, but I at least have a semi official stamp of endorsement for this analogy.
Speaker 3:So the best way to think about this whole thing is that it's Git. And I mean that in like a very serious and also kind of a silly way. But not the CLI, the parts people don't like, but, like, the data model and things. So it's kind of like you have repository of all of your stuff, everything that you've done, and, you know, who you follow and unfollow, what you post, all that kind of information. And it's currently, like, hosted on blue sky, which is like github.com.
Speaker 3:But, you know, when you have your git repo locally, like, you are collecting all of the data in there. And if you wanna upload it to a different host, you're able to, like, just do that. And the fact that, like, your sort of, like, get blobs are signed by, your ID is, you know, sort of required in the way that this works with Blue Sky. And that's kinda like how the data portability thing, you know, goes. Now there's a couple things though about this that are also, like, interesting and a little off, or, like, good or bad, I'll say.
Speaker 3:So the fact that this data is portable is great, but it also means that, like, deleting posts is currently like a git revert, not like, I rebased that commit out. So you the stuff you've delete the stuff you've posted and deleted, it's still in that in that repo that anybody can, like, get well, not If you were running your instance, like, people can look at it. Like, it's, like, public. It's all public data. Right?
Speaker 3:So I could go and find the stuff you've deleted currently. They're sort of working through how to, like, do that, like, rebase, basically. But, you know, that is, like, one thing that's, like, very good, but also sort of very bad about the situation is that, like, it is truly public communication. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I understand they were actually going deep on that on their on their Discord, today, trying to figure out how delete works because as
Speaker 3:soon as
Speaker 4:I went in there and read all that stuff about the the, the Merkle, the the Merkle search tree, as they call it, I was thinking, hold on a second. You know, everything depends on the hash of the content. Supposed to the content isn't there anymore. But, you know, clearly, in a in a world that has GDPR in it and and similar legislation, it's an absolute requirement that you have to be able to make the data go away. You just can't not do that.
Speaker 4:So I'm not sure what's going on there.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah. We'll see how it how it works out. Another thing that I think is interesting related to these technical things, it's always a big question, is, like, some people and some people in the chat even said this, like, smells like blockchain. And, like, the answer to that question is, like, both definitely no and absolutely yes depending on what you mean by the word blockchain.
Speaker 3:If you mean if you mean blockchain
Speaker 1:You're using it mostly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. If if you're using it in the sense that many people who hate blockchain use blockchain, it is absolutely none of that. Like, there's no tokens. There's no servers burning the rainforest. You know, like, that stuff is not a thing.
Speaker 3:It's like, you know, basically, like, Merkle trees. If you think like a Merkle tree makes it a blockchain, then, like, yes. This is, like, stored in a blockchain like manner. And so there's kind of a little bit of, like, back and forth there too where, like, I think a lot of people see it from the outside and they go, oh, Zcash person building a thing that sounds like blockchain. This smells bad.
Speaker 3:I don't wanna use it. And, like, I am a pretty anti blockchain person personally. Like, I don't don't use any of those things. Don't like them very much. And that kinda like put me off a little bit from the start too is not realizing that this is like not does not have the properties of the blockchain stuff I don't like, but it is using some of that technology for, like, in an actual good way.
Speaker 3:Like, it's like a I hate to hand it to him, but, like, you know, this may be an actual, like, good use of blockchain technology. And I think that I think it's actually technically sound.
Speaker 1:If we can have an we can have an immutable distributed ledger without calling it a blockchain. I mean, it is actually possible. You don't actually have to be doing Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm not interested in rehabilitating the term blockchain, but there are many crypto people who are like, yes, this actually is a blockchain. And I'm like, you can't use that as an argument to get people that think that blockchains are bad to, like, reagree with you because they still think the thing that they're talking about is bad. Like, just the signifier and sign are separate. Like, they're just, anyway.
Speaker 4:Well, no no nobody is suggesting you could sell NFTs on it, so that's okay then.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. So so yeah. So there's there's those are the kind of things I think are, like, sort of interesting about it technically, in many ways. I like the layering, Like, the fact that the the moderation stuff and also, like, any sort of algorithmic feed stuff is separate from the, like, data layer, I think, is really interesting.
Speaker 3:I'm not entirely sure that I, like, love the speech versus reach concept conception of the separation of these layers, but I think
Speaker 1:that there are tell you about that. I know the wait. What's the what's the the Okay. So
Speaker 3:I also think it's I'll back up slightly because I think it's a good way to get into this too. A thing that people have been critical of Jay for is the way that she's answered several questions about, like, how things like moderation works by using language talking about the main Blue Sky instance. So they're like, are you gonna ban Nazis? And she would say something like, you know, in this invite only beta, nobody has the right to access this and therefore will ban people from bad stuff. And people are like, well, what about when it's not out of beta?
Speaker 3:Which is I think a reasonable question, But she's answering from like a, like, I have an instance in a federated system, position, whereas people like, and and, like, that means because it's it's federated, like, somebody, you know, could spin up the daily Stormer instance of this and make accounts, and she, like, knows she can't ban them. So she's answering, like, this way, and people are, you know, kinda, like, digging into those details, like, that way instead. So that's caused, like, a little bit of these kinds of, like, problems, but it's because, like, when you have these distributed federated systems, they sort of have layered it out into what they call the like speech layer and the reach layer. And the speech layer is the like actual mechanisms of recording the stuff into your little repository and all that kind of stuff. And that, like, works and, you know, whatever else.
Speaker 3:And then reach is kind of like how do you take that data and then present it to some sort of broader public? You know, so like a a a timeline would be an example of the the part that's doing the reach. It's what lets people see all your posts. And so because those are like very clearly delineated between the 2, that's that's what gives you that data portability. Like, if I don't like the people who are running the algorithms about my reach, I can take my speech and put it somewhere else.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, that's like, I I think that's the it's a lot of the details about that are sort of like these, like, technical low level things that are really hard to explain to folks that don't care about decentralization, which I do think is most folks. And one of the things I love about Blue Sky is that you don't have to care about any of that right now if you don't want to. Like, it just works well disregarding all of that. And I think that combo is is part of why I'm really into it, is that they, like, understand that it needs to be a product that's usable by people who don't care about these things. And then these things are, like, a technical add on for people that do care about it, but they also deliver value to folks who don't need to, like, care about it.
Speaker 3:Like like, you know, a nontechnical user is not gonna care about federation, but they are going to like like, oh, if your, you know, instance dies, you can take your data and move it to another one really easily. Like, that's a useful feature independent of the ideology of decentralized, distributed, whatever else.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well and this actually gets to another great point in your piece, Aaron, about holistic design. I thought that was a because, Steve, what you're saying in terms of, like what I like about this is it is a product. It is designed to be something that, like, you could see a sports franchise having the account here. And, Aaron, do you wanna talk a a bit about that?
Speaker 1:Because I I wholeheartedly agree that the the the great design is always holistic. But that's kind of intention with with federation at some level, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I mean so I think it's maybe useful to keep in mind that there there's Blue Sky, the app. Right? And then there's that whole whatever we're whatever horrible verse neologism we're gonna come up with to talk about what's out on the AAT protocol. It, it's not the speed of verse?
Speaker 1:It's gotta be the speed of verse. Come on. Okay.
Speaker 2:It's the speed of verse. Great. Perfect. And then, you know, the we talk about Mastodon, and Mastodon is what? Right?
Speaker 2:The official Mastodon app and the official Mastodon website, and then there's a ton of client apps and all these things. So and then, of course, there's the, you know, the fediverse, everything that interoperates. Obviously, it is difficult, to make comparisons across those different layers. So some of the complaints that I have about Mastodon in my piece are essentially complaints about, like, underlying mechanisms that I think are not ideal that probably go back to activity pub. And some of them are just, you know, we need someone to make some decisions at Mastodon, the company, about what's gonna go on.
Speaker 2:For instance, what, you know, what they did on the the the new, the new design on the mobile app, the Mastodon app. You know, what's gonna go in the sign up flow? And so to be fair, I think it's it's hard to you know, it it's not apples to apples to say, like, the Blue Sky app has, you know, these great product design points, as opposed to the entire Mastodon experience, which is like this expanding sort of cloud. That said, I think it is a huge advantage. You know, they have a team who's focused on, you know, theoretically, a unified vision for what this thing should be.
Speaker 2:And they obviously care about mass adoption, even though right now they're working in a closed beta. And that's definitely not the case for, you know, every voice in the fediverse. It's a little hard sometimes for me to get a bead on how Mastodon, the company, feels about the compromises that you make, when you try to welcome in, mass culture. I definitely know, especially after the way my mentioned looked for the last 24 hours on masks.
Speaker 5:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, so humor is hard. Right? And I I I have to always, you know, kinda play with this stuff because that's how I find it useful to think about it. But definitely, like, I heard a lot of feelings because I mentioned Linux on the desktop.
Speaker 5:Oh, man.
Speaker 2:And, like, I I don't wanna even hate Linux on the desktop. I just think we can look at that and say that perhaps some things become more niche when they meant to become widely adopted. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was thinking, like, you're getting, like, lit up because people are like, well, you've misconfigured Pulse Audio. Why are you blaming so no. No. You're you're making my point. Sorry.
Speaker 1:You're making my point. You're making my point. I know you don't want to.
Speaker 2:Oh. Right now. Now. Yeah. I mean, to some extent.
Speaker 2:But, like, also, I wanna say, like, there's people who clearly are genuinely worried about what they stand to lose if Mastodon becomes more welcoming or more inclusive. Because what they feel like they have, as far as I can tell, is genuinely a haven in a world that is, you know, largely operated, you know, via some surveillance capitalism characteristics. Right? And they feel like they have something valuable and safe and that they need to protect. And so I think that that to me, like, when I say mastodon is having an immune response to Blue Sky, it is in part.
Speaker 2:You know, that's like the mastodon antibodies. They're like, no. No. No. No.
Speaker 2:No. What we have is really important. And not only is what they have all bad, but we shouldn't change because what if we let all those people from Twitter in and they come in and they get their Twitter cooties on us? So, like, I try to keep in mind that, you know, Mastodon has been a a safe haven for a lot of people. And a lot of those people see a call to, for instance, simplify, you know, the process of signing up and make it easier to follow people.
Speaker 2:And, I don't know, maybe let people try an algorithm of their own if they want. I think that's a fantastic idea. But they see, I think, those things as direct attacks on on something that they already have. And so I feel a lot of empathy about that. But I also don't think it's I don't think it's either or.
Speaker 2:Like, I I don't to me, for one thing, I just don't like anything that's like we're gonna filter out the undesirables by making this really annoying. I I don't think it's a great venue, but like, I don't wanna be on the inside of that club. Like, I don't wanna be with the other people who love annoying shit on me. Like, no. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't think we have to choose. I think because of, instances having their own cultures, necessarily the case that making this easier to use and less irritating for people who aren't tinkerers is is going to overwhelm the culture. But But a lot of people disagree with me very, very strongly, and that's, you know, that's fine too. But I I do feel like the the the the note of loss that's been kind of playing on Mastodon all through the Twitter migrations. You know, there are people who are like, you are coming into my house and getting your footprints on my rug, and it's really bumming me out.
Speaker 2:So that always happens. Right? Like, whenever you have a migration, it's to some place as well as away from some place.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, it's also like if you are you know, if part of the reason you're drawn to this is because it is counterculture or it's not popular. It becoming popular is exactly what you don't want. And, you know, a a friend of mine in high school was, a, he was super into this band that he was just like, we would not stop talking about, but he loved the fact that it had like no fans. And he loved the fact that, you know, he when they came we grew up in Denver, and they came to Denver, and he was one of, like, 15 people to watch him, and he's playing this tape for me.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. This seems good or whatever, but he's like super into them. And I you know, maybe it's a couple weeks after that, I called them up.
Speaker 1:I'm like, John, you're not gonna believe it. But that song that you played for me, I just heard it on the radio. He's like, what? I'm like, no. I just heard it on the radio.
Speaker 1:It's like he he was like, oh my god. That's amazing. Like, I I love these guys. Like, that's what I oh, this is so great. And then, like, 2 hours later, I called them again.
Speaker 1:I'm like, John, they just played it again. He's like, oh, no. No. No. And that band was Nirvana.
Speaker 1:And that was smells like mean spirit, and it, like, crushed him that they became popular. And he, like and he's like, I'm okay. Forget it. I'm moving to, I believe, the he's like, I'm going to this other band that no one's ever heard of. I think it was Soundgarden that he went to next.
Speaker 1:And then Soundgarden, and he's like, okay. And he's like trying to get, like, weirder and weirder and find these, like, screaming trees. No one's ever gonna love that. And, of course, like, he is, like, he is, like, 15 minutes ahead of the grunge movement in the nineties, and it's coming for everything that he loves. And the but, you know, it and it like, the fact that it became pop culture disgusted him in a way that I found deeply admirable, I have to say.
Speaker 1:But I I
Speaker 2:mean, like, yeah. We're old enough to remember the big the the big cultural don't sell out force. Right? Like, that was the real thing in the nineties.
Speaker 1:Yep. That the Oh, Gen x represent. I feel that that has been lost, man. My kids are Gen z ers, and they, like, can't wait to sell out. They wanna they don't even they're not gonna hold out for the highest bidder.
Speaker 1:They're just gonna sell out for nothing. Like
Speaker 2:Right away. You know, right away. Absolutely.
Speaker 4:So so, Brian, I'm gonna have to push back a little bit there. You know, I, there there's certainly an element of what you say is true, but but I think it's probably not a good characterization of of the broader Mastodon populace these days. And, and Mastodon is
Speaker 1:not For sure.
Speaker 4:Is not standing still. Let me say a couple of concrete things. You know, as of today, when you go to join Mastodon, you know, it it it there's a great big green button that says join here. And if you join there, you're on mastodon.social. Bang.
Speaker 4:Okay. There's a lot of people irritated about that because that that's not really decentralized, but it makes, like, the number one problem go away. So second thing, I if anybody uses, Mastodon via a browser
Speaker 1:Actually, did, Tim, can we just actually expand on that? Because I actually think it makes a couple of problems go away. It makes the number one problem go away of, like, picking an instance. It makes another really serious problem go away that you highlighted it, and I think you highlighted as well, which is if you kind of just stumble onto an instance that actually does not have really good moderation, you can see horrific things on MASA
Speaker 2:Oh, very quickly.
Speaker 1:Like, first experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it also solves that pride. There. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2:I I think it's very important that they did that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sorry, Tim. Didn't mean to just wanted to expand on just how important that is.
Speaker 4:I'm I'm glad nobody I'm glad nobody here objected to that because I I certainly think it's a no brainer. Second thing is, for anybody who uses Mastodon on a browser, you should really go and visit fanpi.social. That's p h a n p y dot social. It's an alternate web client, and it is lovely. It is elegant, minimal, rich, and very good, and it's qualitatively different from any other fediverse client I've seen.
Speaker 4:I don't know how it works on on on mobile that much. But, so we're starting to see some really nice innovation on the other side. The other thing I think that that, Mastodon has here that maps well onto the real world is the fact that there's gonna be a huge portion of people who whose identity is going to be related to the school they're in or the job they have. And, boy, that works so well on Mastodon. Right?
Speaker 4:Because if you are noamchompsky@mit.edu, just by looking at it, you know who that is. Right? Or if you're
Speaker 2:salleywall@undergrads.mit.edu,
Speaker 4:that tells you something different and still useful. And so the notion of identity that is offered there is, I think, just right for a huge proportion of people in the world, but, you know, not for everybody.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to tag on, because I I I didn't wanna seem needlessly or unintentionally mean. I wanna say mean for, like, if it's really called for, and I don't think it is here. But I don't think it's just a hipster impulse that's like, I don't wanna be where, you know, the the the mass culture is. That some of that for sure. But also, like, there are plenty of people who are super concerned about, you know, like, the the the inclusion of full text search or something like that because they've had a lot of terrible experiences with people, you know, using full text search to make their lives super miserable.
Speaker 2:So I I I just I I do think that they're, like I would love to see the people who have those pockets of safety be, you know, on instances and in ways that let them keep those things. I would be honestly pretty horrified by full text search that didn't allow some kind of either opt in or opt out, probably opt in, you know, on Mastodon because there's a ton of people who need to be out of that and who picked Mastodon specifically for that reason. And I don't think there's any reason to throw those people under the bus to make it nicer for everybody else. I I mean, I don't think those things are necessarily in conflict. A lot of people do think that, and it's gonna be super contentious whatever happens.
Speaker 2:And I am extremely glad not to be working for massed on a company. Like, it those people have incredibly hard jobs. Everyone is mad at them 100% of the time. So it's yeah. Like, I honestly, a lot of respect for what they do and a lot of empathy and sympathy for the situation that they're in.
Speaker 2:I think something like today's post, you know, on the Mastodon blog that gives, you know, in a centralized public place that isn't a bunch of GitHub issues and isn't, like, replies to people, a statement about, where they expect to go. I love that. You know? I love that kind of transparent open communication. I think that builds a lot of trust.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the things you know, we talked about, like, Jay is great at that on Blue Sky. Feeling like the people who are in charge of at least a piece of the experience are willing to be straight with you and not PG and are responsive and may not always give you the answer that you want, but they're just gonna give you an answer. And it's clear that there's thought behind it. I don't think the folks at Mastodon, the company, are necessarily any less thoughtful. I just like to hear more from them.
Speaker 2:And and I think it's a really good sign, you know, the things that Tim is talking about. And just like, you know, for me, communication is a ton of this. That's like so much of how you inspire and maintain trust, is just keeping keeping that flowing. Again, that's super hard when you're a few people in a building trying to keep all of these planes in the air. But, honestly, also, huge respect to the Blue Sky team for being so, forthright about things as, honestly, the they talk about building the plane while they're flying it, but, like, the plane has flown into a 1000000 pieces over and over this weekend.
Speaker 2:It's they've been real cool headed, and
Speaker 1:and Really cool headed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's impressive.
Speaker 1:I I think I think Jay's scheme was like, we're actually building a plane as it's falling out of the sky. I mean,
Speaker 2:I think it's a Yes. It was.
Speaker 1:And w which was, which was great. No, I went in a bunch there. I, that, that I want to tease apart. What I mean, one of, I think this is a kind of a point we're coming to again and again and again, and I do feel is, like, the one thing I feel I can say unequivocally. And I think that that folks here agree with that There it it feels less and less likely that there's gonna be one network to rule them all, that these things are intentioned and that that and I think that and I and I didn't actually that I sorry if it came across the way.
Speaker 1:My my kind of description of of John and his falling out with Nirvana. But the I don't actually and I think, Aaron, you're speaking very earnestly to what the the reason why people wouldn't wanna see a massive why it works for them, and why there are some things that are an essential feature for someone else that would really be, would really stoke fear in someone in someone who's on Mastodon. It's like, no. No. I I it is very important to me that we not have search for some reasons that are go right to the core of my feelings of safety online.
Speaker 1:And, versus someone else may be like, listen, I gotta be able to have search to make this thing useful for me. So, like, how do you resolve that? That tension, I think, is is is a real and as you say, I would not wanna be
Speaker 3:It has to be a
Speaker 1:master value.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, every one of these sorry. I just every single one of these decisions is fractal because, also, it's like one of the nice things about search is you can find out if people are, like, freaking out about you without tagging you in. And there isn't that because there's no quote tweet, you know, style set of patterns. So, yeah, you can, like, manually quote to or post, unless done.
Speaker 2:Or you can do it more, you know, in nicer way on some of the client apps. What you don't have is any visibility on, like, where that's happening. For some people, like, for me, I would definitely rather not know. Like, it's great. I love not knowing.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people, you know, maybe they need to know because maybe they're gonna get swatted, and they could use the heads up. So all of these things are gnarly, and I think it's so good to have more people working on those problems. I don't know. For me, like, I'm for myself, I have a hard time imagining that I'm only ever gonna be on one of these things. Even when I was on Twitter, I was on other things.
Speaker 4:I'm so glad you brought that up about about search because, you know, I've been a search person at one point in my life and Yeah. And it took me a while to get what these people were saying, but they're right. And every time I try and explain this to ordinary mainstream geeks, you're saying, what? You don't want everything to be instantly searchable forever? They look at me like I'm crazy.
Speaker 4:And and there's a deep lesson, a really deep lesson in there that, you know what? There's a whole lot of people in the world who don't want every character they type into their browser to be go on their permanent, immutable, searchable record forever. You know? And and and I think that's an important part of having a place that's a good place for people to be safe in.
Speaker 2:I I fully agree. And there were there were there were some things happening on sort of while I was peacing out on Twitter that I found just, like, particularly, like, a new kind of terrible, which was people going back through and searching, you know, like, what did you say on this day? Did you react to this event or not? And if you didn't react to this event, that is another piece of evidence in the dossier we are assembling about you.
Speaker 1:I highly recommend what, Adam, my birthday, gave me one of my most cherished possessions, the book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. I was like like, is this Apple book redirected? No. Exactly. But it was And I'm like I
Speaker 2:don't wanna get into the whole discourse there. Like, yeah, there are social functions for shame and all that stuff. But, man, when it get when it gets to mass scale and it's just, like, you know, roving groups of people who are just enjoying themselves by, you know, ruining the lives of people with 200 followers. It's like, oh, man. That that is that is not a that is
Speaker 1:not a problem. The better agents market.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's not great. Yeah. Like, it really makes me extra understand why people feel super hostile to search. So so yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, again, like, every single one of these things has, to be, like it gets to the core of how we are as people online together, so it's not gonna be simple. And it's very encouraging for me to see a bunch of different places trying different patterns in earnest. And a lot of people, I would say, who are, like, super not in the blue sky on Mastodon are like, well, I don't I don't trust those people to do anything right. It's all gonna be malicious and, you know, for the worst motivations. And so they don't see any value in the experimentation.
Speaker 2:To me, I I don't, you know, I don't think I have that kind of evidence. So to me, I think these experiments are super interesting. And as Steve, I think you said, you know, if the blue sky, folks specifically, you know, if they wind up making decisions that turn out to seem, you know, terrible, they also are making a protocol that will allow you to move easily to a different spot. So I don't know. I'm super encouraged by this moment.
Speaker 2:Even though I would have written a different blog post if I'd written it, today after the Mastodon blog post than I did yesterday.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I've been reflecting on what you were saying earlier, actually, because, like, I'm the kind of person that, like so, ironically, like, because 4chan has full text search and I keep tabs on what people are saying about me everywhere online because I'm the literal opposite of you, like, I have read more 4chan than Mastodon over the last couple years because Mastodon is totally opaque, and I was like, I'm gonna drive myself crazy trying to figure out if people are talking trash on me on this, so I'm not gonna do that. Yep. Unfortunately, it's weird. It's like weird.
Speaker 3:I'm also not saying that looking at people, you know, saying they wanna murder you is, like, healthy, but it is something that I do. And so it is, like, interesting. It's all saying, like, none of these things are necessarily right or wrong or better or worse. Yeah. I'm also not totally unique about it.
Speaker 3:I I block, like, 60,000 Twitter accounts or something, and ironically, that's made it harder to do those kinds of searches, and I'd go back and forth on, like, which way I would rather be about it. But, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:So can we talk about that for a second, Steve? Because there is a a and it's unclear if this is kind of a transient artifact or not. But right now, block lists are public, on blue sky. And I feel like Blue Sky, this is the kind of thing that, like, has that changed during this has that changed since 5 o'clock?
Speaker 3:So you this is a perfect transition to how Sway is this 12 minutes ago, Jay skied it about how they're building they're building the functionality to copy or follow another account's block list and just get their blocks automatically.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. No. It does not so okay. Oh, boy. Do I have got that is interesting.
Speaker 1:I've got super mixed feelings about that because I, obviously, there's a I totally get why people need to be able to block people that are harassing them online and not not to be public and and so on. But I get so annoyed by people like Paul Graham and Marc Andreessen who will block people that they just, like, that they just don't wanna hear. A voice that they don't wanna hear, they block. And I kinda feel like, you know, if you're a billionaire, sorry. Like, you're gonna just gonna have to, like, just endure here.
Speaker 1:Or you don't have to endure, and we get to know I mean, I do feel like it's like there's there's a certain level where it's like it makes total sense for blocking you private. And then there's another level where it's like, it really does not feel right to me that you are able to sculpt the, your, your own personal echo chamber by using blocking. And I don't know, like, I honestly don't know what I kind of feel about that. So like I worry Steve about if it's really easy for people to share block lists, because I think this is what happened to me. I and I think this happened to a lot of people where interest because interest as as interest in we're blocking you, Adam, I feel like
Speaker 5:Yeah. I've I've been blocked, and I tried to figure out why. And I I think I added him, but in the most tepid way possible, and it can't conceivably have been the reason I got blocked. But, yeah, it's been, like, a decade.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He blocked me. And so
Speaker 4:he blocked me. And all you have to do is go after crypto.
Speaker 2:This is before This is way pre crypto. I I mean, I just
Speaker 1:way pre crypto. Oh, really? And he blocked me, and I I became convinced that, like, I don't think I I like, this is long before I was publicly disparaging him. So I feel that that he got a list from someone else. And I mean, I know this is where you kind of go into like tinfoil hat territory.
Speaker 1:And it then pathetically, like I had him on the phone when I, he was, I was pitching oxide to him. That idea went poorly mistake regret in life. But the, I didn't have the, even the guts to ask him, like, why do you block me? And I I wanna, like, not I shouldn't be, like, thinking about that, but essentially that he blocks all of us and it's like, shouldn't that I mean, I feel it should be public information that he blocks. Maybe even just, like, the number of people would be I don't know.
Speaker 1:But, Steve, you're someone who also blocks a lot of people. So what what do you feel about this? Do you feel it should be I mean, where do you kinda land on people sharing block lists? I could see it being great, but I can also see it, not being great for kind of broader discourse.
Speaker 3:I was I was gonna make a joke that I I can be the in the middle of your positions, Brian, because I believe that people have the right to curate what they see and don't see as, like, kind of a fundamental, like, sort of level. But billionaires aren't people, so p market has to see my stuff.
Speaker 2:You beat you beat me to my my only joke, which is hear me out. The blue checks have to publicize their block.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that I think that, like, this is super complicated and it kinda echo what was said in the last section. I think this is deeply personal.
Speaker 3:I think that, like, enforcing that people can't, you know, like, block someone is just like, that's not how even real life works. Right? Like, you can say, am I creating my echo chamber by being in this room as opposed to a different Discord call somewhere else? Like, I'm currently listening to you, and I'm not listening to those other people. Like, you know, where how does all that work?
Speaker 3:Like, where do these lines draw? Like, fundamentally, people, you know, will withdraw from situations they don't find to be pleasant. And so if you can't block people by blocking them, then you can block them by not using the app. And, you know, that will also be a thing that happens. I think that stuff being public is a really interesting double edged sword.
Speaker 3:I don't see how it can be different in a federated system, because that's like, how how else does that work without being public? But it's it's helpful in the sense that, like, you know, we're talking about moderation earlier, like in some sense, subscribing to someone's moderation system is, you know, their block list, basically. Like, those are kind of isomorphic, essentially, if not literally the same in some circumstances.
Speaker 1:Although, Borko is this kind of, like, irredeemable moderation. Like, you cannot there's nothing that you can say tautologically that gets me to reconsider what you're saying, because I can't even see you. You're in my kill file. Like you're right. Like you are no one.
Speaker 1:So it is it's just kind of the it's extraordinary. So in Blue Sky, block lists are public and are gonna remain so, it sounds like.
Speaker 4:So let me grab a stake in the ground here. I think blocking is sacred, and I think shared block lists are a boon. And we need more of them to be actively maintained by people because you know what?
Speaker 1:David, do do you what about those block lists being public? Because I think I'm with you if the block lists are public.
Speaker 4:Well, it turns out that I'm I'm we already have this. There's there's there's a successful Block Party app, which is mostly used to to to block sexual predators and harassers and has been quite successful. And I think you can subscribe to that without revealing you're subscribing to that. And I think that's fine. My instinct is that it should not be public in general.
Speaker 4:And but, you know, there's all actually, there's several Gorilla operations spinning up now, to actually do shared block list as a service. And in fact, speaking as a person who does a who who moderates a Mastodon note, our job would be really hard without that because it actually works reasonably well. Sure. What happens, I'm sure, many times every day is some random Nazi spins up a little little instant so he can start slimming people. Boy, those get noticed fast.
Speaker 4:And, you know, when you go on shift, you know, once every 24 hours, you just upload the latest block list. And the result is that the people on your instance are almost certainly not gonna see that. It works great. I I don't want anybody screwing with that.
Speaker 2:But it has to be shared. Right? It has to be shared. Otherwise, the workload is just completely impossible. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I mean, like, I I was on Twitter during gamergate, and that's when I started using a shared blacklist because things got extremely gnarly. And then later, yeah, I did have to be like, okay. So that was that it's blocking, like, how many tens of thousands of people that I did not personally block. At some point, it would be nice to be able to see, like, who actually made those decisions.
Speaker 2:Like, I I would love some transparency about what specifically, what gets you on to a shared block list? What are the parameters for that? Because I don't necessarily always wanna trust the judgment of someone I don't know. But the the actual presence of the lists, I think, is super important for the for just the reasons that Tim said. And also, like, anybody anybody who becomes a target of brigading, over time, like, not even as, like, a one time thing that people who deal with it.
Speaker 2:You know? Sounds like Steve, maybe you. But it's it's at some point, it's like, I don't care who's on that list. Just get these people out of my get them out of my mentions. Get them away from me.
Speaker 2:I need a break. So I don't know. Public I mean, it's what? Because it's a lot of people. Officials?
Speaker 2:Like, I feel like public officials on the Internet maybe should have to publish their block lists. That's like that's the line for me. Like, billionaires? I don't know. Whatever.
Speaker 2:But, like, actual elected officials, they should have to publicize their damn block list.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, maybe there's a demarcation line there that's that simple where it's just like yeah. I mean, I I think that that you've you and and maybe it is just like elected officials or because, I mean, I obviously and, Tim, totally your points, like, why this is so essential and important. And I think it's, like, also, like, I also just wanna, like, slap myself and be like, what? You don't even care what market recent things. Like, why are you but I, you know, I think everybody when you when you just and I I assume this is certainly it's happened to me and if if you've been blocked by entries and you've this happened to you where you've come across someone new on the Internet who you've never met as the best of your knowledge, like, never said anything to do is, like, this person blocks me.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay. Like and, you know, you it's just frankly, it's like you wanna you wanna know, like, what did I do? Is there is there a way that I can apologize or what have you? But, you know, but ultimately, like, that's not our individual right. We don't actually have the right to, like, people got you know, I think that you got the right to not wanna hear someone as from someone and not have any due process associated associated with that.
Speaker 1:Like, that's that's a, that's a right. You got a process
Speaker 3:is a legal government concept. It's not an interpersonal relationship concept.
Speaker 1:It's something that I like.
Speaker 3:I have also been very sad when I found out that someone who seems cool blocks me, and I don't know why they blocked me and we never interacted. But, like, that's just that is unfortunately part of being human is people are gonna make you sad sometimes and you gotta deal with it. And that's, like, on me, not on them. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:When also, like, Steve, just like your problem is that you go to 4chan just so you can, like, understand all the terrible things people are saying about you. I just I don't block anybody. And in particular, my life would've been, I would I would've been arguably better. I mean, I had you know, I've got some I got some haters out there.
Speaker 3:Let's let's let's, is that's true in all circum do you believe that you that's always true and you'll never block anybody ever? Are there reasons that haven't happened to you yet that you would choose to block someone?
Speaker 1:You know, hard to say because, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 3:I work Here's a concrete thing that has happened to me on Twitter. I had someone DM me my actual real home address, including my apartment number and say, this you every day for a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's blocked. That's why. I think that would be my first block.
Speaker 2:So like saying like I shouldn't
Speaker 3:be able to block those people, like that is like a, you know, that's like you wanna talk about, like, mental health issues from social media. Like, that was that was a bad month, and, like, blocking someone is the only way to get that to, like, stop. And that's, like, not cool and not okay.
Speaker 4:And Brian, Brian, it is important to say this, but you, like me, are a hyper over entitled, cis, white, male, neurotypical
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:You know, you our we are playing life on the lowest difficulty level.
Speaker 1:That that is true, but I I the the the a 100% true. And that, but it's also true that and, Adam, I actually I I I called you on the phone during an extremely low moment when I was being when I was being harassed online, and and I should have blocked the I I just I I should I would have been healthier for me, to and I don't know why I can't go to it. But it's certainly Steve in that situation, like, yeah. You certainly and and and Tim, to your point about, like, you know, living in a world where physical safety or safety is not, you know, I I I've got that luxury. And the second, I didn't if I were deprived of that luxury, someone DM ing me my personal information or someone, I mean, god forbid, you know, going after my kids.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's like, yeah, now it's a whole new territory for sure. And it's, it is really important that that you've got ways of doing this. And I think it's interesting that the and I think that this is where, you know, Aaron, to your kind of point about experimentation, like, how can we experiment with some of this stuff to, you know, to make the it it it, let's solve the problems we have, and try to introduce the fewest number of new problems. And how can we go do this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I and, obviously, I unfortunately, I don't have the answer to that. However, I will say that I have enjoyed seeing on Blue Sky the back and forth and what appeared to be, to me, you know, in these early days, the signs that the folks on the Blue Sky team are in fact listening. Because I I, you know, I think I I I really value these experiments. I think they're important.
Speaker 2:Obviously, some of them are gonna go wrong, and people are gonna get hurt in the experiments. And I think that's why a lot of folks don't wanna see it done. You know, I think knowing what you're getting into, knowing, for instance, that you're in a beta app, I saw Jay skip the if you need blocking, you need to wait a little bit. This was, like, in another era of blue sky Monday. Ago or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Monday. You know? And I think, you know, letting people opt in and understand, you know, this could things could get rough on and off over time because it's an experiment. That is, like, the bare minimum that you can do.
Speaker 2:But also just listening when people say, you know, we need this. We need these safety features. We need the airbag. You know, these are things that we need or we need to opt out. I I like to see I like to see that.
Speaker 2:I think the same things have happened on Mastodon just over the course of many years. Like, Blue Sky is really speed running right now. So it's kinda easy to follow the conversations because they've they've been through, like, 4 social media eras since last weekend. And
Speaker 1:and it's
Speaker 2:you know, again, it's kinda unfair to contrast with Mastodon, which is, you know, extremely deliberate in its decision making, if not always particularly transparent. So yeah. I
Speaker 1:think think that, like, it would be be because it is so Blue Sky is so engaging. You've got a bunch of people that are there, and they are immediate speed running kind of Internet culture. And in particular, I and it goes to a point that that you've been making a lot, Aaron, is that the you've got this kind of experimentation not just happening from Blue Sky themselves, but from the user base. And and the way that Jay is handling herself with that experimentation, I think, is really interesting. In particular, with, like, Skeets.
Speaker 1:Right? The the the terminology. I mean, I just like, Jay herself was like, please, it just cannot be Skeet. Please, like, literally
Speaker 2:So Jake, that person is on air. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Make it make it anything else. And, of course, like, people had already spoken. It's like, sorry. It's Skeets.
Speaker 1:And then, like, she but she tacked right into that. It's like, alright. You know what? It's Skeets. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that is something that I it was frustrating, I think, for anyone who was a longtime Twitter user. So many Twitter innovations happened from the user base, And then they were only really codified by Twitter, long after they were ubiquitous. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Really, really late.
Speaker 1:So the the retweet and the quote tweet, and I mean, god, we were on spaces, Twitter spaces forever, and it's like, man, we had so many, you know, so many things we wanted to go do with that. And I think that, you know, one thing that's interesting about Blue Sky is with the the open API, the ability to have some of that experimentation outside of the bounds of blue sky is pretty interesting. And, like, we can try some of that on and get a little bit of a, you know, where can we foster a kind of safe experimentation that doesn't have to be a 100% controlled by Blue Sky. And then the fact that Blue Sky is very willing to experiment is and and very, you know, willing to roll with it is just I mean and also they all they also have a very sense of humor, all of them. I the I I mean, the Paul, the the the developer that I think all of us now follow, the what feels like I mean, they're very, very funny, and they're very willing to kinda listen to people.
Speaker 2:And they're superhuman. You know? And I, they obviously are, you know, real individuals who are, certainly appear to be trying to do good work. That's not necessarily gonna prevent something horrible from happening. Because when the worst people on the Internet have an opportunity to do something horrible, they always will.
Speaker 2:And Blue Sky is almost certainly going to open up some opportunities, either as an experiment or as a mistake. And, you know, bad things are going to happen because that's that's what happens when people hang out together on the Internet. That's right. Yeah. Hope is, you know, like, that the people in these spaces understand when they need helmets and understand which things are more worked out.
Speaker 2:I I think the very slow pace of development on the Mastodon side has come with some benefits. You know? It's very unlikely that Mastodon is gonna turn overnight. And so For all the reasons we have
Speaker 1:to do
Speaker 2:both. Like Yeah. Right. Have let's have Yeah. Let's have speed run over here, and and let's have, you know, maybe not as slow, but, like, a little more deliberate in another place.
Speaker 2:I think that's really good. I think that's healthy. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, Mastodon has made mistakes too. Bad things happen there, and and often learn from them. And the the work that you know, the the things that we see in moderation and the the the shared block lists and things like that, It didn't necessarily come from the central place either, as what you're saying with the possibility on Blue Sky.
Speaker 2:So I guess I just wanna keep kind of even handed. I think both of these pots are interesting. But, yeah, if I were someone who was primarily concerned with being away from potential harm, blue sky is definitely kind of a potentially explosive little lab right now. So, I mean, I'm just hanging out in the corner watching things happen on Blue Sky, and it's super entertaining. That's
Speaker 1:great. Were you online when the, someone figured out how to get a whole bunch of mentions in the metadata?
Speaker 2:Into 1? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. It was delicious. So all of a sudden and I'm sure and Steve, I know you were on the at the and sorry, Adam. This this predates you on on this. Way before me in,
Speaker 5:like, 8 hours. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. By 8 hours. But, like, all of a
Speaker 1:sudden, you see this skit that and I'm like, I got just got a notification to everyone. And you think, like, oh my god. I am about to be the most delightful. Please remove me from this email list. And, Steve, I know you described, like, going over to that is, like, the second you got over it, there were already, like 60 replies to it and the replies were hilarious.
Speaker 1:I was laughing. I was alone in the office laughing. I mean, I would just laughing out loud. It was so funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So good.
Speaker 1:And I mean, I think we can, I mean, to enter your point, like we can expect more stuff like that? I mean, that was obviously harmless and, and ultimately ended up being pretty funny, but we can also expect there'll be, you know, the part of being an open system is people will discover flaws and loopholes and so on. And, yeah, it's like, it's oh, sorry. I got around your blog list. Or Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, everyone's muted me.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's like a it's like a common thing, and, I play this video game called Destiny. It's been around for a long time. It's got a lot of people play it, but, like, they have lots of bugs because it's a very old software system. And right now is a moment where the system has been particularly unstable and people are like, how didn't you test this before releasing it?
Speaker 3:And everybody who does software development is like, gamers are so entitled because, like, if you have a 1000000 people playing your game, they're gonna do more like the fuzzing of the system in the first five minutes of it being live than, like, we you know, even though we have a full staff of software testers, like, just from a time perspective, like, there's not enough time to test every single corner of these complicated systems. And so that's kinda like what you're seeing in here, I think, too is, like, as they, you know, went from 200 users to 20,000 users to 50,000 users, there's just, you know, so many more people probing the edges of all these various parts, which is part of the reason why you invite more people, obviously. But you kinda see an increasing rate of people finding these little funny corners. Like, the way that ad everyone was implemented is that there's, like, a rich text, concept in posts that that says I'm mentioning this user in this post. But you don't have to actually mention them in the post.
Speaker 3:You can just do it in the metadata, and they hadn't limited the metadata, down enough and so somebody found you could put 500 different people and the server would accept it. And so that's like how it worked was like this joke about mentioning at everybody, but then using the rich text system in a way that they like didn't exactly expect. And so they were like, oh, yeah. That's really funny funny and, like, good job. And now we're gonna, you know, like, limit the number of things you can add in that field.
Speaker 3:But, like, you know, you just you just can't figure it out, until people mess with it.
Speaker 4:I'm like but I'm like the game scenario. What's going to happen is there's going to be an organized malicious attack by people with an evil political agenda who are technically competent and large in number and well funded.
Speaker 1:Well, and and that's why I think that you wanted to kind of get these things, figured out when you've got this kind of playful demographic on there. There. There are a bunch of folks on there that that do that are info sec folks that are just having fun with it. And you want those kind of, you know, I wouldn't say criminal mind, but definitely a mind that is trying to figure out how to exploit a system. You want that on there when the stakes are relatively low.
Speaker 1:So you don't end up, I think in the problem, Tim, that, you know, where we've got, where the stakes end up being a lot higher. And the stakes in social networking are really, really high. And we've, you know, I think we talked about this in in November as well. But the the stakes are high in social networking because they are ways of getting actual real people to do actual real things. And that's what's scary about social networking.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's, and we've obviously seen that, we've seen that in just in unspeakable quantity in the last years, in terms of, you know, the the the all of the the kind of very negative discourse. I mean, I, I, if, if you had told me in, you know, 1990 that there would be that, you know, a full, whatever it is, a third of the country was gonna refuse a vaccine for a pandemic. I just would not have believed you. And social networking bears some culpability there. Right?
Speaker 1:And so this is why the stuff is super important to actually to get right. And by getting that right means kind of experimenting with it in the small whether you would like to clarify yeah. Sorry, Erin. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh, just real quick. I I like, pouring one out for the enormous loss of institutional knowledge at Twitter because they had fought some of the hardest fights dealing with nation state actors and organized everything for so long. And we saw so many screw ups, and there were a lot of things that, you know, a lot of us hated. But they also just knew and learned so much. And that that whole cathedral burned real fast, which is a tremendous loss to, you know, everyone trying to do this work after.
Speaker 2:It's been good to see a few people, you know, who are ex Twitter folks talking about this stuff.
Speaker 3:But I
Speaker 2:think most of it, they can't even talk about, which is just really heartbreaking.
Speaker 1:It is. So I I I totally agree with you about the but I I wonder if if if the analog is a cathedral fire or a forest fire because I
Speaker 2:I don't well, actually, I as soon as I said that, I was like, I don't feel that way about Twitter, and I shouldn't say it. But it is knowledge. There's a yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, nobody because I I think that well, the thing that's interesting I mean, I remember, you know, when I first came out to Silicon Valley, SGI was was being was, just miss running flying into the side of the mountain. And, Tim, you remember these days. And, I was watching all of the and in particular, a project that a friend of mine was on to do a new GPU at SGI, Olympus had been horrifically mismanaged, and that thing flew into the side of the mountain. And so all of them are like, screw this. We're gonna go do our own company.
Speaker 1:And that was NVIDIA. And, you you know, the the, the fact that, you know, some of that institutional knowledge, you hope that like a forest fire, you you do hope that this kind of, like, unlocked new birth and that you get some of the wisdom that is in the in Blue Sky and others where it's like, hey, we've done this at scale, and here's some of the problems. Thing I I really like about Jay's disposition is just, like, the knowledge that there's not gonna be a single solution to this. You are not I mean, this Musk has mismanaged Twitter in so many different dimensions. But one of them, surely, is the is the fact that he did not understand that that the moderation is not a technical problem.
Speaker 1:It's a techno social problem and or social technical problem. And you you you he minimized how thorny and nuanced this problem is. And I don't get any of that from Jay, who really seems to understand how how nuanced all this is.
Speaker 2:I mean Right. And there's Actually, let's say Let's be super quick. I just wanted to say humility. Like, the presence of humility and and a willingness to, you know, acknowledge uncertainty is super valuable to me.
Speaker 4:I I think there's actually grounds for optimism in that the among the Twitter engineering diaspora. There are a lot of people who really know their shit about this stuff. Totally. They they have major contributions to offer right in the middle of this inflection point. Now there's the question of the business model, which is unknown at this point, but, still.
Speaker 1:Alright. So one thing I would like to say, and I don't know why I'm defending VC funded companies. I guess I mean, we certainly are 1, but I would like to say that for those who are dismissing Blue Sky because it is a VC funded company, I don't be so fast, because at this stage of the company, the VCs don't actually control the company. I it doesn't now qualifiers, I don't know how it's structured. I don't know what their their board looks like.
Speaker 1:I don't know what their company looks like.
Speaker 4:It is not a VC funded company.
Speaker 1:It is just Jack. No. It's a Jack funded company.
Speaker 2:Instant
Speaker 4:it's $13,000,000 of money from Twitter back when Jack and Greg were running it.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I don't know how to and it's which is which Aaron made that point in
Speaker 4:in the post, which I
Speaker 5:thought was an important one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that's super interesting that they made that call.
Speaker 1:That is originally, I somehow missed that in your post, Erin. It's a b corp. Oh, that is interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's a public benefit, and it and I think that that that actually makes the the comparison with Mastodon, the company, even more interesting to me just from, like, a finance side.
Speaker 1:That is really yeah. I did not know it's a b corp. Okay. Well, that is definitely alright. So then then those concerns are not well founded for those who are saying of that.
Speaker 1:Like, you know, the rapacious venture capitalists are gonna kinda, you know, drain this thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's, like, the adjacency. Right?
Speaker 3:The only thing is, yeah, the adjacency. Jack is on the board, but, like, that's the only thing, and he doesn't seem to really care. Like, saying that this is Jack's thing is just, like, not really a real it's not a real thing to say, basically, at this point.
Speaker 2:And he's been dismissive also about it recently, which just seems yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, Jack, well, Jack
Speaker 4:Jack seems to be more interested in, which which makes sense because Jack has always been a bit of a crypto And, you know, there's definitely some crypto snow out of a no stir.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, yeah, those who are concerned about crypto from Blue Sky will take that as a as a as a positive sign for
Speaker 2:sure. Yep.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been a a terrific discussion. Erin, Tim, Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 2:for putting this together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is, I, I, and you know, I, I think that this is, I'm even, you know, I know this has been a distraction for all of us, but social networking is a distraction, but social networking also we've said this before, it it also gives us a lot, and I it's important to us. And, I think this is a very thoughtful discussion. Aaron, again, loved the piece. I thought it was terrific. And if it hopefully, folks will check that out.
Speaker 1:Tim, thanks for bringing that to to my attention on Mastodon, by the way. Saw that on Mastodon. So, thank you Mastodon for bringing me this terrific content, but a a really great great discussion and, reason for optimism. So, we'll have to check back in, maybe at the towards the end of the year and see how it works out. But, I don't think any of us can predict it, but, definitely feels like an it's an exciting time for sure.
Speaker 3:Okay. Good for you.
Speaker 1:Thanks, everybody.
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