Mark my words: generative “AI” is the tech bubble of all tech bubbles.

It’s an infinite supply of “content” in a world of finite demand. While fast, it is incredibly inefficient at creating anything, often including things with dubious quality at best. And finally, there seems to be very little consumer interest in paid-for, commercial generative AI services. A niche group of people are happy to use generative AI while it’s available for free, but once companies start charging for access to services and datasets, the number of people who are interested in paying for it will obviously be significantly smaller.

Last I checked there was more than a TRILLION dollars of investment into generative AI across the US economy, with practically zero evidence of genuinely profitable business models that could ever lead to any return on investment. The entire thing is a giant money pit, and I don’t see any way in which someone doesn’t get left holding the $1,000,000,000,000 generative AI bag.

Sure, that’s definitely nice in theory.

In practice, however, because the client is closed source and there’s no way to self-host and instance, BlueSky users will eventually find themselves at the whims of the people/person who controls the software. What’s to stop some Elon Musk type from buying BlueSky next and then adding things to your algorithm without your consent?

That’s why I’m very skeptical of BlueSky’s pseudo-federation, as it feels like people are just making the same mistakes (with regard to corporate social media) over and over again. Unlike Mastodon (which I understand is less popular right now and thus the network/peer effect is weaker for people), the users have very little control over BlueSky as a platform, and that feels like a mistake.

With all that said, priority numero uno should simply be to get people off of shit like X.com and TikTok, which aren’t just at risk of becoming toxic playgrounds of oligarchs, but already are. If people choose BlueSky as the next corporate platform to go to, it’s a small step in the right direction, but it’s worth proceeding with caution.

I’ve found tons of new “content” on Mastodon by following hashtags related to the things I like.

Personally I like the fact that I’m not being fed some corporate algorithm.

There’s a lot you aren’t taking into consideration, for example where those users are coming from.

• Threads is just Instagram, it’s essentially the same account, so its users were baked in from the start. How many of those Threads users are just people who already used Instagram?
• BlueSky really isn’t pulling users from Mastodon, it’s pulling them from “X.com”, which if nothing else represents a breaking up of old Twitter, which is good for decentralization in general. Any fracturing of social media is good for the fediverse.
• Both Threads and BlueSky are, to some degree, copies of Mastodon in terms of their relationship with federation. Threads uses ActivityPub itself (a win for the fediverse, depending on how you look at it), and BlueSky has their own AT federation protocol, which shows that the ideas behind the fediverse are already winning out. It’s entirely possible that, at some point in the future, BlueSky and Mastodon learn to speak to each other using one of those protocols (or a new one), and then the fediverse wins by default.
• Fediverse apps like Misskey are apparently doing great in Japan, which is great for the existence of Japanese artists and the international side of things.

The fact that we’re here, right now, discussing this on the fediverse, shows that ActivityPub has come a long way. Bluesky is nothing more than a shallow copy of Mastodon with far less federation and far fewer features.

Mastodon is a bit like Linux, due to its free and open nature. It can be in 3rd place for 20 years, but it’ll keep chugging along, improving and growing over time until it snowballs into something truly formidable. Linux doesn’t need to be the most popular operating system ecosystem to be great, nor does Mastodon need to be the most popular social media server. Unlike a corporate product it’s not just going to die and disappear just because it isn’t the most popular of the social media platforms.

Yeah I don’t know why it took people so fucking long to realize that being on Twitter does nothing other than help the oligarchs, but here we are…

BlueSky is really just Twitter pretending to be Mastodon, but that’s a minor issue compared to the problems associated with platforms like “X” and TikTok today.

What matters most right now is killing off Twitter and breaking up the dominance of any one platform on social media. I really don’t care where people go as long as they get the fuck off of Twitter and TikTok. Mastodon and open platforms will eventually win out in a divided social media ecosystem anyway, in my opinion. Divide and conquer.

Corporate nationalist social media like “X” (American oligarchy) and TikTok (Chinese oligarchy) are a danger to the sovereignty and stability of the Western world.

Oligarchs get cozy with oligarchs, what a shocker.

Holding Western stability hostage in the name of the oligarchs, good job voting everyone…