I took a look at ATProto and would be interested in working with it, but one blocker for me is that all accounts ultimately depend on the centralized Bluesky DID PLC directory. Bluesky recently accepted VC funding, which makes me think the incentives are going to be strongly towards keeping the platform closed.
adamu
mudasobwa
Creator of Cure
Well, yes and no. Yes, our job in not to go all-street. No, I don’t believe the draconian laws are going to slim.
I have an experience living under 5 different regimes (Retiree USSR / Baby Russia / Communist Greece / Germany in Dotcom Bubble / Socialist Spain.) And I came to conclusion the only goodness I can bring to society is to enforce OSS everywhere I worked, teach, help, mentor. It’s all individual. Personal. It’s all absolutely orthogonal to what the regime does en masse.
I think, it brings more value to explain what first derivative means besides this idiotic explanation from lectures at the institute to some humanitarian person rather than to protest against anything. We have a wording in Russian “переведи бабушку через дорогу” which means “take the elderly woman across the street” and is roughly used to emphasize the goodwill action in the wild.
Helping one person is way more valuable than trying to fight the whole regime. And the worst regime ever still leaves a room for good deeds.
3
garrison
Yes, this is the big question: whether the network can successfully federate before the values of the company collapse under VC pressure (inevitable IMO). I want to emphasize that my own expectation was that they would fail, but thus far I have been absolutely overjoyed to watch people work hard to prove that expectation wrong.
WRT the directory specifically, they are transferring it to an independent entity. They are essentially building a new ICANN.
Skepticism is well deserved but thus far these people have largely done the right thing and I think it’s also important that we encourage and support that. There is a good timeline here.
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derek-zhou
We have similar proverb in Chinese. 勿以恶小而为之 勿以善小而不为. My rough translation: Do not allow yourself to dab in evil deeds because they are small; do not be lazy from making good deeds because they are small too.
Also, goodwill actions driven from the above will not be pure. Funny story: when I was a kid, I used to fight other kids for the right to take the elderly woman across the street. My school gave everyone a quota to meet.
3
thiagomajesk
Wow, I can’t believe I missed this thread… This is something that has been on the back of my mind for a long time (when I got to know RSS feeds) and back again when I started to learn Elixir.
This topic, and especially decentralization/federation, has always captured my attention, and it resonates with me even more these days. I think my country (Brazil) has been a prime example of political persecution in recent years, so this pops into my mind almost every week when reading the news.
You can’t really fix something with tech that most people don’t see as broken
IMO, this is the big issue; the reality is that people are choosing to trade freedom for convenience every day. But this is part of a bigger/ broader discussion I’m not feeling like having.
1
dimitarvp
As much as we like to tell ourselves we can change the world with code, history has not shown many such examples apart from “hackers” like Zuck (who stole the idea and part of the implementation from another person just to rub it in) using tech for their own ends.
Our skills don’t mean much if tomorrow they get criminalized or gated behind draconian licenses. And overnight the old-school censors of thought (that all of us who remember even just two years of communism know about) will be back. People love nothing more than telling others what to think.
I don’t share the optimism I am seeing here. If I manage to crawl out of the hole in my life I have ideas how to improve the internet as a whole as well but again, the internet is just series of devices. A regime can take over ISPs and only allow “approved” traffic.
What are we going to do then? Rediscover HAM radio? That can be tracked as well.
I am not saying the bad guys are omnipotent. They are often quite incompetent even! But their game is to gradually take over and start tightening the hold and NOBODY has done anything to stop their super slow, obvious and technically easy to counter strategy.
What makes you all think the next 1-5 years will be suddenly different? Barely anyone lifted a finger to help in the last 20 years.
3
derek-zhou
It is a much longer game than that. What has happened repeatedly in the history is:
- Authoritarian took over a state
- Smart people fled said state
- Said state lose out in global competition due to the lack of smart people
- Said state collapsed because at some point it could not fool its citizen about its strength any more
Each stage may take decades.
1
AstonJ
That doesn’t make it ok or that we should accept it or not try to do anything about it..
The thing is the world is not fine. I shared a video with our senior mods a while back as I was concerned about the impact of AI on dev jobs and how that could directly impact a large number of people in our community, unfortunately it looks like the video and his account are no longer available. IIRC the person is saying he’s tired (of living) because it feels like he’s not living and he feels like he’s not lived for a very long time - with him constantly having to make choices between things like either being able to afford to take his children out or to fix things around the home. It’s a similar story all over right now - young people can no longer afford to buy homes, people are having to choose between heating their homes and eating, and the rest of us seem to be getting ripped off (profits of supermarkets and oil companies have tripled here in the UK since the pandemic).
Most of us in the tech space are somewhat shielded - for now anyway. In all my life I have never witnessed times as uncertain as these. It’s very worrying, but to tie this back into the topic, when things get worse (which seems likely) the need for a free internet is going to be more important than ever.
0
mudasobwa
Creator of Cure
I believe that’s what makes you a bit overworried 
I had. Imagine for once the times when your whole fatherland collapses, and say Manchester proclaims independence. I by no mean devalue your worries, but trust me, the cruel govt and tough laws are not the scariest occasion ever.
Define “free.” Even in USSR we have had FIDO over landline. Here in Spain I use torrents to download stuff I paid for before (due to many changes in my living location I left behind a ton of VHS, CDs, DVDs, books etc.) I never grab something I didn’t pay for, but for what I once bought I tell the authorities to go to hell with their “torrents are punished” stuff. I just don’t care. Once they came for me. I printed logs for my home server for the days in question (5kg of paper approx) and defended myself in the court in Spanish (which I honestly speak twice as bad as Elixir.) I outchattered them with infinite number of cross-references to my logs, and whatnot.
In general, it’s always better to live in great climate under smart humane govt. And frankly I am pretty sure the climate is more important, because one cannot outsmart a rain.
2
derek-zhou
Accepting is a privilege enjoyed only by paying customer or the boss. I cope with it when I can, or vote with my feet when I no longer can. OK, vote with feet is also a privilege many do not enjoy. Life is tough.
I am skeptical about any activism because it is a game that favor dirty players. Play fair and die a martyr, or play dirty and become the new dark lord?
3