[mwinatschek]

Social media was doomed the moment its users were demoted from customers to exploitable sources of data. Bluesky will inevitably follow the same path of enshittification as every other social network before it. Its current success hinges solely on the nostalgic desire for a single platform where people can gather in peace. The real question is: How many cycles of doom will people endure before they finally stop jumping from one sinking ship to another?

[afavour]

> Bluesky will inevitably follow the same path of enshittification

Why do you say that? Bluesky is a protocol-first non profit. To my knowledge no company set up that way has achieved this level of success before. They don’t have the same motivations to enshittify that other networks do.

[jazzyjackson]

OpenAI was a nonprofit to make sure benefit of AGI was distributed equally.

I think it's plausible AT protocol allows a new level of interop/portability between services. It's also possible Bluesky burns through Blockchain Capital's money and starts doing crypto air drops like Keybase.

[potamic]

How is a company that has received investments, a non-profit? Those investors will require returns, which means the primary objective must be profit. Otherwise they would have just asked for donations.

[afavour]

> Those investors will require returns, which means the primary objective must be profit

It doesn’t mean that has to be the primary objective, just that at some point it should happen.

[potamic]

That's what OP was referring to, the same path of enshittification

[izzydata]

There are no ads so that is one aspect that could prevent enshitification. Businesses can't just spend money to force their way into peoples feeds. At least not in a traditional advertising kind of way.

[CaptainFever]

To be fair, is it better for customers to jump from sinking ship to sinking ship, or to permanently stay with a smaller, leaky boat?

Even though I don't like the term "enshittification", I do think that it is inevitable that BlueSky would need to make some unpopular changes in the future to become financially sustainable.

But is this such a bad thing? I used the Fediverse before, which is the "permanent place" that many people claim. But it had many disadvantages, from my point of view. No algorithms, no search, and I didn't like how defederation made it hard to follow anyone I liked.

I hosted a server myself, but it cost money. BlueSky doesn't, until it does. But maybe it is better to basically "exploit" BlueSky's free offers, before it changes?

TLDR: Is it better to jump from free service to free service (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Reddit), or is it better to permanently stay on a paid or lower-resourced service (e.g. IRC, forums)? I think many people seem to prefer the free version, and jump off when it starts "sinking" (trying to become financially sustainable).