jrm4

Now perhaps might be a good time for the reminder of a truth always obscured:

Black People (not Black "women" -- ALL BLACK PEOPLE - ) are the practical always-voting correctly BASE of the Democratic party -- which in turn makes them the moral center of voting in America.

Right?

I'm starting to realize you can save time by just counting the number of times people use the word "I" when you ask the question

No it isn't.

If you are aware and able to vote in an election, and you can percieve *any* difference in potential harm between the two candidates...

Then not voting is a choice to NOT engage in harm reduction and thus, to cause harm.

You who do this should feel bad about yourselves.

Op may be right and *you're definitely wrong that it is impossible*

Sorry if you're weak or whatever, but folks like myself (Black, it may matter) are well used to living, existing, being in hostile spaces and keeping our heads, strategically if we think there may be value.

As a Black person familiar with also his own parents' struggles and stories politically

frankly...the entirety of this discussion is *very weird to me.*

Y'all, ATProto is pointless and it just hit me why.

It's too complicated. Ok, so then your response will be "then we can educate and hold hands and explain and gain trust"

You do THAT and *boom* you ALREADY just solved the problem with humans that you were just trying to solve with complex tech.

Facts. The related idea that I've been working with is -- we shouldn't focus on being *nice* to the opposition, which kind of implies *being mean* -- but I've been reframing that into - "they want a drill sergeant/ mean father" type. The "meanness" needs to be there regardless of like or dislike

So true, and the Masto people -- well meaning -- mostly DID NOT HELP by "overcorrecting" WAY hard.

(sadly, in my experience, **especially** the Black people)

whoo don't get me started.

Honestly, I think Masto missed its moment by not going hard *with big companies* after the eli lilly thing, but of course that's the opposite of most of the masto ethos

Um -- so I like the theory and vibes

But an *ID* is the literal opposite of anonymity.

This really doesn't make any sense.

Nice, same as as Cairo, GA?

aka

KAY-row?

Haha

Cairo, Georgia
and
Havana, Florida

near me fit this *perfectly*

Also, there's the whole "Houston everywhere except texas"

why ATProto is pointless:

It would be orders of magnitude easier to build a (or better yet multiple) non-profit wikipedia-style "twitter" that just relied on non-tech trust, than it is to engineer a new protocol to do something that has NEVER REMOTELY been done well-- aka, "take it with you"

I agree, but like -- *layers*

It just feels smarter to build on the definitely functional mediocrity that is Mastodon (which you could build healthy centralization on top of) than to go hard on "you can take it with you," which has literally never been done well and is already showing flaws.

I was thinking of it in the Schneier sense, but I suppose what I really mean is "fails in a more antifragile fashion."

Feels like Mastodon's numerous smaller failures are way more manageable than ATProto's bigger ones.

I guess its this: I **love** ATProto's theory. "Take your stuff with you" is such a cool idea.

But, like, I'm a huge geek pushing 50 -- and I'll self host everything EXCEPT EMAIL because ITS TOO HARD.

But now ATProto's gonna come along and fix this and make it easy? So doubtful. Good luck.

Don't get me wrong, I *want* all of you to be correct in theory about "everyone and their own repo"

But I *just dont see it happening* -- I mean, that's prohibitively difficult for even the nerdiest of nerds WITH EMAIL. That's why I -- wait for it -- pay a trusted provider.

Spoken like someone who doesn't remember the early days of email. :)

Yes, server hopping sucks. But my bet is that the small failures that require server hopping are smarter than atproto trying to fix everything once and for all, while still showing the same problems?

All of this proves to me the ultimate point that just kind of hit me:

Mastodon is better because it "fails elegantly"

All of these little small failures are good little human learning instances that will improve things.

atproto will just likely FAIL HARD

Again , the concept of ATProto has picked the wrong battle. "Every provider will eventually suck so lets introduce this VERY complex thing that no one has ever remotely done before" seems less smart than "How are providers incentivized to suck less" -- when the latter has happened, incrementally.

Sure. And my argument would be -- this is exactly why email/Mastodon is a smarter bet. Of all of these services it fails the most elegantly.

ATProto is trying to invent basically a new concept (take it with you) that sounds great in the abstract but ultimately fails on complexity, I suspect.

You answered your own question :)

Again, I just don't believe "inventing a completely new concept, aka 'you can always take it with you'" -- something untested, unproven, etc etc is smarter than "eh, just do the email thing. it can suck, but it works"

yup KEEP GOING.

Being forever tied to an identity thing IS THE PROBLEM.

Servers and identities as ephemeral and disposable is GOOD. It forces people to actually, uh, commune

Technically I *hope* so too, but I'm pretty much 99% skeptical at this point.

If you're talking Masto, I think it's biggest problem is actually that it tries to police assholes TOO MUCH and is thus boring.

Again, wrong.

I care about what is *actually* sustainable. Mastodon's model is email's model. We at least know that CAN work.

This ATProto thing presently looks to be doing the very thing it's trying to prevent, centralization.

Saying it a bunch, but I now believe ATProto's goal is inherently pointless and dangerous -- ; sounds nice but introduces the very thing we're trying to fix, "centralization"

It's better to just force people (or markets) to find trustworthy providers. We *know* this can work, because email.

As I've said elsewhere, I just think this "extreme portability" is itself a *pointless* goal, and that, actually "just find a reliable provider you can trust" is better.

We KNOW that works. It's called email. The other thing *introduces* dangerous centralization.

Let me double down.

The thing Bluesky is trying to do, optimize "keep all your stuff forever" is simply *not a useful goal* and introduces centralization.

You know what mildly significant technology also has no way of doing this AT ALL and still is sort of popular?

Email.

Again, mastodon's it.

this like, literally proves that this protocol *inherently* sucks, no?

yes, the people over at mastodon are cornier right now, but it's the best technical model