s19e06: Fine, Social Networks; Are you in?

0.0 Context Setting

Sunday, 17 November 2024 in Portland, Oregon where it is cold and not raining and I have eaten half an orange scone. But it’s an American scone, and it doesn’t come from the scone region of England, so it doesn’t count and is an example of really bad appropriation.

0.1 Events

Nothing to report at this time.

1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 Fine, Social Networks

OK, so part of what my bit of the internet is talking and excited about lately is Bluesky, one of the “major” text-based social networks. For those following along, the main ones are:

• Threads, owned by Meta/Facebook, bootstrapped from Instagram, and with hundreds of millions of users
• Mastodon, a decentralized open-source social network built on an open protocol called ActivityPub, in theory part of the Fediverse of open protocol social applications, with lots and lots of users
• Bluesky, also a decentralized-but-not-right-now open protocol and mostly open source social network, initially backed by Jack Dorsey and his beard, but Jack left, with about 15 million users

Bluesky is getting attention right now in part because:

Threads