Not really. You’re strongly funnelled down the bluesky owned instance, most uses of ATProto are more or less mere plugins for that main instance. Can I migrate my account to another instance? Unclear.

The VC funding also adds another layer that implies they’re going to trap people into their monetisable market share sooner or later. This seems incompatible with fediverse principles.

So while they present themselves as a more technically refined iteration of the fediverse, the whole thing is a big trap. Enjoy it while it lasts would be my advice, but if you’ve got the sway then try to get those close to you to migrate to mastodon before it goes wrong.

The unfortunate reality is that most jobs linked to humanities are considered “passion jobs” for which there are more applicants than openings by a wide margin. If you don’t have connections that gives you an edge, you’re likely being crowded out by those who do.

This is probably not helped at all by AI/LLM buzz meaning firms are increasingly seeking to automate roles associated with language processing of whatever kind.

So suggestions might be: Widen your net: consider roles like administration, HR, paralegal etc. which generally go to educated people but don’t have specific academic subject requirements.

Retrain in something in demand like a trade, healthcare assistant or similar.

Attempt to leverage your language skills to present yourself as a “prompt engineer”, lean into the AI hype to land a job.

To a large extent people are just the products of their surroundings. Doing the default thing is an energy saving technique, as well as something which people do to prevent being ostracised by their peers. If you’re able to break that in some small way, you’re still doing better than most.

If you want to do more, I guess you have to interrogate why you’re not doing more. Is it fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Lack of time, energy or resources? Dependency on e.g. cars? Lack of confidence in your actions?

In every other aspect of society, choice is heralded as a good thing, a fundamental aspect of freedom even. We were supposed to believe that having a range of different brands of toothpaste is fundamentally a good thing, and people happily choose which ones they want. We vote, it’s freedom.

Fundamentally federation is freedom as compared to centralised networks that lock you in. You can choose where to go and you never get locked in because you can choose to move instances later on - in particular Mastodon lets you take your followers with you.

If people can’t spend 15 minutes making a decision on something they’re going to spend probably hundreds of hours a year on, what does that say?

People figured out email, and that’s essentially the same set of choices - you get an email provider, you don’t go to “centralemail.com” where you can only communicate with people on that same locked in-platform.

The whole thing about people “not wanting to pick an instance” is just a bad meme. It’s all about marketing and the fact Bluesky and its predecessors like Twitter and Facebook had the money to chuck around to attract people to the platform by e.g. paying off influencers to join.

It’s also the case that BS aspires to be a federated platform (see: ATProto) - apparently it wants exactly the same “problems” that Mastodon has!

But, you know, will inevitably do something shitty with respect to that because VC funding.

Trump’s gaggle of tech bros loves this opinion

Listen I just don’t have sympathy for it at this point. If people insist on maintaining iPad-only tech literacy then they can catch up with any average intelligence 4 year old.

Linux is so good today. Windows is increasingly shooting itself in the foot and MacOS requires a huge premium (and also billionaires suck) which is increasingly incompatible with budget conscious sectors like education. Really great stuff if you’re managing to get people to love it there.

Kind of like how I’d be pessimistic about sticking my fingers in the closing boot of a cybertruck yeah.

I think it’s more going to be more like twitter than they’re bargaining for.

I mean I get it. And network effects are a thing. But these VC backed/owned firms (like bluesky) are cancer. Fascism promoting, lying, grifting, you name it. Can we please just try a little harder to support the community efforts?

If you Google “sign up for mastodon” the first result you get is a sign-up page for mastodon.social which is the default instance. The sign up page is straight forward. I get we’re all coddled by iPads or whatever but this argument evades me.

The much, much bigger issue is people just flocking to where there’s the capital for marketing. The feature sets/philosophy could be precisely 1:1 swapped and people would still end up on the platform with all of the money to throw around.

What, the VC funded tech firm makes lots of noise about not being evil before eventually just becoming evil yet again pattern? Yeah I don’t like it either.

News corp. They’re the single most effective driver of fascist influence in the 21st century among the politically passive part of the population. Everything that all these other companies do is underpinned by News Corp outlets like Fox, The Sun, etc. justifying, equivocating, scapegoating and propagandising.

They’re all going to bluesky because for some reason as soon as social media gets involved, the wonderful human ability to pattern match just gets switched off.

Thank you!

Post surgery sick leave. My body is still a bit fucked but it’s also the most time off I’ve had in one go in years.

When Elon Musk experiments by taking a day off ketamine.

For-profit US tech boycott club!