So I thought that BlueSky was set up just like Lemmy in that it was fully decentralized into a sort of “terrorist cell” structure that wasn’t focused on profits, but then found out that BlueSky has a CEO. Since this is a business, what makes BlueSky fundamentally different from Twitter or Instagram?
I feel like so long as a social media platform exists through monetization (in some form or another private companies need to make money), we are ultimately replacing one dictator with another.
Social media servers cost money. There are only three options.
1: (Lemmy, bsky now) - someone runs it for their own private reasons and users bemefit as side effect or charity.
2: (Twitter, facebook, reddit) - someone runs it as marketing, and sells user eyeballs or data.
3: (some MMOs, bsky future) - someone runs it and sells users things to keep it running.
Baky says they want to keep the current experience free, and are contemplating a freemium add-on subscription. Maybe they’ll stick to this and maybe they wont, but “they sell subs” isnt guaranteed enshittification they way that an IPO and ads are.