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During the Napster wars, the record labels *seriously* pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba
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Well. The Napster wars anecdote put a lot of my pacing across the floor into perspective. I'd like to wait until there's some proper federation, but I'm also impulsive, and a small-time artist, and feeling the pressure to join ASAP, because artists have been 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 there.
@bigolifacks @pluralistic Same. Decided to hold off for now, but given my size I could benefit from the growing network effects over there.
Would hate to build a community, though, only for it to fall apart when the owner(s) lose their mind before any solid bridges elsewhere have been built.
Wish the digital world didn't just feel like one giant honeypot.
@pluralistic Is changing the AT Protocol in-scope for the "free our feeds" effort?
From what I've seen, AT protocol requires relays to drink from the entire BlueSky firehose and replicate it. That means it costs, minimum, hundreds per month if not thousands to run a relay. And that's today, it will only get worse if Bluesky gets more popular.
What if the architecture is just not realistically federateable?
@pluralistic I've seen a handful of fedizens being like "I can't believe Doctorow would sign on to Free our Feeds!" when my first reaction was "obviously he'd support Free our Feeds."
When you've said your main issue with Bluesky and centralized networks is "no fire exits" it's practically a no-brainer to support building those exits. Expensive, but probably easier then telling everyone to stop having fun wrong (network effects 
The Napster story is also a great perspective on this
@filifa @pluralistic My impression of Doctorow is that he's a "perfect is the enemy of the good" and "some change is better than no change" person, overall. He doesn't seem likely to get paralyzed by ideological purism; he'll do what gets another step done right now.
@guyjantic @filifa @pluralistic exactly my perception too. I don't -like- Bluesky. But should I be in favour of efforts to improve it? Sure!
@http_error_418 @filifa @pluralistic Similar. It makes me uncomfortable to see people flocking to a service apparently constructed to be another turnkey billionaire playground, but for right now it's a better alternative to twitter and facebook. Maybe it will stay that way, who knows?
@guyjantic @filifa @pluralistic I don't expect that it will. But I support efforts to make it less shitty even if I don't have much hope for that outcome.