You may have seen mention of how ICE raided a Hyundai plant under construction in Georgia and detained hundreds of Korean workers.

Well, it's turned into an absolute catastrophe that will cost the country at least several billion dollars and likely far more in future investments.

Read about it in this great @wdlindsy thread:

https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/115171198787024624

"Hyundai’s halt: Construction is paused, and Hyundai has signaled it won’t move forward with the plant. That’s a $4.3 billion investment gone."

@mackuba @thisismissem

!!!

The thing that make this tricky is the difficulty many have in distiguishing AT Protocol and Bluesky PBC. But in any case we do ourselves no favors by being uncivil with each other.

@mackuba @thisismissem

So, what the companies need to do, at the earliest possible moment is spin it all out to an independent standards effort where they do not have any proprietary advantage. Then enforce internally that they follow the standard and do not have their own version. (This is kind of where Mastodon extensions to ActivityPub seems dicey.)

But, as said above, it is really hard. Lots of competing forces and agendas. Get a bunch of VCs in the mix and it's nigh impossible.

@mackuba @thisismissem

What this would look like in.practice is all the things you mention. Better doc, distributions etc. But also economic support, promotions and clear metrics celebrating meaningful 'competitive' adoption of the standard.

The reason it is hard to do is because there are always people inside the company who view these adopters as competitors and since they have the lock on the information, they have an unfair advantage.

2/

@mackuba @thisismissem

Kind of hard disagree.

Having been involved in standards efforts over the years, some of which where initiated by single corporations. Can without a doubt say the ones that were successful were spearheaded by companies intent upon fostering independent adoption of the standard, and insuring they were not the sole dominant enterprise using it.

This is very hard to do, and more failed than were successful.

@thisismissem @mackuba

!!!

It can both be true that the protocols have interesting differences and the networks would be stronger if they were more decentralized.

Would argue that the decentralization issue is more acute with AT Protocol because of the overwhelming dominance of Bluesky PBC.

@thisismissem @mackuba

Yes. Like that too. Absolutely.

These are precisely the conversations we should be having. Fediverse decentralization has lots of room for improvement.

It's confounding that AT Protocol users are not demanding more diversification from Bluesky PBC. Blacksky is a great first step, but until a meaningful percentage are on independent nodes the entire network is at elevated risk.

We're heading into even more challenging times, and should be thinking more strategically.

@thisismissem @mackuba

And we need to be able to both have this discussion and band together to oppose these horrible laws.

And we will be better able to oppose them from positions of relative distributed decentralized strength than as highly concentrated centralized targets.

2/

@thisismissem @mackuba

Yes, and you could also say that the one that chose to capitulate in advance and avoid legal liability did so because they judged (probably rightly) that they were a very vulnerable target.

No one should be blaming Bluesky PBC for taking this sensible action. It would be a disservice to their shareholders to do otherwise.

The point is that their highly centralized nature gave them no choice.

1/

@thisismissem @mackuba

No there is not. And yet, in this case regulators did not go after anyone. One network decided to proactively capitulated while the other said it would not comply and offered rationales for resistance. This too should be part of the discussion.

And not saying that banding together to push back on these laws is not also important. All of this needs to be fair game for discussion and strategizing.

@thisismissem @mackuba

Discussing this vulnerability is not dumping on AT Protocol, which, as you point out, could and does have independent decentralized components. The protocol itself is not the problem. The current topology of the network and overwhelming dominance of Bluesky PBC is.

We are in a time when susceptibility to forces that seek to exert control over social media is very important. As such, these discussions are not only warranted, but vital.

2/

@thisismissem @mackuba

Don't think this is really a technical matter. It's just software, so of course there is nothing fundamental that can not be done. The issue comes down to the feasibility of enforcing these measures. Because Bluesky PBC is a relatively small very centralized target for enforcement they are particularly vulnerable. Internationally decentralized Mastodon, writ large, is not something that can easily be subjected to enforcement action.

1/

@mackuba @wjmaggos @thisismissem

Thing is, that the debate was about Bluesky PBC centralization issues, and the pushback ostensibly focuses on AT Protocol, but by extension includes criticism of Bluesky.

So, again there is a conflation of AT Protocol and Bluesky when it serves their PR interest, but a separation when it does not.

Edit: The point is AT Protocol again serving as a rhetorical shield for Bluesky PBC decentralization washing.

@wjmaggos @mackuba @thisismissem

Agree with this. It has been building for a while. Would say some correlation with the Bluesky Mississippi block and the online debate between Eugen Rochko and Mike Masnick.