In July of 2023, Bluesky made an initial offering of shares for \$8 million, which was followed in October of 2024 by a \$15 million offering. Eyebrows were raised when the second share offering was led by a firm called Blockchain Capital, especially because the new CEO, Jay Graeber, is a software engineer coming from a blockchain and cryptocurrency background, having previously worked as a developer for cryptocurrency called Zcash.

And now I learn that a much bigger, secretive deal is in the works now that a significant migration from Twitter has happened, led by a company called Bain Capital:

Who is Bain Capital? It's a private equity firm founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney (former US senator and governor of Massachusets, and the Republican nominee a thousand years ago in 2012) and associates. Private equity firms are notorious for taking over companies not precisely for the benefit of society, but to wring as much money from them as possible whatever the cost to other people, including their customers and employees, and the companies themselves. You remember the buyout and bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us? That was Bain, together with a couple of other predatory investment companies. During the 2012 presidential election campaign, Obama criticized Romney strongly for the practice of Bain companies of shipping jobs overseas.

I am very wary of a social media operation run by crypto and private equity bros. And I am very skeptical about the image that Bluesky has created of itself as some sort of democratic alternative to X. Especially when there is a truly democratic, decentralized alternative in the fediverse.

Discuss...

#Bluesky #Fediverse #Democracy #Corporations #SocialMedia #Enshittification

Don't depend on corporations to grant you rights. Defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you're on one).

In July of 2023, Bluesky made an initial offering of shares for \$8 million, which was followed in October of 2024 by a \$15 million offering. Eyebrows were raised when the second share offering was led by a firm called Blockchain Capital, especially because the new CEO, Jay Graeber, is a software engineer coming from a blockchain and cryptocurrency background, having previously worked as a developer for cryptocurrency called Zcash.

Naturally investors will seek a return on their investment, so Bluesky will have to find ways of making money. They promise not to do it through advertising, but instead offer subscription services. Right now they offer a way to create a personal domain, and they are also musing about things like charging for higher quality video.

The goal of Bluesky, like any other social media company, is to make money, and as much of it as possible, for those investors and shareholders. The platform for you to share your thoughts with others is not the goal. It's the mechanism.

Cory Doctorow, who has done a lot of thinking about the evolution of tech corporations, which led him to the concept of enshittification, explains why he won't join Bluesky here. Sure, Bluesky is cute and refreshing by comparison to Twitter, but so was Twitter scarcely ten years ago.

The web was not built to be fragmented into walled gardens that are delightfully simple to enter but practically impossible to leave. Quite the opposite, in fact. The web is designed for democracy. We owe it to ourselves to use it in that way.

#Corporations #SocialMedia #Web #Enshittification #Democracy