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{
  "uri": "at://did:plc:mdjhvva6vlrswsj26cftjttd/com.whtwnd.blog.entry/3lip3woqiei2q",
  "cid": "bafyreifl4mhdvlhjqsw76wocuev3j2i3or5xnapwgdqwzcfep5srty2glu",
  "value": {
    "$type": "com.whtwnd.blog.entry",
    "theme": "github-light",
    "title": "Newsletter #104 introduction",
    "content": "Ryan Broderick wrote an excellent essay in his newsletter Garbage Day this week, titled \"[you can never truly go back](https://www.garbageday.email/p/you-can-never-truly-go-back)\". Part of his argument is that \"the difference between the illusion of power and the real thing is vanishingly small. And in an attention economy, they effectively become the same thing over time.\" His observation is that there is no going back to the old state of the internet, that we need to adopt to the new technological landscape. He says that we cannot only go offline to deal with the problems, but that the solutions need by building new mass appeal platforms to tell other stories to voters.\n\nBroderick is clear that he thinks that the fediverse cannot be the mass appeal platform for this. I understand why he wrote that, and I don't think he is wrong per se, but to me the situation is slightly more complex than that:\n\nAs [I wrote last week](https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-103/), the differences in responses between Bluesky and the fediverse regarding the Super Bowl halftime show cast a lot of doubt on the idea of whether the fediverse actually wants to be a mass appeal platform. A significant part of the user base of the fediverse is clearly more interested in being a countercultural platform.\n\nThe second complicating factor is that I'm seeing quite a bifurcating response between different countries in how they think about the different mass appeal platforms. I keep being surprised by how vocal the part of Dutch public society that is concerned with social platforms rejects Bluesky and is fully on board the Mastodon train. A similar situation seems to happen in Germany as well, where a campaign called 'Save Social' also seems much more focused on presenting Mastodon and the fediverse as an alternative than Bluesky.\n\nPersonally, I keep switching between a viewpoint that social platforms are 'winner-takes-all', versus the idea that open protocols and a multi-power world select for a fragmented, semi-interoperable plurality of places instead.",
    "createdAt": "2025-02-21T15:16:35.610Z",
    "visibility": "public"
  }
}