Comment by cyberax
3 days ago
On the other hand, running something like BlueSky is not terribly expensive. A foundation with a reasonable endowment can do that indefinitely.
Initially, it can be funded by selling tools that do analytics or by donations (like Wikipedia).
If Bluesky ever gets close to becoming a serious threat to Meta's walled garden, the effort to fight back against them will take a lot of capital. Just the legal battles alone will cost a fortune.
Wikipedia isn't a threat to anyone, they just have to generate enough capital to exist.
Yes! If the venture capitalists that are already involved stick to their stated principles and don't demand eternal growth (which... fingers crossed?), I think bsky has an extremely feasible, promising future.
They've intentionally kept a low footprint to keep expenses down, and while income via donation is out of the picture (unless AT Proto grows into a full ecosystem, I suppose?), cosmetics are a tried-and-true model for supporting something that most users use for free, but that some power users spend all day on and want shiny stuff for. They'll probably end up exploring Discord-esque paywalled features for power users as well, which isn't necessarily ideal but is leagues better than getting on the currently-dying vicious cycle of Display Ads, IMO.
This is hardly the first instance of "if only venture capitalists light their money on fire, we can have nice things."
Spoiler: Venture capitalists don't light their money on fire, and we can't have nice things.