ASM Updates: Bluesky growth continues

16 Nov 2024 - Robert W. Gehl

Here’s what caught my eye (and ear) this week in the world of alternative social media. I didn’t plan this, but it turns out a lot of this is coming from 404 Media – shout out to them! If you aren’t reading their articles… do it now!

The Bluesky Bump continues

The coverage of Bluesky’s growth is everywhere. I just watched my local CBC station present a story on it during the 6 PM news.

You can read lots of takes, but the one that caught my eye is Jason Koebler’s article in 404 Media. He talks about the rapid growth of Bluesky, but also puts it in conversation with Mastodon – a system he had previously been excited about. While Bluesky is growing, Mastodon “feels” to Koebler to be more stagnant. His theory is that this is due to Meta’s Threads:

Threads’s uneven entry into the Fediverse feels like it has made my personal feeds deader. My theory and fear is that Threads has allowed people to perform the act of federating by having their Threads posts go to the fediverse, but it does not allow people on Threads to respond to people on Mastodon. This gives people a permission structure to abandon their Mastodon accounts, use Threads, and sort of passively invest in the future of decentralized social media while actually just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg’s side project.

In contrast, he argues Bluesky feels vibrant and human.

Having watched the “Killer Hype Cycle” play out with Mastodon back in late 2022 and then seeing articles within a few months stating the fediverse had failed, I wonder at what point we will see articles with headlines such as “Remember Bluesky?”

Maybe this time will be different. In some ways, it has to be – Bluesky has accepted venture capital, and that brings with it the expectations of growth and profit. Which makes it hard for me to consider Bluesky a Twitter alternative. It strikes me as yet another corporate social media platform – with all the downsides that brings with it.

AI and social engineering

What downsides, you might ask? Well, speaking of 404 Media, their podcast just released an episode featuring an interview with a cybersecurity expert Rachel Tobac on how generative AI is currently being integrated into social engineering. Tobac adeptly walks us through how deep fakes, voice cloning, and other AI tools are being used by scammers and computer hackers. For example, she discussed the case of a social engineering attack using deepfake Zoom corporate clones resulting in a loss of $25 million USD.

I’ve been researching and writing about this with a colleague, Sean Lawson, for some years now (e.g., our book and this article). While I was not particularly shocked by what Tobac talked about, I did not find it comforting to hear she thinks such AI-powered social engineering can only be stopped with stronger privacy regulations, particularly of tech companies and social media corporations. I say this because that’s exactly what Sean and I have been arguing, and it seems like my native country the USA won’t be engaging regulations any time soon.

Why not? Well, we’ve basically granted too much power to corporate social media and other big tech companies. Their lobbying power in the US was incredible before the recent presidential election, and it’s only going to be more powerful with Trump in office. The lack of privacy regulations forces US citizens into an opt-in setup where their personal data are ripe for the taking, fueling attention-grabbing AI slop – and thus also tools easily adopted for targeted scams.

I should note there’s nothing in Bluesky’s Privacy Policy that leads me to believe Bluesky won’t partipate in similar data abuses if it means providing a return on investement to its backers. It’s also unclear to me that they are truly committed to moving the ATProto to the IETF – it’s been more than a year since they floated that goal. A defacto corporate-controlled protocol – as open as it might be – is still a corporate-controlled protocol.

Post Tags

• bluesky
• ASM update
• social engineering