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when everyone has a different explanation of why the bad numbers are not that bad or why the small number is still very important, the simplest explanation is that the bad number is actually just indeed very bad

I think it's mostly bad in the context of the funding model. A social network doesn't have to be the biggest to be healthy, nor does it need infinite growth. It doesn't have to be on fire all the time. But when you're funded by folks who expect those things, well now it's a problem.

it sure is suboptimal from a funding perspective. but i do disagree that small is healthy in this context, these types of networks do need infinite growth not in the vc-brained type of way, but if the sales pitch of fedi or atproto only appeals to a small number of people, the sales pitch is wrong

obviously people dont care about these abstract concepts, but about the practical implementations that bring them concrete value. but how long are we gonna keep teling ourselves that if the right app comes along people will come on board?

like, i think fedi and atproto communities are healthy in the same way that some facebook groups are healthy: some collectives of people online together get meaning and value of being together online, in spite of the affordances of the substrate

@laurenshof.online Ah, no, sorry: fedi is full of projects which may or may not work, but it's quite alive as a platform. Because it's *actually* decentralised. Will it ever explode? I don't know. But it will be able to keep trying for a long, long time. Not so Bluesky.

@blackskyweb.xyz has a full copy of the bluesky network even if the Bluesky company got nuked. blacksky.community is their client soon @eurosky.social as well There are multiple replicas of the identity service which is in the process of being migrated to an independent Swiss org.

granted there are some choices that Bluesky the company intentionally makes that obscures this fact: the default bsky dot app client hardcodes their own full network cache api server and moderation for brand safety in their words, but the protocol doesn't require it and most clients don't do this