This move came from Jay so that she could focus more on the atproto ecosystem and forward looking development. Personally, I'm happy for her. The CEO role gets extremely wrapped up in operations & org building, and as a technologist I'm not sure it would be for me.
I've met with Toni a couple of times and he seems really excellent. He was CEO of Automattic (Wordpress) from 2006 to 2014, and that means a fair amount of expertise making an open-source-first company work. He cares about an open internet and protocol, and seems very keen to drive the mission forward.
For a little extra assurance, atproto is hopefully quite close to establishing an IETF working group, and the DID PLC Directory is likewise close to establishing the independent entity. Our priorities for an open network are unchanged.
There is a very common inflection point in companies where the CEO needs to be about maintaining what is built instead of growing forever. You cannot, for instance, when you have 60% market share expect the company to keep growing linearly. The people who do end up stooping to questionable means to grow new markets they have no business growing, like for instance children.
Some orgs will go through three, from founder, to growth, to sustaining.
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We don't need "open" networks (Digital Panopticons), we need private networks.
Both are good
What are your thoughts on people self hosting their own websites and blogs instead of posting to big tech platforms? I’d say that extra openness was a good thing. I absolutely believe in privacy as well, and think ownership is important too.
We already could've done that before, just throw a HTML file on a HTTP server on a cheap VPS
That's pretty much what atproto is, except it's typed JSON rather than HTML, and HTTP+WebSockets to allow aggregation.
I wrote more about how it works here if you're curious: https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/
and I actually don't hate that bit (I really like lexicons, although I might have approached it in a different way) - what I hate is the aggregation layer. I know that it is possible to have an AppView-less atproto app (e.g. RedDwarf), but I feel like much of the ecosystem still defaults to the assumption that it will go through the Bluesky AppView.
Unrelated apps (https://leaflet.pub/, https://tangled.org/, http://semble.so/) don't go through Bluesky Appview (since they need aggregations of different kind of data). I think aggregation is the only model that can compete with centralized services on UX, but of course different apps would need different backends.
You may be confusing the Relay, a protocol component run by Bluesky, with the Bluesky AppView
https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers
This is like saying anyone can open a lemonade stand in Mogadishu.
Who is this "we" and where can I read their opinions?
We have never had an online open public space where each of us has our voice, can shape our experience, can use our own compsable moderation, can integrate with whatever apps we choose.
How, in spite of having no data on what it would be like, people are so confident that leaving shared open connected mediums behind is the only way to go is such a mystery to me.
The radio station I'm on just played a modem tone, Mountain Chill Radio. But I was already gearing up to write what an amazing era this has been, how incredible a rise it has been that we can connect & talk, with so many people. My dialtone travels so much further & that is glorious. I have no idea, feel like I would have no chance to build a good private network for myself, that my life would stagnante and closed, if I had to build my networks myself in private, smuggling the light of my soul to others rather than being able to let it out.
I am happy to be online. I am proud of my "data", my voice, my app records. There's some less pleasant less shiny corners! But it is mad incredible that I get to do this live, that I get to have so many edges of connection and serendipity. People provide the most wild interesting comments and suggestions and topics, ongoingly. I benefit so much from them sharing their lives.
I spiritually believe deeply that we have our light to share with the universe. To turn your nose up at sharing, to renounce & see only evil, to let the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, this spectre of the closed/bad/no-good controlling systems shape our thinking here is a pandora's box: I say you are shutting the door right as hope is finally trying to get out.