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Maybe the reason Mastodon never got off the ground is because Bsky basically strangled them by popping up out of nowhere and stealing their potential userbase?

Beyond that, the fact that Bsky came up out of nowhere and ate Mastodon’s lunch around that time just reeks of hostility to me.

No, AFAIK they still push ads on you whether you’re monetized or not.

As Google intended.

How soon before the rest of the web chases ad blockers away?

Redlib still works, but it’s read-only (not a problem for me, I killed my Reddit account last year), and it’s probably a matter of time before that’s killed off too.

Did those users not hear they can dodge Age Verification by using a different Bluesky compatible app?

And beyond that, it’s not like you can’t migrate to Blacksky or another third-party PDS, or even host your own PDS if you have the hardware and admin chops for it, although you can also self-host on the Fediverse too, and there’s thousands of instances on the Fediverse vs. a handful on ATproto, plus other than Blacksky who are supposedly completely independent from Bsky’s corporate infrastructure, most third-party PDSes and pretty much all self-hosted PDSes still have to interact with Bsky’s corporate infrastructure at some point where if you host a Fediverse instance, you own the whole thing.

If Bluesky dies and the users go back to Twitter, they never believed in anything more than ‘I want to be part of the herd.’

• If ATproto (I migrated to Blacksky last year when Bsky made an unpopular ToS change) dies, I also have a Mastodon account I’ve been active on lately although my Mastodon account predates my ATproto account by a couple years, that I’ll happily move to full time, I killed my Twitter months ago because I wasn’t even active on there anymore anyways plus the baggage associated with that platform now, and I don’t plan on setting another one back up.

That’s the whole idea. Buy up all the silicon production, go public, tank and take the rest of the tech industry down with you, and rule the world.

Once again, thanks Madoff Altman for buying up all the chip supply just to monopolize it. I’m never gonna let that go.

And the same thing that could also work in Win365’s favor against PCs should it get a consumer tier.

The fifth part has an asterisk: Access can still be denied for physical copies, too. The Crew proved this, not to mention all the old G4WL CD titles which are effectively paperweights because their DRM is defunct and there’s no crack yet for a lot of them if there ever will be any, and as for BD movies, in theory the studios could revoke AACS keys for a given group of media and render those media into coasters as well.

Audio CDs are DRM-free at least so they’re pretty much immune to that, but if Sony had their way with their rootkit DRM and didn’t get successfully sued over it, audio CDs would be DRM-encumbered too, thankfully they didn’t get their way and did get successfully sued over it so audio CDs remain DRM-free to this day so you could rip them to FLAC and do as you wish with that lossless copy; transcode it to a lossy codec such as Opus or Ogg Vorbis, make additional copies of the lossless copy, etc.

And even dedicated BD players are seemingly on the way out as most of the major manufacturers either severely pared or discontinued player production outright, assuming they’re even in the home AV business anymore to begin with.

Sony just has one model each for a 1080p and 4K BD player, I don’t know what Panasonic is up to with their players if they even make anymore, and beyond that, boutique videophile brands like Magnetar and Reavon were still making players last time I checked, but they’re ludicrously expensive.

Assuming Sony discontinues their dedicated disc players and moves exclusively to streaming boxes, they’ll be done with physical media forever. And I’m still surprised they even make traditional AVRs and speakers and didn’t kill those in favor of a couple soundbars yet.

As for second-hand physical games, from PS4 onward, there’s the chance that a lot of your discs might not work once support is dropped for those consoles as most of them are glorified license keys.

Nintendo made that concept literal with the Game-Key Cards and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Switch 3 if one actually happens, dropped carts altogether, and the Switch 3 effectively become a glorified tablet that you lost access to your games on after support is discontinued because it’s digital-only.

Even MS is playing with moving PCs to the cloud, and if Win365 takes off enough to get a consumer tier, it’s game over for PC ownership.

The only thing that’ll kill Sony as a company is if they have a CED-level screw-up as the CED was such a massive screw-up that it killed RCA as a company, and Sony has yet to screw up that badly. I make the RCA comparison because RCA in their prime, before their stupidity got the best of them, was basically in the position Sony is currently in with having their hands in basically everything. I really feel like Sony and other big companies for that matter, should treat RCA’s demise and the CED debacle that caused it as a cautionary tale, but that’s just my opinion.

Plus like I pointed out, even if PS and their home electronics division died, Sony themselves will still live on because they have their hands in basically everything. They have a pro audio and video division, including ENG. They’re in the still cam business and make image sensors for pretty much everyone else too, and unless that changed, they also have an industrial imaging division as well.

Also, Sony barely makes dedicated disc players anymore, only having one model each of 1080p and 4K BD players in production, and I feel like those won’t be much longer for the world either.

Sony’s future dedicated media player is probably gonna be a glorified Roku-type streaming box; effectively a thin client to stream rented media to.

I’m surprised they even still make traditional AVRs and speakers and didn’t switch exclusively to soundbars or drop out of that market entirely yet, even.

The future for physical media is gonna be grim as even though you can still buy BDs/DVDs and CDs and vinyl second-hand, there might not be any new players for those formats being made in the foreseeable future anymore apart from videophile/audiophile stuff. Although in an odd twist of fate, and potentially a repeat of a trend from the early '80s when the audio CD first launched, CDs are outselling vinyl again.

No. And even if PS and their home electronics division died, Sony has their hands in too many pies for it to hurt them longterm as a company; they’re in the cine and ENG industries, they make still cams, they make image sensors for everyone, and last time I thought they also had an industrial imaging division, Sony as a company will be fine even if they lost PS and their home electronics division.

To put it bluntly, Sony is in the position now, that RCA was in when they were in their prime, only Sony has yet to have a CED moment where RCA killed themselves in their stupidity with the CED. And no, Betamax and MD don’t count as neither of those formats killed Sony as a company, the CED otoh, killed RCA as a company.

Wanna bet Meta bought the lawmakers off?

Boy, this didn’t age well, given the KIDS Act passed the House and it’ll probably pass the Senate, and then it’s over for online freedom in the US.