It is why passersby like me can't get into either Twitter or Mastodon when it is a culture of getting outraged and shouting at each other, to collect a choir of people nodding and agreeing in the replies: "well done for saying it like it is."
These people forgot how humans talk and have arguments outside of their Internet echo chambers.
Anger, insults and hate sells more (creates more engagement) than reasoned arguments. No one would have posted this on HN if is was otherwise. So don't worry, they are not hurting their chances, the next topic that can be summarised with an angry title like "xxx is the most obtuse crock of shit" will get great traction on HN.
The linked article/toot and certain replies seriously makes me want to just shutdown my personal mastodon server and move on from the technology altogether.
"Also I don't care if I'm spreading FUD or if I'm wrong on some of this stuff. I spent an insane amount of time reading the docs and looking at implementation code, moreso than most other people. If I'm getting anything wrong, it's the fault of the Bluesky authors for not having an understandable protocol and for not bothering to document it correctly."
It's unfortunate because there are some valid points in his criticism.
It still does in my circle. The overloading of "crypto", though, has become such a source of confusion and misunderstanding that I have stopped using it and just use the full word, be it cryptography or cryptocurrency, instead.
(Of course it's perfectly possible, for all I know, that SW is not debating in good faith. But what you quote doesn't look to me like an admission of bad faith.)
"I put as much effort in as can reasonably be expected; I tried to evaluate it fairly; but the documentation and supporting code is so bad that I may have made mistakes. If so, blame them for making it impossible to evaluate fairly, not me for falling over their tripwires."
If something is badly documented and badly implemented, then I think it's OK to say "I think this is badly designed" even if you found it incomprehensible enough that you aren't completely certain that some of what looks like bad design is actually bad explanation.
If some of the faults you think you see are in fact "only" bad documentation, then in some sense you're "spreading FUD". But after putting in a certain amount of effort, I think it's reasonable to say: I've tried to understand it, I've done my best, and they've made that unreasonably difficult; any mistakes in my account of what they did are their fault, not mine.
(I should reiterate that I haven't myself looked at the AT protocol or Bluesky's code or anything, and I don't know how much effort SW actually put in or how skilled SW actually is. It is consistent with what I know for SW to be just maliciously or incompetently spreading FUD, and I am not saying that that would be OK. Only that what SW is admitting to -- making a reasonable best effort, and possibly getting things wrong because the protocol is badly documented -- is not a bad thing even when described with the words "I don't care if I'm spreading FUD".)
However, you are coming across as highly adversarial here. Mostly because you immediately follow your questions with assertions, indicating that your questions may be rhetorical rather than genuine.
I’m not accusing you of anything per say but I very much want a dialog to happen in this space and I think your framing is damaging the chances of that happening.