I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
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@jdp23 Blacksky is not only hosting a Bluesky alternative, they are *coding* a Bluesky alternative (in Rust, where Bluesky prefers a combination of TypeScript and Go). I assume(?) the combination of Rudy's statements should be interpreted to mean that the self-authored AppView is not ready yet, so he is hosting a PDS he wrote, hosting a relay he wrote, hosting Bluesky's appview and client on top of that, and he intends to replace Bluesky's appview soon. I assume.
@mcc it's certainly possible! I didn't think they were running a separate appview yet but I could easily be wrong.
(blacksky.community is currently a fork of the Blluesky app-aka-client, it hasn't diverged much yet. not sure if and when they're planning on writing their own implementation of that)
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@mcc Content doesn’t get removed from the PDS it would be hidden by labels - accounts do have takedown labels applied.
Bluesky operated relay doesn’t censor Lexicons that don’t validate and it doesn’t enforce moderation.
For those following along at home the relay costs about $30/month to run for all ~38M accounts worth of content.
@boris @mcc PDS takedowns are happening though: https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3lyt3yumpos2q
This is stronger than a label, isn't it?
Maybe not the same technically as content being removed from a PDS, but if the whole PDS is taken down that's functionally equivalent.
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@makeworld All I know is I see reports over the last week of posts just disappearing. This seems(?) to be a new event borne of the moderation staff finding too much content they feel they should moderate and panicking. If I were on a bluesky pds right now I'd be getting out before it happened to me.
@mcc I agree with you and I'm working on migrating. I don't see how this relates to my post though. I'm trying to compare the downsides of ATProto you raised with how ActivityPub would perform.
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@mcc I agree with you and I'm working on migrating. I don't see how this relates to my post though. I'm trying to compare the downsides of ATProto you raised with how ActivityPub would perform.
@makeworld "I don't see how this relates to my post though"
Oh, it doesn't! I was trying to do a "I don't think I can intelligently comment on that, here are the only things I can say for sure"
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@boris @mcc PDS takedowns are happening though: https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3lyt3yumpos2q
This is stronger than a label, isn't it?
Maybe not the same technically as content being removed from a PDS, but if the whole PDS is taken down that's functionally equivalent.
@makeworld @mcc it’s all labels
Boris (@bmann.ca)
These are labels applied to posts, yes? !takedown is the one I always forget / don't have a good reference for since it's not on this page as a "global" label https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/moderation Is that an account level takedown or a post level takedown?
Bluesky Social (bsky.app)
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@makeworld "I don't see how this relates to my post though"
Oh, it doesn't! I was trying to do a "I don't think I can intelligently comment on that, here are the only things I can say for sure"
@mcc ok, gotcha
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@makeworld @mcc it’s all labels
Boris (@bmann.ca)
These are labels applied to posts, yes? !takedown is the one I always forget / don't have a good reference for since it's not on this page as a "global" label https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/moderation Is that an account level takedown or a post level takedown?
Bluesky Social (bsky.app)
@boris what about "Takedowns on accounts and records apply on the API level regardless of the labeler headers."?
Paul Frazee (@pfrazee.com)
Okay I got some answers. Takedowns on accounts apply on the PDS level. Takedowns on accounts and records apply on the API level regardless of the labeler headers. I’ll explain why and share some thoughts in next posts
Bluesky Social (bsky.app)
It really sounds like user data/content is being made inaccessible at the source, but I'm out of my depth here.
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@mcc Bsky doesn’t have auth on your account and can’t delete individual posts.
The user can delete posts as they like and then it’s truly deleted and can’t be queried.
@boris "Bsky doesn’t have auth on your account and can’t delete individual posts."
This is true in my case because I self host a PDS. Most users use a Bluesky PBC hosted PDS. In this case, Bluesky owns everything, they have the keys, the bits are resident on their servers. What prevents them from deleting a post? Aren't they legally bound to delete posts in case of DMCA takedown, CSAM, etc?
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And that's why I say, TLDR:
- I am legitimately excited about the work being done by Blacksky Algorithms! I am using their frontend and happy with it.
- Northsky is an interesting development to watch
- If you're on a Bluesky PDS, I recommend migrating off with one of these tools https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ii5jchdzlmcojjw4dqczcgkh/post/3lyt6t6qfa22u
- Everything Sucks. A LOT of things would have to change at a social level for *any* entity other than Bluesky to have power or independence in the ATP ecosystem. I still don't trust Bluesky.
@mcc I'm sorry that I'm too much of a fedi noob. What lead to it failing here? Defederating? Not enough people? Where could I read more on this? It sounds like it was a big hurdle to get parity with bluesky so I'm curious on what lead them to do that?
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@boris what about "Takedowns on accounts and records apply on the API level regardless of the labeler headers."?
Paul Frazee (@pfrazee.com)
Okay I got some answers. Takedowns on accounts apply on the PDS level. Takedowns on accounts and records apply on the API level regardless of the labeler headers. I’ll explain why and share some thoughts in next posts
Bluesky Social (bsky.app)
It really sounds like user data/content is being made inaccessible at the source, but I'm out of my depth here.
@makeworld yes I’m not disagreeing!
The “source” is where someone’s account is hosted - a PDS. So, bsky PDS vs somewhere else.
And then the API end points would again be a PDS or appview hosted by someone.
If you’re on your own PDS anyone can fetch from you directly.
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@mcc I'm sorry that I'm too much of a fedi noob. What lead to it failing here? Defederating? Not enough people? Where could I read more on this? It sounds like it was a big hurdle to get parity with bluesky so I'm curious on what lead them to do that?
@KnightMustard "What lead to it failing here?"
What lead to what failing?
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May be a stupid question but I don't know enough about ATProto, ActivityPub or Bluesky infrastructure to be sure
Would it be possible for one of those systems that is forking Bluesky to make it so they use both ATProto and ActivityPub streams so they can be on here without a bridge?
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@KnightMustard "What lead to it failing here?"
What lead to what failing?
@mcc You mentioned they got harassed off Fediverse? Perhaps I'm over complicating it?
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@boris "Bsky doesn’t have auth on your account and can’t delete individual posts."
This is true in my case because I self host a PDS. Most users use a Bluesky PBC hosted PDS. In this case, Bluesky owns everything, they have the keys, the bits are resident on their servers. What prevents them from deleting a post? Aren't they legally bound to delete posts in case of DMCA takedown, CSAM, etc?
@mcc for illegal content (what is described as network abuse & infra moderation here https://docs.bsky.app/blog/blueskys-moderation-architecture) they likely take down the entire account
Yes Bsky _could_ delete posts by like … accessing the blob directory or deleting/editing SQLlite on disk but that’s tinkering. There’s no like masquerade as Boris function to do this in any sort of consolidated way across accounts.
Just like Google _could_ delete something in GDrive.
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@mcc You mentioned they got harassed off Fediverse? Perhaps I'm over complicating it?
@KnightMustard No. I am saying a different group of people got harassed, a few years back, and I saw people leave the Fediverse as a result. My perception, which obviously is the perception of an outsider and so not trustworthy, is that black Fedi is smaller now than it used to be.
Rudy says he's never used Fedi.
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I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
My expectation was it was unlikely we'd ever see this happen because "federation" on ATProto means basically reproducing the entirety of the Bluesky software stack. In old Big Data terms, on ActivityPub your instance is a "horizontal shard" of the network; ATProto forces full DB replicas only.
Still, we're seeing movement on this front, which I'd split into two categories:
1. Your fault (you reading this)
2. Aaron Rodericks's fault@mcc thanks for this!
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@benroyce @txtechnician @mcc the funding is an interesting one. If we don't hear anything new about another BSky funding round in the next 6 months they'll start being close to running dry (they're currently closing in on one year since the last round that was supposed to be for two years and had a failed one early 2025)
Some of these recent troubling decisions may already be influenced by that. They've said they want to start running ads and that has implications for moderation for example.
@ikuturso @benroyce @txtechnician @mcc
How much has actually been invested in Bluesky? Public information (https://accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-ipo/) is three rounds, a seed round and an $8M in 2023 and $15M (Blockchain Capital) in 2024. In January 2025 a round lead by Bain Capital (https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuation-new-funding-round-2025-1) was reported setting valuation at $700M, but no further info if that round closed has been reported. Is the total to date $23M plus seed accurate? What happened with the big January Bain Capital round?
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@ikuturso @benroyce @txtechnician @mcc
How much has actually been invested in Bluesky? Public information (https://accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-ipo/) is three rounds, a seed round and an $8M in 2023 and $15M (Blockchain Capital) in 2024. In January 2025 a round lead by Bain Capital (https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuation-new-funding-round-2025-1) was reported setting valuation at $700M, but no further info if that round closed has been reported. Is the total to date $23M plus seed accurate? What happened with the big January Bain Capital round?
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@mastodonmigration @ikuturso @txtechnician @mcc
good question
we can calibrate with earnings (what, about $0?), the length of time, and the nature of the lenders, and arrive at a nice measure of how close bluesky is to plutocrat destruction
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@aeva @cthos either you rely on bluesky to get the content (meaning you have to trust them to convey the content) or you prepare and mirror the content yourself. No real third option, fundamentally. If there were several blacksky-like towers then they could potentially pool resources, but no other actor has gotten as far as blacksky so there's no one to pool with.
This is just me thinking out loud without much direct knowledge, but isn't live Atmosphere content supposed to remain available on its home PDS indefinitely? So couldn't an AppView implement an LRU cache rather than a full mirror of all content? Or does this storage cost come from something else that can't be trivially re-fetched later?
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This is just me thinking out loud without much direct knowledge, but isn't live Atmosphere content supposed to remain available on its home PDS indefinitely? So couldn't an AppView implement an LRU cache rather than a full mirror of all content? Or does this storage cost come from something else that can't be trivially re-fetched later?
