I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
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@erincandescent @mcc Nope. Recovery is one of the primary considerations. Unless you intentionally want recovery to be impossible (some people may), you have a recovery policy notarized (can be published or kept unpublished in safe storage you control) prior to any use of the identity. Then proof of conditions satisfying the recovery policy preempt any transfer of control that took place later during a compromise.
@erincandescent @mcc And in my view, "not usable for money" is a prerequisite for "usable as identity". Related: the whole market for buying popular browser extensions to put malware in them.
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Why does the "relay" matter? Well, because although Bluesky's claim is that moderation is "composable" in their system— that you can choose which moderators to follow— moderation decisions made by Bluesky are hard binding on systems they control. Someone blocked by Bluesky is blocked from the Bluesky appview, their content will get removed from the Bluesky PDS if they were using that. The Bluesky relay censors content that violates the data "schema"; I suspect (?) it enforces moderation also.
@mcc I don't think the last part is true. Their relay implementation is open source also. Trying to find more info about this
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@mat @eniko Well, point of order. Do I want to work together? If so, why? I have no incentive or desire to badmouth Bluesky specifically, but also, do I have any incentive to grow their ecosystem or help their corporate project? All I want to do is talk to people. The only ATP dev I've done has been because it makes it easier for me to talk people.
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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.
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Why does the "relay" matter? Well, because although Bluesky's claim is that moderation is "composable" in their system— that you can choose which moderators to follow— moderation decisions made by Bluesky are hard binding on systems they control. Someone blocked by Bluesky is blocked from the Bluesky appview, their content will get removed from the Bluesky PDS if they were using that. The Bluesky relay censors content that violates the data "schema"; I suspect (?) it enforces moderation also.
@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.
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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 "Content doesn’t get removed from the PDS it would be hidden by labels - accounts do have takedown labels applied." I could be wrong but this seems to be contradicted by actual events over the last two weeks.
"Bluesky operated relay doesn’t censor Lexicons that don’t validate" Contradicted by my own testing. Either the relay censors them or the appview does and it comes to the same thing, because when I make 301-character posts even third party tools can't see them.
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@mcc am having a discussion of this on bsky that is helping to disambiguate :
https://bsky.app/profile/futur.blue/post/3lyuzwzb2k226
also https://github.com/zeppelin-social/bluesky-appview@fleeky As an update, I searched on blacksky.community for "from:me blackbird" and found a post from 2024. So they have some source of older posts.
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@boris "Content doesn’t get removed from the PDS it would be hidden by labels - accounts do have takedown labels applied." I could be wrong but this seems to be contradicted by actual events over the last two weeks.
"Bluesky operated relay doesn’t censor Lexicons that don’t validate" Contradicted by my own testing. Either the relay censors them or the appview does and it comes to the same thing, because when I make 301-character posts even third party tools can't see them.
@mcc accounts get taken down! Posts do not / individual posts doesn’t get removed out of the repo (would also break verification of a repo and is detectable)
yes apps all choose their validation (and for that matter strong types). Regardless it’s not the relay that’s doing it if you’d like to be correct about where locus of control is.
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@mcc accounts get taken down! Posts do not / individual posts doesn’t get removed out of the repo (would also break verification of a repo and is detectable)
yes apps all choose their validation (and for that matter strong types). Regardless it’s not the relay that’s doing it if you’d like to be correct about where locus of control is.
@boris "(would also break verification of a repo and is detectable)"
What happens if I delete a post from a repo? If it can't be removed can someone then query the post from my PDS direct and get a copy of the deleted content?
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So what I understand from this is that it would be relatively possible for BlackSky or NorthSky to add ActivityPub as a secondary protocol in ways that would likely be unfeasible to do the other way (ActivityPub instance using ATProto as a secondary protocol)
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@fleeky As an update, I searched on blacksky.community for "from:me blackbird" and found a post from 2024. So they have some source of older posts.
@mcc it seems like with enough effort some amount of mastodon sparsity could be implemented in bsky ,, so my current criticism still stands , i still think mastodon is easier and cheaper to maintain but bsky is definitely more popular (if you like that sort of thing) and could be cludged into different network architectures probably with enough effort .. main question is which way will it evolve ?
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@boris "(would also break verification of a repo and is detectable)"
What happens if I delete a post from a repo? If it can't be removed can someone then query the post from my PDS direct and get a copy of the deleted content?
@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.
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@mcc Blocks are "enforced" at the client level. I know, I know, that probably merits another "oh dear" but that's how Bluesky is doing it. So blacksky.community as a client doesn't do age verification for DMs in the UK, or block access to Mississippi.
Takedowns by contrast are at the AppView and someties PDS level.
@jdp23 Rudy says they're appview and also client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyvbqh3m3s2e
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As an update since posting the above thread I have received replies from two people, one saying I am underestimating the level of stack coverage Blacksky has, another saying I am overestimating it. Also a "AppView" and "Client" are different. Sorry.
The stack is just so tall! There are *so many* layers in this protocol's model. And it seems like every single one of them is an opportunity to introduce censorship
Update: Rudy who operates blacksky.community responded to this thread on bluesky. Above I said I wasn't clear on how independent Blacksky was of the Bluesky infra. His answer is "completely". They run their own relay (which scrapes PDSes itself), the relay feeds into their own appview, the appview feeds into their own client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyv5rwpc722c
And since they bridge end-to-end, in my Hypothetical Example above, they *could* choose to make different moderation decisions from Bluesky PBC.
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@jdp23 Rudy says they're appview and also client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyvbqh3m3s2e
@mcc so I saw! I responded over there. I was in a video disucssion on Friday and I could have sworn he said that the appview wasn't released yet, but it looks like I was just confused. If so, sorry for the misinformation!
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@mcc so I saw! I responded over there. I was in a video disucssion on Friday and I could have sworn he said that the appview wasn't released yet, but it looks like I was just confused. If so, sorry for the misinformation!
@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.
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Update: Rudy who operates blacksky.community responded to this thread on bluesky. Above I said I wasn't clear on how independent Blacksky was of the Bluesky infra. His answer is "completely". They run their own relay (which scrapes PDSes itself), the relay feeds into their own appview, the appview feeds into their own client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyv5rwpc722c
And since they bridge end-to-end, in my Hypothetical Example above, they *could* choose to make different moderation decisions from Bluesky PBC.
@mcc excellent, good to know!
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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.
