I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
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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 faultee@mcc@mastodon.social looks like an ini
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If you sign up with https://blacksky.community you get:
- Blacksky's "appview"/web frontend
- Optionally, Blacksky's PDS
- Blacksky's moderation layer (and you can optionally enable Bluesky's too)Almost-complete independence! What I'm not clear on is to whether, or to what degree Blacksky relies on Bluesky's "relay":
(EDIT 2: There was an edit here with corrections, but I've removed that because the corrections may have been less correct than the original.)
@mcc (if this is too off topic just ignore!)
I noticed that Blacksky asks for a birth date when you make a new account.
Bluesky didn't use to ask. No idea what they do now, but I would not have made an account with them if they required a birth date.
I'm sure people make up dates but I was still surprised. I'm guessing this is related to age verification laws? I don't know much about them.
Have any Fediverse servers started to ask for a birth date when a new account is created?
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@benroyce @mcc @aeva No argument from me on that account. I mean even if they were completely benign, just being a VC funded enterprise means they're going to need an exit (ideally a profitable one for the investors) and one way or another it'll probably end up being a crap deal for the users.
Many of the folks who moved there for "classic twitter" even acknowledge this and are resigned to move again someday... valuing the familiar experience over everything else.
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@mcc great thread. I've been thinking about this, and about the ActivityPub alternative. Which to me looks like either
- Best case: "Gertrude" can speak freely on a friendly instance (which she used originally) and unfriendly instances/users can block her. But she keeps posting to her audience
- Worst case: "Gertrude" is banned by her instance, and now does not even have the option to continue speaking to her followers, she has to start a new account/identity from scratch, try and integrate into the community again, prove she's not an impostor, etc
With ATProto you don't get that best case scenario. But you don't get that worst case scenario either.
Btw, I saw pfrazee say they don't do PDS deletions except for illegal content (since they have to by law in that case). But on that note, they could even go further if they wanted (I think?) and block PDS migrations at which point we are back in the worst case scenario.
The comparisons and tradeoffs here are really complex! Just starting to wrap my head around it.
@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.
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@mcc Which PDS implementation are you self hosting with?
@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.
Is there a reason to pick another?
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@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.
Is there a reason to pick another?
@mcc I don't know
Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive? -
@lrhodes there's the other piece that is still totally controlled by bsky pbc, maybe that's it? I'm not clear on what it is
@esoteric_programmer @mcc -
Doing my part on gaygeek. To get more users, we need central, sadly. It's just beyond older non tech people to figure out. Not impossible though. I put mastodon.lol on my mom's phone...
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The biggest movement on this front has come from the community formerly known as Black Twitter, which now has complete, viable alternative dupes of the whole stack:
Rudy wants revolution. (@rude1.blacksky.team)
blacksky.app → pds atproto.africa → relay blacksky.community → app @blackskyweb.xyz → moderation @tektite.cc → migration assembly.blacksky.community → governance blackskyweb.xyz → marketing website rsky.satnav.dev → exported data explorer https://blacksky.community
Blacksky (blacksky.community)
This makes intuitive sense to me! My first question, looking at ATP, is "why do free dev for this protocol, controlled by one corporation, when Fediverse is right there and is more complete?". But the black dev community, from everything I saw, tried to adopt Fediverse *first* and basically got harassed off.
@mcc "tried to adopt Fediverse first and basically got harassed off."
what does this mean, exactly? you don't have to interact with any other instance on the whole stack if you don't want to. what I'm guessing is this actually means people tried to signup for mastodon.social which is a shithole and then that got conflated with the whole fediverse -
@mcc (if this is too off topic just ignore!)
I noticed that Blacksky asks for a birth date when you make a new account.
Bluesky didn't use to ask. No idea what they do now, but I would not have made an account with them if they required a birth date.
I'm sure people make up dates but I was still surprised. I'm guessing this is related to age verification laws? I don't know much about them.
Have any Fediverse servers started to ask for a birth date when a new account is created?
@ahimsa_pdx I don't know. I didn't make an account, apparently.
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@mcc There's also https://plc.directory/, the
did:plc:database, also run by Bluesky.("
plc" stands for "placeholder", because they aspire to figure out something blockchain decentralized later.)I think Bluesky can inconvenience people at best, or hijack their accounts at worst, especially if they were using a Bluesky PDS and Bluesky has all the keys. But I don't know/remember the exact implications.
@mnordhoff yes, the plc is another really frustrating thing
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@mcc I don't know
Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive?@fabrice yeah, I dunno. I haven't noticed a load problem from the typescript implementation. I don't have a very data oriented operation over here tho
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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.
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
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@lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker oh God so I could have sworn the early documents I read talked about the Big Data Server and then suddenly that's gone and they talk about the "relay" but is that why I'm confused? The BDS got split in two, into the relay and appview?
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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 Look, Bluesky has some nice advantages over the fediverse, mainly that it's not confusing at all because it gets to the point of just being old Twitter.
Federation is not their strong point and will never be, whether we like it or not, if you want federation and multiple communities, Activitypub is by far the best option.
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@lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker oh God so I could have sworn the early documents I read talked about the Big Data Server and then suddenly that's gone and they talk about the "relay" but is that why I'm confused? The BDS got split in two, into the relay and appview?
@mcc @lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker
Feel like the best 'simple' explanation for AT Protocol that makes some sense of the different components is this document from Kuba @mackuba
Introduction to AT Protocol
Walkthrough of the various parts and concepts in Bluesky's AT Protocol (ATProto), the types of servers involved and how it all fits together
(mackuba.eu)
Kuba is also a great resource here on the Fedi for all things AT Protocol. He may be able to clear up any misunderstandings.
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What I saw happen when Black Twitter came to Fediverse is attempts to build community resources— like shared cross-instance blocklist infrastructure— get demonized by white queers as being anti-queer (because they, personally, wound up moderated— due to, as far as I saw, entirely real racism). I saw multiple projects shut down or hobbled by this and good people driven off fedi. I don't know if any devs from that era are involved in the new Bluesky efforts. But the Bluesky efforts *are* thriving.
@mcc thank you for posting about this. Did a quick stop over to Black sky and found a lot of the people I miss here and followed on Twitter over there. Thank you! My social media morning routine now feels a lot better again.
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@swetland that is pretty much the intention of the ATmosphere's design. The vision of this "composable moderation" is to allow independent "labeller" or filter services be able to process the firehose of relay traffic.
I do find the atmosphere approach interesting but its "service oriented" design seems to fight against the nature (or original intentions at least) of the host-centric internet we all try to navigate.
I think that, if reasonableness prevails, ATproto and ActivityPub will end up cross pollinating ideas and resembling each other more. Oddly enough they are both hobbled by the same problem to some degree...the dominance of a single entity hampering the true potential each has (Bluesky and Mastodon or at least Gargron's Big Instances).
One thing is pretty certain at least... The dominant platform within the fediverse driving certain communities away was a more significant factor in why Bluesky gained traction than any technical design decisions either network made.
@msh @swetland @mcc @gbargoud I think it is good to keep looking at fediverse's decentralisation too but of course there's a huge difference between the degrees to which these two are controlled by a single entity.
Why do you say this was a significant factor in driving communities away from the fediverse? It sounds surprising to me.
