I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
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because #bluesky operates on the #cryptoBro credo (since bluesky is run by crypto bros)
in #crypto, the con is:
1. promise a lot
2. don't deliver
3. but nevertheless generate adoring devotion off of the promisethis works like gangbusters
because people want to believe. they even get defensive and angry when you point out promise vs reality
it's a hack of human psychology
@benroyce @mcc @aeva I think in this case what's driving most of the adoption is people wanting "twitter but less terrible" or "twitter like it was in the (imagined) good old days" and bsky is giving them the closest experience to that they can get at the moment. There are absolutely true believers in their handwaved distributed/federation/freedom promises (and they are quite loud, especially if you ever question the reality of that situation), but I think most are just fleeing Musk's tire fire.
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@mcc Right now, its only Blacksky's feeds that are using their own relay.
They're not currently running their own AppView (although a lot of people are confused about this -- I even saw Masnick get it wrong) .
EDIT: although maybe I got it wrong too, and they actually are? See the discussions.
ANOTHER EDIT, 10/7: it now seems like I was corrrect. whew. But it really is a confusing situation!
They're working on this and saying it should be out fairly soon, at which point I believe the plan is to have blacksky.community switch over (or maybe offer the choice of which AppView to use, the way deer.social currently does). I assume their AppView will use their own Relay but haven't verified this.
Another current dependency is on Bluesky's platform-level moderation, the automatied scanning for CSAM, malware, and spam. At the technical level it's easily replaceable -- Bluesky outsources it -- but it's not cheap (especially since video is supported); Rudy estimated $160,000/year.
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@mcc @aeva I continue to be annoyed that whenever anyone brings up legitimate gripes with how bsky is operated, the staff claim "open protocol", "federation", and "user freedom", when the reality is that with only a handful of alternate towers that represent maybe a single digit percentage of users at best, for all intents and purposes it is not federated in any way that brings meaningful choice to the average user.
@swetland @aeva Yeah. I am using the exact alternate infrastructure that the bluesky reps point to as proof their system works. And I *still* cannot tell, if Bluesky banned someone and Blacksky disagrees with the ban, if I would be able to see that person's posts or not. In response to this thread I've had one person tell me I'm underestimating Blacksky's stack coverage and another tell me I'm overestimating it.
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@jdp23 oh dear.
@mcc well, it's incremental implementation. Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky, so is useful in its own right even though it doesn't get all the way there. The real value of the appview will kick in once it's got the equivalent of local-only posts.
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@aeva @mcc looks like Rudy gave the numbers for their PDS here https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:w4xbfzo7kqfes5zb7r6qv3rw/post/3lyqnpovlik2p
But he also mentioned downthread they are actively developing the AppView and don't have an independent one yet
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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.
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@mcc well, it's incremental implementation. Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky, so is useful in its own right even though it doesn't get all the way there. The real value of the appview will kick in once it's got the equivalent of local-only posts.
@jdp23 "Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky"
How?
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There's some info about costs in https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/115200210981454279 and https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/115204185294385151
Moderation is certainly a big problem, that's driving a lot of the momentum for independent infrascture.
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@swetland @aeva Yeah. I am using the exact alternate infrastructure that the bluesky reps point to as proof their system works. And I *still* cannot tell, if Bluesky banned someone and Blacksky disagrees with the ban, if I would be able to see that person's posts or not. In response to this thread I've had one person tell me I'm underestimating Blacksky's stack coverage and another tell me I'm overestimating it.
@mcc @aeva Even if Blacksky has full coverage of the stack (or will soon), your point about bsky controlling well over 90% of the users means that their moderation rulings are effectively universal.
It's cool if folks are able to run their own standalone implementations, but a couple of those on the far edges of a large centralized system does not a truly federated network make, as we have seen time and time again over the years (XMPP comes to mind...).
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@mcc Bluesky is a venture capital shit show in the making. The rug pull will happen in the next decade.
I did not know about the fighting between black devs and the queer community.??? What is the lore there.
Cuz it sux that they went the way of atproto over activity pub.
this is the ticking time bomb
venture capital has sunk a big investment in bluesky, and at some point they are going to ask for a return
and then bluesky goes the way of twitter
"black fedi vs queer fedi" is mostly confined to a few notable drama ego characters
it's not devouring communities, there's plenty of black folk and queer folk on the fediverse completely untouched by it
but drama *is* drama
it does drive people away
and the bullying is real
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@jdp23 "Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky"
How?
@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.
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@GroupNebula563 @mcc Would be nice! Won't happen though.
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@benroyce @mcc @aeva I think in this case what's driving most of the adoption is people wanting "twitter but less terrible" or "twitter like it was in the (imagined) good old days" and bsky is giving them the closest experience to that they can get at the moment. There are absolutely true believers in their handwaved distributed/federation/freedom promises (and they are quite loud, especially if you ever question the reality of that situation), but I think most are just fleeing Musk's tire fire.
they unfortunately moved from #twitter to a ticking time bomb
since #bluesky is #crypto bro #ventureCapital fueled, when the investors ask for their return, they will change the ethos and ruin bluesky with #monetization digs. and maybe even put an elon #musk in place at the top and warp it for a political agenda, since all these #plutocrat money pools are connected agenda-wise
and then bluesky goes the way of twitter
and then people have to move all over again
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@benroyce @mcc @aeva I think in this case what's driving most of the adoption is people wanting "twitter but less terrible" or "twitter like it was in the (imagined) good old days" and bsky is giving them the closest experience to that they can get at the moment. There are absolutely true believers in their handwaved distributed/federation/freedom promises (and they are quite loud, especially if you ever question the reality of that situation), but I think most are just fleeing Musk's tire fire.
@benroyce @mcc @aeva A lot of these folks have had very negative Mastodon (well fedi, but from their POV it's about the "app" not the network) experiences and are somewhere between unconvinced that federation is a good thing, believing it's actively a *bad* thing, or just completely unaware or uncaring about the implementation vs the UI/UX experience of their social app.
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they unfortunately moved from #twitter to a ticking time bomb
since #bluesky is #crypto bro #ventureCapital fueled, when the investors ask for their return, they will change the ethos and ruin bluesky with #monetization digs. and maybe even put an elon #musk in place at the top and warp it for a political agenda, since all these #plutocrat money pools are connected agenda-wise
and then bluesky goes the way of twitter
and then people have to move all over again
@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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this is the ticking time bomb
venture capital has sunk a big investment in bluesky, and at some point they are going to ask for a return
and then bluesky goes the way of twitter
"black fedi vs queer fedi" is mostly confined to a few notable drama ego characters
it's not devouring communities, there's plenty of black folk and queer folk on the fediverse completely untouched by it
but drama *is* drama
it does drive people away
and the bullying is real
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@markc568 Yeah, but Mastodon GmbH runs it and also develops Mastodon-the-software, so it could have in practice had the same effect as bsky.social. But it sounds like it doesn’t, and that’s good! (even if there are plenty of other issues with Mastodon GmbH and mastodon.social)
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@cthos @aeva I don't have an answer to this question. I've seen various claimed attempts to ballpark this number, but I expect it will change month to month, so even if I trusted the numbers I saw (I don't) there's no guarantee they're still accurate.
The Big Problem as I see it is since every "tower" contains the entire network, if the amount of traffic on bluesky doubles, the operating costs of each tower doubles. The "oh shit this is harder than I thought" problem is even worse than fedi.
@mcc @cthos @aeva I feel like fedi's cost/scaling problem mostly centers around issues with the implementation and deployment of Mastodon (the most popular server), with some features of the protocol being not entirely optimal, compared to the fundamental design of atp being hostile to lightweight independent instances.
Somebody could build a "better Mastodon" and instantly give people a lower resource / less complicated option for small or self-hosted yet fully interoperable fedi servers.
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@mcc @gbargoud It would seem like maybe this could be mitigated a bit by a (hosted) service that operates a filtered relay feed -- which drinks from the full network firehose, but lets downstream users small instances/servers subscribe to a subset view of that (based on accounts/hashtags/filters to observe).
@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.
I was hoping Blacksky found a way around that problem, but I have no idea whether or not that is even possible because I have no idea how AT works.
