FOSSDLE PieFedI for one welcome Bluesky, the ATmosphere, BTS ARMY, and millions of Brazilians to the fediverses!
submitted by The Nexus of Privacy
privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediv…
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17686207
It's a very long post, but a lot of it is a detailed discussion of terminology in the appendix -- no need to read that unless you're into definitional struggles.
BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization https://rys.io/en/167.html
There is this thread too: https://feddit.org/post/2656676
Kuba's link i that thread is good, it looks like there's currently about 370 PDS's -- Bridgy Fed got an exception from Bluesky so is the only one that currently has more than 10 uses. https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdses I know some people who just run the open-source code for Bluesky's PDS (which is pretty straightforward) and some run other implementations.
Blueksy's approach to decentralization is very different from ActivityPub but it's definitely decentralized. (Also that article's over a year old, and some things have changed since then.). But, like I say in the article, not everybody is so welcoming!
They're still cosplaying decentralisation. Google hosts images on a separate domain to the one where they serve documents, are they decentralised? When we see more indexers, by all means let's consider BlueSky decentralised, but until then, they're just offloading traffic.
I hope they start supporting people who want to run an indexer. Right now they just point to their source code and say, "if you can get this largely undocumented complex service running on your own, you can run a indexer, but don't ask us for any help".
I'm not entirely confident that it will happen before their only funding source decides to cut off the cash flow.
Not sure about Bluesky, but welcome Brazilians!
Hello,
I skimmed through the article. Isn't Bluesky one billionaire purchase away from becoming the new X (and in this case, I don't mean Twitter)?
Yep. And that's far from the only way it could work out badly. I talk about this a bit in the section on "Bluesky is a useful counterweight to Threads"
No. It's already owned by multibillionaire Jack Dorsey.
This is straight up misinformation, Dorsey was on the Bluesky's board, but left in May. As far as I'm aware, he's never even invested in the company (but he has given money to the nostr devs).
It did originate from Twitter. Somehow Twitter at the time considered it wise to split it into a separate entity, and Dorsey was fine with not controlling it. And then Twitter was sold, and Dorsey and Bluesky grew apart from each other.
Correct. Dorsey's early involvement is certainly grounds for concern -- the way I think of it, he's gone now but his stench lingers on -- but he's not influential there going forward.
Oh, I didn't know that. Everything I've heard about it associates them together.
Getting the BTS fanbase to switch platforms is huge and can essentially get you millions of users in an instant. I wish Mastodon was in the picture though.
bluesky is run by a single org, and you have to beg them to let their router include your 'independent' instance. it is a closed garden.
it is like federating with facebook (not threads) by begging facebook to include your server and content into their garden.
thats not open federation. even after they let you in, they could take their ball home and lock it down at any moment.
Agreed that Bluesky's run by a single corporation so it's different than today's ActivityPub Fediverse, but the Fediverse's historical approach to "open federation" isn't the only approach. Even in the ActivityPub world we're seeing more and more experimentation with allow-list federation.
allow lists run by individual instances..not a gatekeeping board of a single entity.
my points stand. if you want to join a true federating twitter clone youre not using the atprotocol.
For people who want to join a twitter clone there aren't any good ActivityPub options -- Mastodon's good at other things, but isn't a good Twitter alternative let along clone. And ActivityPub's version of "true federation" isn't the only kind of federation. That said, I agree that AT isn't an option for people who want to join a federating-in-theActivityPub-sense-of-the-word Twitter clone,
Maybe competition will make the Fediverse better? With or without Bluesky in the loop, we could take inspiration from their unique features and what people like about their platform. I certainly didn't know they take onboarding seriously and offer shared blocklists and useful stuff like that...
I'm kinda hoping it will lead to a new protocol that mixes the best of a handful of competitors. ActivityPub is a terrible protocol.
Yeah. There are a few issues with ActivityPub. And as far as I know it's questionable whether it could scale to a scale the large commercial platforms have. I'd be in for a more efficient successor with a few more standardized extras. I guess it'll be hard to agree on a new protocol. External pressure/influence could help, IMO. Although, at the same time I'm grateful I have this platform.
I think that xkcd is overused. It's very true, though.
I'm squarely in the AT protocol is not the Fediverse camp. Fine if people want to enjoy Bluesky, but the Fediverse is built on top of the W3C protocol ActivityPub. AT is incompatible. Cool that there's a bridge, but a bridge between incompatible protocols will always be a bit of a hack in my book.
You're not the only one who sees it that way. Historically the Fediverse was always multi-protocol but some people don't think it shojld be today. I talked about this view some in https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/
"Anyhow, if Evan and Eugen and SWF and fediverse.party want to choose a definition of Fediverse where history stopped with Mastodon's 2017 adoption of ActivityPub, erases earlier Fediverse history, and ties the Fediverse's success to a protocol that has major issues ... they can do that. "The Fediverse" means different things to different people. It's still worth asking why they choose that definition."
You seem to be incorrectly stating what is on Wikipedia, which leads:
That last bit is absolutely key: a collection of services using a common protocol. Imagine if two different email servers didn't both speak SMTP. Imagine if two different web services didn't both speak HTTP. The Internet as a singular entity is only made possible because of protocol interop between all of its constituent parts.
To say "the fediverse" is comprised of multiple *incompatible* protocols goes against that grain, and to go back to pre-ActivityPub-as-W3C-specification days as an argument that it's fine to label multiple incompatible protocols as all being components of "the fediverse" is a stretch.
To me, this isn't a let's-agree-to-disagree-issue, honestly. While the term "fediverse" is arguably colloquial and doesn't necessarily imply any specific technical attributes, it ceases to be useful as a term if Fediverse Platform A cannot in any way communicate with Fediverse Platform B because the two platforms happen to be using 100% incompatible protocols. Aside from a third-party bridge, the AT protocol used by Bluesky is 100% incompatible with ActivityPub used by Mastodon, Threads, and others. Therefore, they cannot both be simultaneously services in the fediverse.
For what it's worth, the guy who mostly maintains the Wikipedia page agrees with you. And yet even so, at least for now, the Wikipedia page states "The majority of fediverse platforms ... create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol" -- which pretty clearly implies that not all fediverse platforms use the ActivityPub protocol.
Anyhow whether or not you agree to disagree ... we disagree. Time will tell how broad usage of the term evolves. In the original article I pointed to examples of TechCrunch and Mike Masnick using the term in the broader sense, but maybe those will turn out to be points off the curve. We shall see!
Just a small Portuguese correction: "Bem vendos aos fediverses" should be "Bem-vindos aos fediversos!".
Thanks very much, fixed now!
I think, possibly like many others, since BlueSky came from the creator of Twitter, I do not trust it. At the moment, I don't even think there's anything anybody can say about it that would make me want to even test it. It just feels tainted.
Also, what is BlueSky promising? A new Twitter? The fediverse is making so much more possible: new Twitter(s), new Youtube, new Instagram, new Reddit, and it's even being put into Wordpress, maybe even Tumblr, and who knows what else. How does BlueSky fit into that puzzle?
I don't trust it because there's no believable plan to make it commercially viable, so it's just going to end up defunct or enshittified. Mastodon is up front, it's a volunteer service that you can either pay for or roll the dice on the instance staying up. And there's a built-in way to move on when one goes down.
BlueSky is a B-corp, which theoretically means they can say their mission takes priority if sued by an investor in court, but doesn't in any way require them to make it the primary goal, and the reality of funding and money and investors means that's almost certainly not going to happen.
Dorsey's not involved in Bluesky any more but I agree that there are lots of reasons not to trust them (including Dorsey's original involvement).
Bluesky's currently a much better Twitter alternative than Mastodon but I totally agree, there's a lot more to social networking than that. I talk about ways I see Bulesky as complementary to the ActivityPub section in the last section, "It's the end of the Fediverse as we know it – and I feel fine"
Can I ask why you say Mastodon isn't a good twitter alternative and maybe what it could do to improve? Sorry if I missed that part in the article
You didn't miss it, I didn't go into detail on it in the article ... one big reason is that because of how ActivityPub works you only see a fragment of the overall conversation (instead of everything). If you're on a big well-connected instance like mastodon.social you see more of it but still not all; if you're on a smaller not-so-well-connected instance you miss most of it. This comes in conversations (the "missing replies" problem), with search, and with hashtags.
Another reason is that Twitter's got a lot of journalists, activists and organizers, politicians, government agencies, athletes, etc ... and Mastodon for the most part doesn't. That's not a technical issue, but for most people, following one or more of those groups is something they're used to from Twitter, so Mastodon doesn't fill the same role.
Again, there's plenty of stuff Mastodon *is* good at! And Twitter clones replicate Twitter's problems as well as what people like about it. But for people who are sick of Twitter and want a similar experience elsewhere (as opposed to trying something different), they're more likely to get what they want on Bluesky (and in many cases even Threads, especially if they already have an Instagram account and don't want to see political stuff) than Mastodon.
Nope. I wish this were the case, but PeerTube will never replace YouTube. Ever.
I long for the day where I am proven wrong. Not holding my breath.
They're going to federate with ActivityPub?
Bridgy Fed and Friendica already connect Bluesky to the ActivityPub Fediverse.
https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started
I mean, I guess, but that's pretty convoluted and opt-in, not so much a direct compatible connection from Bluesky to the Fediverse. And you'd have to trust them regarding privacy.
Agreed that Bridgy Fed is opt-in ... I see consent as a good thing, but not everybody agrees.
And yeah, Bluesky's just ike any other instance, you have to trust them with privacy. I think the argument that Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, and Wordress.com-hosted blogs shouldn't be considered part of the Fediverse is intellectually consistent, I just don't see a lot of people making that argument. But, "the Fedivese" means different things to different people, the followup post Is Bluesky part of today's Fediverse? goes into a huge amount of detail on that ...
I was referring to Bridgy, not Bluesky, regarding privacy. It acts like a middleman between whatever you're using and Bluesky. And it isn't really opt-in in that sense, because the majority of users would not even be aware of this even existing. An opt-in feature would be directly implemented into a platform, like a toggle you could switch within your account settings. Whether that is opt-in or opt-out is personal preference I guess, but with that logic it should be ideally the same for all native instances as well.
Ah okay, I agree that you need to trust Bridgy Fed from a privacy and security perpective. Also agreed that most people don't know Bridgy Fed exists, and that's a problem. And yes, it would be better for the platforms to have more support for opt-in federation, but alas Mastodon's documentation describes allow-list federation as opposed to their mission ... I asked Renaud a while ago whether that was likely to change and he said no. So, yeah, it's certainly far from a perfect solution.