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Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

beige.party

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Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#61

Post by innocentoldguy »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12

Bluesky's marketing is rather annoying on my opinion. They're not defederated in practice and they probably never will be, but that's okay. People don't want a new Mastodon, they want a new Twitter after Musk fucked that up worse than ever. Their promises of portability may ring empty but so far their lack of AI algorithm and ad feeds are what people actually come to Bluesky for If you want federation, ActivityPub is…

How did Musk "fuck [Twitter] up worse than ever"? It has more functionality and is more stable since Musk bought it.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#62

Post by croes »

kfrzcode wrote: post #42
colesantiago wrote: post #4

Unfortunately close to nobody on or has moved to Bluesky cares about it being decentralized, they just want another Twitter that just works. Most of the people on Bluesky that have moved are artists, academics, writers and creative folks that don't care about tech. If they did care about decentralization they would be all going to Mastodon right now, but there isn't any traction there in the millions.

X seems to be working quite well. Especially considering the significant reduction in overhead since Elon's purchase.

Do you mean technically or financially?

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#63

Post by lukan »

toofy wrote: post #51
pxoe wrote: post #43

Mastodon is not decentralized, it's federated. It doesn't solve some of the problems that come with centralization, it just creates more entities that will have the same problems (being at will of a server). And funnily, it doesn't even solve data portability entirely (you can't actually move your posts). Mastodon's "decentralization" is even worse than a "theoretical promise" of one, cause it's a just marketing prom…

> it just creates more entities that will have the same problems (being at will of a server). this isn’t a “problem” that needs to be solved. you’re not “at the will of the server” in a federated environment, its the actual literal opposite. if i don’t like the server operators or if i don’t like the servers it federates with, that’s totally ok. i start my own and federate with who i like. this is a good thing, not a…

"if i don’t like the servers it federates with, that’s totally ok. i start my own and federate with who i like."

So everytime you move, can you take your existing network and posts and messages with you, or do you have to start from scratch every time?

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#64

Post by dbspin »

arromatic wrote: post #58
IoI_xD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never said no algorithm. I don’t know where that meme comes from. It comes from the people who don't know what an algorithm is but heard that Twitter has it and it's making them doomscroll so it's bad (which is not to defend Twitter or other social media's algorithms, but to say that some people seem to have a blind hatred of them entirely due to misconceptions)

You expressed it perfectly in word which i couldn't. People's hate for algorithm is so weird . Without the algorithm they can never find quality or content they are interest in .

Absolutey rock hard disagree. I'm old enough to remember when twitter and facebook used to both have a chronological feed without algorithmic sorting. Facebook (trash today of course) was an incredibly useful way to find out what your friends were doing on a given day by just reading the chronological feed. You could also trivially see which events were going on in your locality and which friends were attending. At the same time (2005 - 2012) Twitter was an incredible resource for real time news and reactions to what was happening. Without clickbait, commercial promotion or flame (culture) wars. The web pre-agorithm was gradually being subsumed by feed readers like Google Reader, where you'd browse longform articles and blog posts from people you'd found or been recommended by friends. There was no shortage of content. What was absent was 'brainrot', engagement bait, and all the vapid fluff that the 'algorithms' (tweaked entirely and completely to maximise engagement and advertising consumption - not to your preference) provide.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#66

Post by suprjami »

arromatic wrote: post #58
IoI_xD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never said no algorithm. I don’t know where that meme comes from. It comes from the people who don't know what an algorithm is but heard that Twitter has it and it's making them doomscroll so it's bad (which is not to defend Twitter or other social media's algorithms, but to say that some people seem to have a blind hatred of them entirely due to misconceptions)

You expressed it perfectly in word which i couldn't. People's hate for algorithm is so weird . Without the algorithm they can never find quality or content they are interest in .

The hate is for algorithms which fill your feed with useless shit that you didn't ask for, at the expense of things you did ask for, and which is intended to manufacture rage to get you commenting and arguing with others so the social network can shove an ad in your face.

That's the only kind of algorithm people have been exposed to, so they hate the term.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#67

Post by llm_trw »

rtpg wrote: post #47
pxoe wrote: post #43

Mastodon is not decentralized, it's federated. It doesn't solve some of the problems that come with centralization, it just creates more entities that will have the same problems (being at will of a server). And funnily, it doesn't even solve data portability entirely (you can't actually move your posts). Mastodon's "decentralization" is even worse than a "theoretical promise" of one, cause it's a just marketing prom…

"Being at will of a server" is always a problem, but with federation you can choose which server you are at the will of. You still need trust, but that trust can be chosen by you based off of your needs (and that trust can be placed in yourself). You're on a different part of the trust gradient. Meanwhile there's a certain quality of service that can be obtained with "mere" federation that is much tougher for many de…

We've gone from digital totalitarianism to digital feudalism.

This does not seem like an improvement.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#68

Post by Matl »

pfraze wrote: post #3

Read this: https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers AT Protocol works like the Web, where each user is a website and each application is a search engine. The apps crawl the network of hosts and aggregate activity. We have over 100 outside hosts and at least 3 aggregating apps out there. It’s a different model than ActivityPub, which is more akin to email. We never said no algorithm. I don’t know whe…

To me the biggest problem with ATProto is to discover the current location of a user, you query https://web.plc.directory/resolve which is a centralized service

Second biggest is that while a PDS does decentralize the data, I belive bsky.app is still the place providing the 'frontend' that makes it all work.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#69

Post by lukan »

dbspin wrote: post #64
arromatic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expressed it perfectly in word which i couldn't. People's hate for algorithm is so weird . Without the algorithm they can never find quality or content they are interest in .

Absolutey rock hard disagree. I'm old enough to remember when twitter and facebook used to both have a chronological feed without algorithmic sorting. Facebook (trash today of course) was an incredibly useful way to find out what your friends were doing on a given day by just reading the chronological feed. You could also trivially see which events were going on in your locality and which friends were attending. At t…

To quote the sibling content:

"And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm."

Apparently people understand different things by "algorithm". I also use the general one and not "algorithm" as a special algorithm that tries to find things I might like based on my past interactions, but mainly tailored to keep my engagement high so I watch more ads"

I would like the possibility of creating and tweaking my own algorithm for my feed.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#70

Post by Matl »

pfraze wrote: post #25
rsolva wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP does not take issue with the algorithm part, but the claim of decentralization. I'm currently running my own instance of an ActivityPub server (GoToSocial), just for me, and it works like a charm. I would not know how to do the same with BlueSky, and I have tried to understand how.

If you’re trying to self host your account, you follow https://atproto.com/guides/self-hosting If you’re trying to build an application, you follow https://atproto.com/guides/applications If you’re looking to run the bluesky application, you need to run the codebases in https://github.com/bluesky-social .

If mastodon.social shuts down tomorrow, my own instance continues to operate fully independently.

For PDS is that true? If bsky.app shuts down, will my PDS be able to function as an independent instance incl the web frontend etc.?

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