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Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

beige.party

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Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#171

Post by dredds »

pfraze wrote: post #35
blitzar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its ok, they have my details. I am sure they will let me know when it is time.

I personally and formally invite you to join. Im sure your original invite got lost in the mail. Fwiw the invites were really just to manage scale. We weren’t ready yet and demand was high. We weren’t trying to exclude people

A reservation queue would have worked just as well. (first in first served) The invite system sets up existing hierarchy of insiders and outsiders from the get-go, favoring the already popular, and creating a wall for new (single) users perhaps not in the hot geolocations where invites get handed out in bulk. It actually excludes people who are already struggling to socialize, and rewards those who have all the 'right connections'.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#172

Post by pfraze »

dredds wrote: post #171
pfraze wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally and formally invite you to join. Im sure your original invite got lost in the mail. Fwiw the invites were really just to manage scale. We weren’t ready yet and demand was high. We weren’t trying to exclude people

A reservation queue would have worked just as well. (first in first served) The invite system sets up existing hierarchy of insiders and outsiders from the get-go, favoring the already popular, and creating a wall for new (single) users perhaps not in the hot geolocations where invites get handed out in bulk. It actually excludes people who are already struggling to socialize, and rewards those who have all the 'righ…

We did both. I don’t know why the invite didn’t reach their email

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#173

Post by pxoe »

toofy wrote: post #168
pxoe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"backing up" and data takeouts are not data portability, cause with mastodon you can't actually move posts between servers. so it's like, literally what's the point if you cannot actually move your content and it's gonna be a flush and start new again, which in that regard is no different than moving from one proprietary platform to another

sure, i can see why some might worry about this but like i said in a different comment, for me, most social media, ability to go back and reference years old random conversations just isn’t of any kind of critical “identity”. more important to me is just having a reference of who i’m mutual friends with. other than some family pictures on insta, i can’t remember the last time i’ve gone back and looked at old conversa…

for artists, content creators, their posts are literally their body of work. this is why people don't move away from twitter, for example - while the audience is important, having posts there is also just as important if not more, cause these posts are the thing that brought in the audience in the first place, and may continuously bring in the audience thru people browsing profiles and sharing/reposting.

besides whatever the content of posts might be, not treating it like 'a part of your identity' when it is literally a reflection of it, i don't know, seems a little dismissive of yourself, but if that's your prerogative, sure. it's super not the same for everybody. for some people, their stuff is either more important to them personally regardless of what it is, or it holds more value with the amount of work put into it, or both.

it's a little bit obtuse to look at platforms filled with posts, and then go and think that those posts are of no value, when it is literally the point and the core of those platforms, don't you think. like, you don't have to imagine. just look at those places that are filled with art and artists, content and creators.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#174

Post by Natanael_L »

stevenicr wrote: post #165
apitman wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main caveat to this currently is that someone would have to run an alternative to https://plc.directory , and everyone else would have to agree which one to switch to. I'll be a lot more comfortable with atproto once the directory has moved to a non profit like ICANN (as @pfraze mentions), or a different DID method gains wide adoption.

Is this a thing that is easily discoverable in settings where people can choose to use a different directory? OR is this buried and hard to find or know it could be a thing?

It's currently built into the applications, not configurable by default. It's preferable if everybody in a thread / space / community uses the same one because otherwise differences can cause validation failures and conflict and thus break threads, resulting in that people can't follow many discussions, thus applications don't really expose it.

It's the kind of thing where it's preferable that either everybody switch at once, or that new applications with different "lexicon" (post types / social media format) picks a new default from the start.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#175

Post by steveklabnik »

apitman wrote: post #145
steveklabnik wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PDS is an independent data store of everything you’ve done with atproto. If bsky.app shuts down, and you’ve self hosted your PDS (or created one and migrated your records over by replaying them from the network) you could spin up your own copy of bsky and continue on as normal.

The main caveat to this currently is that someone would have to run an alternative to https://plc.directory , and everyone else would have to agree which one to switch to. I'll be a lot more comfortable with atproto once the directory has moved to a non profit like ICANN (as @pfraze mentions), or a different DID method gains wide adoption.

Yeah this is a good point, I was thinking purely about those two parts of the service, but if bsky is gone, then plc.directory would be too. Thanks.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#176

Post by Natanael_L »

avinassh wrote: post #122

related: any high level architecture details on how BlueSky uses SQLite per user?

It's used in a not particularly advanced way - bluesky uses repositories per each user for all their public social activity (posts, likes, etc) and it creates a Merkle tree as an index for them and signs that index (this enables stuff like authenticated content addressing and efficient verification).

SQLite simply stores those posts and that signed Merkle tree. The PDS account host server also has another SQLite DB with a list of its accounts.

They have fancier stuff in their appview server and relay server

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#177

Post by Natanael_L »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #152
bbor wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? AFAIK it is not more stable: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-twitter-to... Twitter appears to be an outlier in that respect. Instead of displaying the usual post-acquisition stability, ThousandEyes’ data indicates that the number and frequency of outages did increase commensurate with the acquisition. If we compare the two periods (pre- and post-acquisition), it’s apparent that there were fe…

Nothing game-changing? How about: • Long-form content • Video streaming • Grok • Ability to edit posts • Bookmarks • Communities • Better verification system • Encrypted direct messages • Cashtag feature • Bold and italic text formatting • Open-sourced algorithm • Premium features • Improved search • Improved analytics for content creators • And most importantly, less First-Amendment violations in secret partnership…

Most of that doesn't deserve to be called an improvement. That message encryption is one of the worst designs I've ever seen. The algorithm isn't open enough that anybody can see if what it's doing matches the code.

And instead of censoring "secretly" in partnership with the US government they do so in partnership with the Indian government as well as individual Republican politicians.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#178

Post by Natanael_L »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #169
bbor wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply! That's a good list. Of those, I would break them down accordingly: - Cool new features - Encrypted direct messages - Video streaming - Ability to edit posts - Communities (IDK what this but it sounds cool) - Bookmarks - Cashtag feature (?) - Improved analytics for content creators - Trivial decisions about policy - Long-form content - Bold and italic text formatting - Untrue, or at least unverif…

I'm not sure what you mean by "Nazi" and "arbitrary moderation." Can you clarify?

Musk is reposting actual neonazi accounts

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#179

Post by StellarStoic »

apitman wrote: post #146

To date decentralization is inversely correlated to good UX. * nostr is very decentralized (keys) and has terrible UX (manual management of keys). * Mastodon is medium decentralized (dependence on DNS; can't migrate accounts) and has bad UX (confusion about which instance to use; "Take Me Home" to interact with anything). * Bluesky (atproto) is moderately decentralized (did:plc) and has great UX. The main advantage t…

Nostr's poor UX is a feature, not a bug. It serves as a reminder that life isn’t perfect.

Basic knowledge of manual key management should be essential for every internet user. Think about password managers.

What I love about Nostr is that individuals can actively participate in making it better. It’s fully open, allowing anyone to build whatever they wish on top of it. I agree it’s not perfect now, but it will improve over time and the progress already made can speak for itself that Nostr is here to stay and it's getting better and better each day. The more developers the Nostr ecosystem has, the faster it will evolve.

Personally, I enjoy using it. Cross-posting has been resolved, so I can’t even remember the last time I opened Twitter. Mastodon never really attract me much. Bluesky is yet another Twitter and it's not decentralized. They can read your DMs btw.

One of best features of Nostr is when you build something, you get users instantly and whenever I post on nostr I cross post to Mastodon and Bluesky as well. Reactions are also interchangeable :)

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#180

Post by maxlin »

rsynnott wrote: post #97
maxlin wrote: post #37

[flagged]

I mean, Twitter itself borrowed most of its concepts from either the user base (@ mentions, replies, retweets, quote tweets were all informal behaviours before they were features) or other social media platforms, particularly Tumblr. It is very much a field where doing it well beats being the first. Of course, if you’re earlier you have network effects, but Carface seems doggedly determined to compensate by driving t…

I don't disagree but that's not my point.

The point is, there's little reason to go to the clones, you just lose the network effects, as X is still clearly "the" place to post stuff, and where your identity is the strongest. Which is important given in actuality it's not such a walled garden with authoritarian rule throwing people out like Twitter was. Only when everyone can have their say, you end up with something that ACTUALLY represents the "town square". Blue Sky might also be the town square, but more akin to one of a closed soviet military town.

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