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Thoughts on Bluesky

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Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#11

Post by S0y »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #9

I find the factionalism among nerds over Mastodon and Bluesky to be a fascinating display of clique dynamics at work. Perhaps the most amusing bit is the folks most focused on fighting out these clique dynamics are the ones most likely to think they're the rational types that don't get involved in social dynamics. At the end of the day, you opt-into either network. My only wish is that the networks interoperate, whic…

I can tell you that personally, if Bluesky wasn't so miss-reported as being federated and decentralized I wouldn't be caring as much as I did.

I'm happy that bluesky is successful. what I'm not happy about is that it's claiming to be something it isn't and in doing so, undermining all the work people have put into an ecosystem that is TRULY federated and decentralized.

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#13

Post by pfraze »

shafyy wrote: post #8
BillFranklin wrote: post #6

To be fair to them, they have done a significant amount of work to design the network to be open to competing servers, and I think it would be quite tricky to unpick that. In comparison to successful networks like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ATP gives a far fairer playing field and Bluesky hasn't done anything (aside from taking funding) to suggest they're not going to run with it. You are right that they co…

They have done everything to have the appearance of an open protocol and use that as a competitive advantage against incumbents. However, if you look at the reality, it's a very centralized service run by the same company which controls and develops the protocol. If they are serious about this, they should hand over ATProto to an organization like W3C. They said that they don't think ActivityPub is good enough – but…

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it:

1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP world's established norms & wishes.

2. We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host. AP's redirection model of account migration concerned us.

3. We're concerned about the cost structure of AP. We're concerned that self-hosters are going to pay a prohibitively high price for virality. This is why we designed the network to avoid placing heavy load on PDS.

I know that the AP world is frustrated with the competition between the protocols and suspicious of how we've chosen to do things. It's a shame because I think we're after similar things, and hold similar values. We didn't set out to sabotage the AP world; we just felt like there were important changes that needed to happen for this mission to work.

Note, however: Our software is not proprietary. It's open-source. The specs are open. The network firehose is open. We're working on getting every piece of the infrastructure into good governance and straightforward self-hosting. It just takes time.

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#14

Post by fsflover »

pfraze wrote: post #13
shafyy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done everything to have the appearance of an open protocol and use that as a competitive advantage against incumbents. However, if you look at the reality, it's a very centralized service run by the same company which controls and develops the protocol. If they are serious about this, they should hand over ATProto to an organization like W3C. They said that they don't think ActivityPub is good enough – but…

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it: 1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP wo…

> AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics.

I guess you should also refuse to use the Internet itself, too.

> We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host

So how do I leave a host and join another, independent one in Bluesky?

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#15

Post by pfraze »

fsflover wrote: post #14
pfraze wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it: 1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP wo…

> AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. I guess you should also refuse to use the Internet itself, too. > We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host So how do I leave a host and join another, independent one in Bluesky?

For account hosting: https://atproto.com/guides/self-hosting

For running a relay and appview, the code is dispersed among https://github.com/bluesky-social and we're working on a straight-forward distribution

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#16

Post by [deleted] »

fsflover wrote: post #14
pfraze wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it: 1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP wo…

> AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. I guess you should also refuse to use the Internet itself, too. > We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host So how do I leave a host and join another, independent one in Bluesky?

[deleted]

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#17

Post by steveklabnik »

S0y wrote: post #5
rvz wrote: post #4

> Compare this to Mastodon, where you can easily switch to a new server and most your follower won’t even notice and business as usual carries on. I would like to think this is true, but there are just too many frustration stories of confusion of 'which instance' to choose, losing posts due to admins (and followers) shutting down instances and having to tell your followers where to go next. Best part is the instance…

>To solve this, they should close sign ups. Why haven't they done that yet? They do periodically closes signups. >I would like to think this is true, but there are just too many frustration stories of confusion of 'which instance' to choose, losing posts due to admins (and followers) shutting down instances and having to tell your followers where to go next. Except on bluesky, you don't even get to be confused becaus…

> Except on bluesky, you don't even get to be confused because it doesn't support any kinds of moves!

This is simply not true. There's hundreds of folks who have moved their stuff over. I haven't yet but will be doing so, been too busy with other stuff. But I follow a bunch of people that have moved, and there was zero disruption on my end.

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#18

Post by steveklabnik »

I don't really agree with the characterization of a lot of this post, but one specific technical detail:

> If Bluesky Social, PBC decided to show ads (or do something else you don’t like), it would be very hard for you to switch to a different Relay and still be able to interact with all the other folks who stayed at the Bluesky Social, PBC Relay.

This is backwards, as far as I know. Relays aggregate information from PDSes. If you decide that you want a relay that ignores certain PDSes, and then use an AppView that listens to that relay, you could use it. Your posts would still end up in your PDS. The BlueSky Relay could still be told about your posts, just like your relay would be told about your posts. This doesn't require any other people to do anything.

The issue to be worried about with relays is the other way around: If Bluesky's relay decides to ignore your PDS, then folks that use that relay would have issues seeing your posts. Just like how your relay would be ignoring the ads.

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#19

Post by S0y »

pfraze wrote: post #13
shafyy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done everything to have the appearance of an open protocol and use that as a competitive advantage against incumbents. However, if you look at the reality, it's a very centralized service run by the same company which controls and develops the protocol. If they are serious about this, they should hand over ATProto to an organization like W3C. They said that they don't think ActivityPub is good enough – but…

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it: 1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP wo…

>AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics.

Very nice way to say "AP isn't centralized enough".

>We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host. AP's redirection model of account migration concerned us.

What's your current timeline to start accepting incoming account migrations back into the bluesky hosted PDS? When will account migrations officially be a recommended operation? Source: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/ACCOUNT_MIGR...

>We're concerned about the cost structure of AP. We're concerned that self-hosters are going to pay a prohibitively high price for virality. This is why we designed the network to avoid placing heavy load on PDS.

First of all, self hosting an ActivityPub service is not prohibitively expensive, heck expensive just isn't even a word a would use at all. On the other hand, what's expensive is the cost of hosting the bluesky relay. What you're essentially doing is just taking on the burden/cost of data processing and hiding it from the end user. The fact that ATProto requires a relay is at complete odds with the premise of decentralization and federation. You're no more decentralized than google search giving you results from different websites.

>I know that the AP world is frustrated with the competition between the protocols and suspicious of how we've chosen to do things. It's a shame because I think we're after similar things, and hold similar values. We didn't set out to sabotage the AP world; we just felt like there were important changes that needed to happen for this mission to work.

We're frustrated with bluesky describing itself as decentralized and federated when it isn't. Look, I get it, You guys are trying to run a business. You can't control ActivityPub so you made ATProto. It's your thing so you can make what you want with it. You can make it open-source, but at the end of the day, you guys decide. Just be honest about it.

Re: Thoughts on Bluesky

#20

Post by pfraze »

S0y wrote: post #19
pfraze wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We looked quite closely at ActivityPub. Here's why we didn't go with it: 1. AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. The user community has been very clear that they do not want it to be introduced. We felt the connectivity of a shared global network was extremely important to the UX, but we felt it would be wrong to fly in the face of the AP wo…

>AP doesn't have the facilities for global aggregation which can power search, discovery, algorithms, and metrics. Very nice way to say "AP isn't centralized enough". >We felt that strong account portability was an extremely important feature of the system, to ensure that users don't get locked into a specific host. AP's redirection model of account migration concerned us. What's your current timeline to start accept…

Believe it or not, it’s possible to have meaningful differences about the way to design a system while maintaining the same motives. It’s clear that you’re happy with the ActivityPub design. I’m not. And your argument right now is akin to saying the Web isn’t decentralized because it uses search engines.
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