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Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

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Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#51

Post by rexpop »

baxuz wrote: post #50
jedimind wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good and necessary thing to become "radicalized" in order to prevent genocide and break out from the pacifying programming of the state. the state puts pressure on centralized social media companies to enact clever methods of censorship to pacify the masses for them. such companies might even just willingly self-censor in anticipation out of obedience or just plain uncritical acceptance of state department pro…

I'm not singling out this kind of radicalization, but any kind, including alt-right, qanon, etc. I'd say that inaccessible bubbles become echo chambers of people screaming into the void. The point is the be visible and heard, and federation does the opposite.

I wonder if maybe "radicalization" isn't as useful a term as you think.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#52

Post by baxuz »

rafram wrote: post #42
rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

Yup. Mastodon has this issue. Can’t pick a big generic instance because it could get defederated for spam/being too normie; can’t pick a small instance because it could get defederated over some ridiculous drama [1][2]. Normal people (and even some not-normal people) don’t want to deal with that. “Instances” are a bad model. [1]: https://tootworld.social/@lilythelonelygirl/1143999833553083... [2]: https://tau-ceti.sp…

Mastodon is basically Reddit for people who have the urge to tell you they use Arch.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#53

Post by krapp »

rafram wrote: post #42
rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

Yup. Mastodon has this issue. Can’t pick a big generic instance because it could get defederated for spam/being too normie; can’t pick a small instance because it could get defederated over some ridiculous drama [1][2]. Normal people (and even some not-normal people) don’t want to deal with that. “Instances” are a bad model. [1]: https://tootworld.social/@lilythelonelygirl/1143999833553083... [2]: https://tau-ceti.sp…

Weird. Millions of people seem able to deal with it just fine.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#54

Post by krapp »

baxuz wrote: post #52
rafram wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Mastodon has this issue. Can’t pick a big generic instance because it could get defederated for spam/being too normie; can’t pick a small instance because it could get defederated over some ridiculous drama [1][2]. Normal people (and even some not-normal people) don’t want to deal with that. “Instances” are a bad model. [1]: https://tootworld.social/@lilythelonelygirl/1143999833553083... [2]: https://tau-ceti.sp…

Mastodon is basically Reddit for people who have the urge to tell you they use Arch.

Twitter. Mastodon is a Twitter clone. The Reddit clone is Lemmy.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#55

Post by dingnuts »

rglullis wrote: post #33
rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

I thought I had it (mostly) solved with fediverser: users would go to one place, sign up with OAuth to the service they wanted to leave (Reddit, Twitter...) and the system would behind the scenes create an account on any of the participating instances. In doing so, it could leverage the user existing information (subreddits subscribed, users followed on Twitter) and find the corresponding subreddits/users that are al…

> Turns out the biggest challenge was not in getting users, but in convincing admins to join the network

The incentives for homeserver admins are extremely perverted and it's why the Mastodon network in particular is so dominated by ideological cliques.

Running a homeserver is thankless, laborious, and expensive, and the costs go up with each user. There's no money for it, so admins have to be compensated another way. Either they get off on the power, or have an ideological axe to grind and thus moral compensation, or they are altruistic and eventually burn out when they are subjected to the abuse of the job.

The financial story has to be solved. Admins must be paid to run services or the services get distorted to compensate them some other way.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#56

Post by spookie »

rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

It doesn't matter what instance you choose. An instance is a group, who is part of a bigger group.

But yeah, the majority of people won't ever understand that. And, in all honesty, that's fine.

Really, I'm cool with just having people around who care enough to grasp that. If you care that's cool, if not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nevertheless, this discussion is a whole other topic. They are just pointing out a potential issue.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#57

Post by myaccountonhn »

brap wrote: post #30

Everything decentralized will become effectively centralized once it’s popular enough. Most people don’t care.

I think people are starting to care more and more. People are using Mastodon, many are switching to Bluesky believing it is decentralized.

If you teach people why they should care, I believe many actually do care. Many users just don't know enough to make a choice.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#58

Post by spookie »

rafram wrote: post #42
rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

Yup. Mastodon has this issue. Can’t pick a big generic instance because it could get defederated for spam/being too normie; can’t pick a small instance because it could get defederated over some ridiculous drama [1][2]. Normal people (and even some not-normal people) don’t want to deal with that. “Instances” are a bad model. [1]: https://tootworld.social/@lilythelonelygirl/1143999833553083... [2]: https://tau-ceti.sp…

Yeah mods of an instance have the power to do so for the sake of their users (in their view at least).

Your comment also implies their actions affect all other instances just by seldomly doing this action. Which isn't the case.

We can cherry pick all day, but one cannot take the whole Fediverse down like it happened with Bluesky. Which is the topic at hand.

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#59

Post by sitzkrieg »

rafram wrote: post #42
rwmj wrote: post #9

Haven't we learned by now that approximately no one cares? Centralised services are vastly more popular than federated ones, the main reason being that they reduce the paradox / paralysis of choice when you're signing up for them. (Solve that problem properly and you may be on to something.)

Yup. Mastodon has this issue. Can’t pick a big generic instance because it could get defederated for spam/being too normie; can’t pick a small instance because it could get defederated over some ridiculous drama [1][2]. Normal people (and even some not-normal people) don’t want to deal with that. “Instances” are a bad model. [1]: https://tootworld.social/@lilythelonelygirl/1143999833553083... [2]: https://tau-ceti.sp…

this is a fediverse issue. mastodon is a client

Re: Apparently Bluesky has one centralized service, the "relay"

#60

Post by brap »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #57
brap wrote: post #30

Everything decentralized will become effectively centralized once it’s popular enough. Most people don’t care.

I think people are starting to care more and more. People are using Mastodon, many are switching to Bluesky believing it is decentralized. If you teach people why they should care, I believe many actually do care. Many users just don't know enough to make a choice.

Which people? The kind who browse HN?

Bluesky is only getting some attention now from people outside of tech because Musk is disliked and it’s basically the only alternative. I assure you most of them don’t know or care what “decentralized” means.

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