211–220 of 327 posts
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> their cost of operation is still something most people can afford: approximately $30/mo now. Your definition of "most people" must be very different than the literal meaning.
If $30 a month is too much for you, then you probably should be doing something other than trying to run a relay. It is just not a significant amount of money.
I think the analogy presented here is broken. RSS doesn't depend on Google Reader at all. Even at its prime, RSS depended less on Google Reader than email depends on Gmail now. In ATProto, AppViews heavily depends on Relays to be useful, and Relays are quite expensive to run. Also, the yellow circles which represent blogs in the RSS illustration are really not of the same nature as the same circles which represent po…
Relays are actually quite cheap now! They used to be a bit more expensive when they archived all the traffic, but in sync 1.1 that was dropped and they can be run on $20/mo VMs pretty trivially now
If I read a post from a month ago, how will my client know how many likes it has or what the replies were? Without reverse links, someone has to look up in a database of all AT actions for likes/replies pointing to that post.
Contrast with the inbox/outbox forward/reverse linking model of activity pub.
I've wondered for awhile why someone hasn't started the Blogger.com of ActivityPub/Mastodon: 1 "instance" per person, no weird complicated group dynamics, the service handles all the technical details, the user draws from the same cohort as the people who signed up for Blogger blogs in the early aughts. If there are advantages to ATProto over ActivityPub in this kind of deployment setting, they don't seem clear enoug…
I don’t know what you mean by “instances” here. Leaflet ( https://leaflet.pub ) is one of those “blogger on atproto” things — is that what you mean?
Atproto apps are not like an RSS reader that runs on the users' computers and connects directly to the sources of content.
Atproto apps are servers that control, filter and shape the content they serve to readers.
Atproto apps can censor, shadowban, show ads, algorithmize the feed into anything it wants. The user is powerless and the creator is a victim that can't do anything besides crying.
The fact that any person can host their data anywhere is completely meaningless since they have no way of distributing that data.
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> architecture astronauts Not sure how I haven't heard this one before, but I'm stealing it. Salient descriptor.
Even has a wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_astronaut Joel's post was the genesis https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... Salient indeed!
Interesting. I'm an architect by title because my employer doesn't have the career path of a "senior specialist who really knows their stuff and wants to keep going at it". No. We have only two paths: either Manager (not interested in the slightest), or the almighty Architect. Every time I'm forced to architect something, that bit about the bottom line comes to my mind.
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From my perspective, I care about the centralization/decentralization aspect a lot, and if I'm coming into the discussion with a much better understanding of the Mastodon side then _of course_ I'm going to ask about the instances--that's the vocabulary I'm going to use to try to probe for flaws and gaps. It's not necessarily that it's the instances specifically I care about, or that I'm somehow technically misguided.…
I see! That's a huge topic by itself since you're raising a lot of questions. Maybe this could be a different article. My aim with this one was just to clarify the network topology because it is a prerequisite to having the other discussion, and too often that prerequisite is not there. If you ask a list of specific questions, that would help a lot. I might be able to write something or reply inline here.
The RSS comparison is misleading. Atproto apps are not like an RSS reader that runs on the users' computers and connects directly to the sources of content. Atproto apps are servers that control, filter and shape the content they serve to readers. Atproto apps can censor, shadowban, show ads, algorithmize the feed into anything it wants. The user is powerless and the creator is a victim that can't do anything besides…
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I’m speaking about the hypothetical situation where an app is blown from the face of the earth, not temporarily goes down. I thought that’s what the parent discussion was about. I’m not sure what we’re discussing now. All I’m saying is that if a developer forever takes down some atproto app, another developer can put up a new app that shows the old app’s data because the data is actually inside the users’ repositorie…
Yeah I'm kinda waiting for this. I don't like to join bluesky because I want it more decentralised but I can't join blacksky because it's only for black people. I'm kinda hoping someone sets up a rainbowsky or something for us in the LGBT community. Now that I would join.
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Uhhh, I'm comparing Bluesky to the Fediverse because that's the main applications of ActivityPub and ATProto? I don't care about the broader ATmosphere. How is comparing Mastodon/the Fediverse and Bluesky unfair? Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized by suggesting the AP analog of Bluesky is the largest Mastodon instance rather than the federation of them? This seems to contr…
Where do I login to the Fediverse? It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to ATProto. It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to Bluesky? https://bsky.app Where do I login to Mastodon.social? https://mastodon.social People use apps, not networks of apps. Saying you don't care about the broader ATmosphere is exactly the same as saying you don't care…
I'm comparing two supposedly decentralized microblogging platforms, Bluesky and Mastodon (and compatible microblogging software.)
The things in your post don't hold up. For example, people log into apps. OK. So when I log into my email account using Thunderbird, that's decentralized. Right? Literally I am using a client to connect to some IMAP+SMTP server. Couldn't be more decentralized.
So now let's say I log into gmail.com. That's still email. Is email still decentralized with the existence of gmail? Well, it is less so than it maybe should be, but absolutely! Because I actually use Fastmail. That's what a federated network looks like.
When I log into Matrix, I still use Element regardless of homeserver. I can use any instance of Element, or install it to my machine. But still, it's Element. That's what a federated network looks like.
Not all decentralized things are federated. Some of them are, for example, peer to peer, and many other architectures.
I am ignoring the broader ATmosphere because it is not part of Bluesky the microblogging network. There are also plenty of ActivityPub applications that are not Mastodon-compatible microblogging networks, and I'm not talking about those either. I'm not talking about, for example, the network of Peertube instances that are also using ActivityPub.
I fully admit that I am not an ATProto expert, but if you're not running a Bluesky compatible AppView that speaks the Bluesky schemas, you are not participating in Bluesky, which is what I am talking about specifically.
I have used the terms "ATproto" and "ActivityPub" only in the context of Bluesky/compatible and Mastodon/compatible. That is it. If you wanted to argue about something else, it is not me pulling a gotcha on you to refuse. I just simply don't care, and you are not taking the hint. It's my damn comment thread, I know what my intended scope was. I know, too, you must know that Bluesky itself is supposed to be meaningfully decentralized, such that you can indeed run your own entire appview stack and still be a part of Bluesky, so you must understand that what I am doing is inherently an apples to apples comparison.
Yet when I log into Bluesky using a Bluesky app, what I get is the Bluesky appview and Bluesky moderation service. This is because Bluesky is substantially more centralized than the Fediverse. You can kick. You can scream. It doesn't matter. Bluesky. Is. Centralized.
> The data is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). The user identity is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). Moderation is meaningfully decentralized (similarly to AP apps). Independently developed applications are meaningfully interoperable (more so than most AP apps, especially leveraging DIDs). People can and do run their own AT infrastructure all the time. Ask questions instead of trying to pin people with gotchas based on incorrect assumptions.
With all due respect, to the extent that there is any, no thank you.