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There are no instances in ATProto

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Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#221

Post by jchw »

EnglishMobster wrote: post #209
jchw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, this literally already happened (a person was banned, and Blacksky reversed that ban on their app server). Blacksky is literally the only such example of alternative infrastructure that I know of, and obviously, it will not be applicable to the vast majority of people. Given the rising cost of hosting combined with the fact that the compute needs of running appviews and relays should theoretically only go u…

> Blacksky is literally the only such example of alternative infrastructure that I know of That doesn't mean other places aren't doing so. As an example - here's a list of all the relays that mirror the ATProto network: https://atproto.at/relays There's 16 relays by my account, of varying sizes. Of course, you don't have to query a relay - you can look at the Personal Data Servers (PDSes) directly. Speaking of - ther…

Relays are now cheap to run, but they don't enable you to actually be independent. You would need a proper AppView for that. Eurosky is actually not independent at this point.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#222

Post by riffraff »

doublepg23 wrote: post #78
1dom wrote: post #44

> Every single time a post about atproto hits Hacker News, somebody asks in the comments: “But where are all the Bluesky instances?”. The problem is, there are no instances in atproto! The question is a category error. Instances are a Mastodon-brained concept, and I wanted something I can link to that explains this clearly. I feel like you've (perhaps purposefully?) misinterpreted "instances" just to plug ATProto spe…

Perhaps ATProto vs. ActivityPub will been seen as the Fediverse's East-West Schism. Instead of decrees over the "filioque" we get blog posts about the definition of "federation" where both parties talk past each other.

The good thing is bridgy fed/a new social exists, and you can trivially bridge atmosphere and fediverse today.

The east-west schism took way longer to allow some reconciliation :)

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#223

Post by IANSYT »

hahajk wrote: post #212
pfraze wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Someone has to archive the data, right? Perhaps the complexity has been pushed to the AppViews? 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.

AppViews already had to archive whatever data from the network they cared about. The change just means that an AppView won't be able to infinitely backfill from any relay, you either need to find a relay that archives all the data you want and backfill from that relay, or you'll need to backfill by querying pds's directly. Or you could just not backfill at all, your AppView can do whatever it wants to really. Clients always talk to an AppView to get information about the network, the AppView manages the building of reverse links, the relay doesn't care about the hydrated state of the network, its just a stream of events which occur on the atproto network.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#224

Post by cavoirom »

JasonSage wrote: post #65
danabramov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being a bit cheeky in the article's tone but I am fairly confident from discussions in the past that "But where are Bluesky instances?" is a common question which usually demonstrates a misunderstanding of the architecture where "having instances of an app" is seen as a measure of decentralization. My article was an attempt to dig at this specific misunderstanding by comparing it to "But where are Google Reader i…

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 could see "Bluesky AppView" has similar semantic as Mastodon instance: network, moderation...

The difference is on ATProto, when I get banned, people must switch to another "AppView instance" (could be reusing the same Bluesky AppView stack) to interact with me. I summary, my data is not lock in, but my audience could be.

On the other aspect, Bluesky AppView is only a small part (a microblogging network) of the bigger Atmosphere where we can create different AppViews for different use cases, e.g. publishing (leaflet.pub), code repository (tangled.org). Users can use the same handle and PDS for these AppViews.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#225

Post by rtpg »

danabramov wrote: post #57
JoshTriplett wrote: post #49

I appreciate how this explains the difference between the two. But I also found it a little frustrating, because it answered one part of the question but failed to answer the question so what does ATProto do to solve the problems that instances solve? For example, when this article dismisses defederation as merely a mysterious reason you might not see posts from your friends, it fails to answer "so how does atproto s…

If you’re asking about moderation, it works similarly as you’d expect it to work in a everything-RSS world. At the hosting level, the hosting you use will likely ban you for clearly illegal stuff. Same as blogspot dot com or Cloudflare could ban you for certain things. At the application level, application admins/mods would moderate as any app does. This is similar to running any web service today with user generated…

> There’s no “defederation” because there’s no analog of “community instances” that may fight with each other.

If Bluesky specifically wanted to just not have its user interact with some other entity in ATProto-land would they be able to?

My impression is that the answer to this is "yes", because people are signing up to Bluesky and relying on Bluesky to hold on to their posts etc.

Similar to how Email is all federated but in practice a bunch of people use email from one of a handful of large service providers who (in practice, not necessarily for nefarious reasons) do end up blacklisting certain email senders.

The RSS-reader example feels a bit different on the ground because for a given user, "store a list of websites you care about" is not a complicated endeavor.

For the "short-form social media with algorithmic timeline" usecase (which isn't all atproto is about, granted!) "users self-host a thing to scoop up enough of the world's posts to then make a local algorithmic timeline" doesn't... doesn't feel very feasible, right?

I guess the blogspot comparison is apt... but if "full" self-hosting requires a relay with quite some juice ($30 is "cheap" but... compared to a pile of files to host your own blog...), then in practice we're going to see a heavy amount of centralization anyways right?

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#226

Post by chickensong »

krapp wrote: post #180
wolvoleo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The obvious question is, which group gets dibs on "redsky?"

The Fixx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cit17Si-Vts

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#227

Post by INTPenis »

tao_oat wrote: post #39
INTPenis wrote: post #34

ATproto sacrifices true decentralization for consistency, Mastodon and AP does the opposite, sacrifices true consistency for more accessible decentralization. At least that's how I understand it, because running an AP node is much more accessible to regular selfhosters than running one of those content relays in AT. So all you'll ever "decentralize" in AT is your own data, it's more about owning your data rather than…

I'm not sure there is such a thing as "true" decentralization :) In my mind it's more of a buffet of tradeoffs rather than a single sliding scale. FWIW, in the AP world there are several individuals and small teams running relays/mirrors/caches/AppViews and so on -- but you're right that this could get more expensive as things grow.

I agree, with the state of things as they are now.

I prefer AP for one reason, it's more accessible to the people. I would prefer to see small computer organisations with member fees, and donations, that run their own little node, instead of huge monolithic components.

That's why I never liked bsky, because it was too monolithic. I never liked the monolithic AP instances either. If we're going to decentralize, let's properly decentralize.

As soon as something becomes huge and monolithic, it's a red flag.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#228

Post by palata »

wmf wrote: post #216
danabramov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm one of those "is it decentralized yet" people and to me the real concern is the AppView since I assume that's where censorship would be applied if it ever happens. People keep telling me about PDSes but I don't care about controlling my PDS if other people can't see my posts .

> I don't care about controlling my PDS if other people can't see my posts.

Isn't that similar with Mastodon? Someone on an instance that does not federate with yours will not see your posts, and I guess someone on an instance that would censor you would not see your posts?

That someone would have to change instance if they disagree with the moderation, and doing so is more painful with ActivityPub than with ATProto, right?

Disclaimer: I have no skin in this game, I don't use social networks. Just interested technically :-).

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#229

Post by palata »

cavoirom wrote: post #224
JasonSage wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could see "Bluesky AppView" has similar semantic as Mastodon instance: network, moderation... The difference is on ATProto, when I get banned, people must switch to another "AppView instance" (could be reusing the same Bluesky AppView stack) to interact with me. I summary, my data is not lock in, but my audience could be. On the other aspect, Bluesky AppView is only a small part (a microblogging network) of the big…

Yeah I wanted to say that. From a user's point of view, it sounds like the AppView is the instance. If you disagree with the moderation, you can move to a different AppView (that may use different relays) but keep your PDS.

Whereas with Mastodon your PDS is your AppView, so if you leave the AppView you lose your PDS (and have to somehow export it).

Is that correct?

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#230

Post by TylerE »

skybrian wrote: post #163
ramblurr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How about, less than what many people pay for a tank of gas? Most people won't do it, but they don't have to, and it's not a particularly expensive hobby.

In the US. How about in Kenya or Laos? Plenty of places where $30/month is closer to “median monthly income” than “an expense you’d barely notice”.
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