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Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

bsky.social

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Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#11

Post by jakobdabo »

jakebsky wrote: post #5

Hey HN, the engineering team at Bluesky is especially excited to get to this point! We're happy to help answer questions and help anyone trying to run their own PDS host. Things should work pretty well for self-hosters right now, but we're standing by to help if there are any problems. Technical details and the installer are in the GitHub repo https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds And we're on Discord available to he…

Congratulations on the release! If I may ask a question - is it possible to register an account without a phone number on a 3-rd party server?

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#12

Post by steveklabnik »

r14c wrote: post #8

I hope someone comes up with a multi-protocol social server. Bridges are a bad architecture for decentralized systems, because they introduce single points of failure. I can understand using a read-only bridge to mirror content from external resources, but if the other side speaks a federation protocol you should find a way to communicate directly so you don't have to worry about intermediary failures.

Someone has been working on a bridge between BlueSky and Mastodon, and uh, it has generated a TREMENDOUS amount of controversy on the Mastodon side.

I have my own biases so I don't want to describe it further than that, nor link to it directly so as not to cause even more disagreement, but the controversy does not seem to faze the developer, so I believe you will have your wish.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#13

Post by lolinder »

yupyup54133 wrote: post #10
jakebsky wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The network is designed to be "locked open" in a way that prevents this. The architecture is designed to work like the web.

Nothing against Bluesky, but I think we are all a little jaded after seeing decades of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" pattern.

This would be more "create, extinguish", because there's no existing AT protocol network to embrace.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#14

Post by steveklabnik »

yupyup54133 wrote: post #10
jakebsky wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The network is designed to be "locked open" in a way that prevents this. The architecture is designed to work like the web.

Nothing against Bluesky, but I think we are all a little jaded after seeing decades of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" pattern.

Being jaded is understandable, but because this critique is generic, it is applicable to literally anything and everything. I don't see how you can ever get something that's considered good if you always assume it will turn into something bad regardless of its current stance.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#15

Post by jakebsky »

jakobdabo wrote: post #11
jakebsky wrote: post #5

Hey HN, the engineering team at Bluesky is especially excited to get to this point! We're happy to help answer questions and help anyone trying to run their own PDS host. Things should work pretty well for self-hosters right now, but we're standing by to help if there are any problems. Technical details and the installer are in the GitHub repo https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds And we're on Discord available to he…

Congratulations on the release! If I may ask a question - is it possible to register an account without a phone number on a 3-rd party server?

Thanks!

Yes, it's totally up to a PDS operator to decide how they create user accounts. It's also not required on the Bluesky PDS service any longer, in most cases.

By default the self-hosted PDS requires an invite code, to prevent random people from creating an account. Later other options will exist, including OAuth support which is coming soon.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#16

Post by steveklabnik »

I am very excited that this shipped! I believed the team would pull it off, but there's been a lot of skepticism, some justified, some unjustified, IMHO. Hopefully this will assuage some people's concerns.

I am unsure if I am going to run my own just yet. We'll see.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#17

Post by [deleted] »

jakobdabo wrote: post #11
jakebsky wrote: post #5

Hey HN, the engineering team at Bluesky is especially excited to get to this point! We're happy to help answer questions and help anyone trying to run their own PDS host. Things should work pretty well for self-hosters right now, but we're standing by to help if there are any problems. Technical details and the installer are in the GitHub repo https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds And we're on Discord available to he…

Congratulations on the release! If I may ask a question - is it possible to register an account without a phone number on a 3-rd party server?

[deleted]

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#18

Post by tamimio »

>You need to join Discord to access the feature

Seriously?! Will this trend ever dies?!

I don’t want to use discord, can’t they just make a simple request form? Whenever I see “join our discord” for anything in any service I just never use that service, keep it as an option for whoever wants to hangout there just don’t make it the “only” channel of communication!

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#19

Post by jakebsky »

steveklabnik wrote: post #16

I am very excited that this shipped! I believed the team would pull it off, but there's been a lot of skepticism, some justified, some unjustified, IMHO. Hopefully this will assuage some people's concerns. I am unsure if I am going to run my own just yet. We'll see.

Thanks Steve! You've been very fair the entire time and your feedback/thoughts have been helpful.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#20

Post by steveklabnik »

tamimio wrote: post #18

>You need to join Discord to access the feature Seriously?! Will this trend ever dies?! I don’t want to use discord, can’t they just make a simple request form? Whenever I see “join our discord” for anything in any service I just never use that service, keep it as an option for whoever wants to hangout there just don’t make it the “only” channel of communication!

Is that a direct quote? I don't see it anywhere. What I do see is

> Because the PDS distribution is not totally settled, we want to have a line of communication with PDS admins in the network, so we’re asking any developer that plans to run a PDS to join the PDS Admins Discord.

https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation

This is much more reasonable than an actual gate on the feature.

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