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Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

beige.party

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Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#101

Post by j_maffe »

gary_0 wrote: post #86
miki123211 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm.

We're also using an algorithm right now on HN, to sort comments and posts by freshness, votes, and reply count (plus manual moderation fairy dust sprinkled by dang and friends). Some people have even criticized it or dislike it, because everyone has different criteria for things they want to see. It's easy to forget there's a gray area between "unsorted feed of all posts" and "nothing but insane rage-bait to maximize…

Yeah this is a more nuanced view that I find quiet true. Any algorithm has emergent properties that can make the resulting feed be healthy to consume or not. The issue is that these objectives simply don't align with the objectives of these companies. HN deliberately tries to avoid this kind of feed which is why it mostly works.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#102

Post by alpaca128 »

j_maffe wrote: post #82
Kye wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chronological sorting is an algorithm. You don't hear its dissenters as much, but it's not without issue. It's not always the best way to present things.

Repeating my comment here because some people are deliberately stick manning this argument: > In the context of social media, people mean highly optimized algorithms for maximum retention.

There's nothing stopping a platform from being correct both ways by saying "we use no manipulative algorithm" or something along those lines. It may be pedantic to point out that "no algorithm" is wrong, but it is in fact wrong and it's not hard to communicate both clearly and correctly.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#103

Post by j_maffe »

eru wrote: post #100
gary_0 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're also using an algorithm right now on HN, to sort comments and posts by freshness, votes, and reply count (plus manual moderation fairy dust sprinkled by dang and friends). Some people have even criticized it or dislike it, because everyone has different criteria for things they want to see. It's easy to forget there's a gray area between "unsorted feed of all posts" and "nothing but insane rage-bait to maximize…

Funny enough, depending on your exact definition of 'algorithm' either essentially everything you can do on a computer is an algorithm or there some weird and annoying exceptions. For example many definitions include the requirement that an algorithm has to terminate for every input. And I suspect that there are probably some bugs lurking somewhere in the HN codebase that make it go into the occasional infinite loop.…

In the context of social media, algorithms specifically mean recommendation algorithms that try to curtail the feed for end users. It is much more specific than the abstract definition of algorithms.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#104

Post by davexunit »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #49
rtpg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being at will of a server" is always a problem, but with federation you can choose which server you are at the will of. You still need trust, but that trust can be chosen by you based off of your needs (and that trust can be placed in yourself). You're on a different part of the trust gradient. Meanwhile there's a certain quality of service that can be obtained with "mere" federation that is much tougher for many de…

And the federation also made the spam email problem a lot worse ;-) Anyhow, federation should be seen as a part of specific strategy for decentralization; federation itself is not decentralization and cannot achieve it without more bits---like topological consideration. Many federated protocols tend to push those bits into the horizon and fail at scale when that horizon eventually approaches, while ATProto is at leas…

Saying the fediverse is not decentralized is a wild take.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#105

Post by j_maffe »

alpaca128 wrote: post #102
j_maffe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeating my comment here because some people are deliberately stick manning this argument: > In the context of social media, people mean highly optimized algorithms for maximum retention.

There's nothing stopping a platform from being correct both ways by saying "we use no manipulative algorithm" or something along those lines. It may be pedantic to point out that "no algorithm" is wrong, but it is in fact wrong and it's not hard to communicate both clearly and correctly.

I agree that not using manipulative algorithms is the best, more nuanced, goal. However, most people would not trust such a statement from a platform with clear conflict of interest in manipulative algorithms. Chronological ordering is simple (and testable) enough that anyone can trust it is not tampered with in any way.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#106

Post by davexunit »

its-summertime wrote: post #13

> BlueSky's big claim is [they have] "no algorithm". https://bsky.social/about/blog/3-30-2023-algorithmic-choice Over a year ago, a blog claiming the opposite > But the actual BlueSky app does not implement DIDs. It's called "did-placeholder" on their github. It's a stub. It's TBD. It's not a feature, it's a feature request. AFAIK People with did:web dids can make accounts and use bluesky > And guess who just bought…

did:web is not a decentralized identifier. My understanding is that it was made for test suites but was taken out of that context for production uses.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#107

Post by jamesmunns »

maelito wrote: post #52
pfraze wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky integrates with Mastodon better than Threads does at this point. I have bidirectional conversations with mastodon users, with notifications, using a bridge called BridgyFed. I can follow Mastodon users on Bluesky. I can’t with Threads.

How seamless is it ? Any daily problems ? Can you show a link to a conversation made this way ?

I bridged my bluesky account, if you're on mastodon and want to talk to me here, you're welcome to. Not sure if you need to opt-in on the mastodon side to be bridged to bluesky.

@jamesmunns.com@bsky.brid.gy

I think you can opt-in here? https://fed.brid.gy/bsky/jamesmunns.com/followers

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#108

Post by kalleboo »

miki123211 wrote: post #54
IoI_xD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never said no algorithm. I don’t know where that meme comes from. It comes from the people who don't know what an algorithm is but heard that Twitter has it and it's making them doomscroll so it's bad (which is not to defend Twitter or other social media's algorithms, but to say that some people seem to have a blind hatred of them entirely due to misconceptions)

And to be extra clear, "only show posts from people I follow, in chronological order" is an algorithm.

In common usage, there is a distinction between "an algorithm" and "the algorithm". The latter is often shortened to "the algo".

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#109

Post by kalleboo »

dbspin wrote: post #64
arromatic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expressed it perfectly in word which i couldn't. People's hate for algorithm is so weird . Without the algorithm they can never find quality or content they are interest in .

Absolutey rock hard disagree. I'm old enough to remember when twitter and facebook used to both have a chronological feed without algorithmic sorting. Facebook (trash today of course) was an incredibly useful way to find out what your friends were doing on a given day by just reading the chronological feed. You could also trivially see which events were going on in your locality and which friends were attending. At t…

I also remember when Facebook originally added their algorithmic timeline.

At the time everyone was complaining that Facebook was just "people posting their lunches" and from that PoV I thought it was a great addition to promote the things people found important in their lives instead of the noise.

Of course that didn't last long.

Re: Bluesky Is Not Decentralized

#110

Post by j_maffe »

kristo wrote: post #40
pfraze wrote: post #3

Read this: https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers AT Protocol works like the Web, where each user is a website and each application is a search engine. The apps crawl the network of hosts and aggregate activity. We have over 100 outside hosts and at least 3 aggregating apps out there. It’s a different model than ActivityPub, which is more akin to email. We never said no algorithm. I don’t know whe…

I don’t understand what the naysayers want? They want an app that is decentralized, completely free, uses nothing remotely related to crypto, doesn’t serve ads, and where it starts day 1 with a robust ecosystem of applications using it. These people are just winging for followers IMO.

Bro you literally just described Mastodon.
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