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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

#111

Post by eropple »

mvdtnz wrote: post #92
emceestork wrote: post #31

I switched to Bluesky but then moved back to twitter. I'm glad that they are trying to compete with Twitter (Twitter is a conservative cesspool), but all of my non-technical friends have stayed on Twitter. So, I end up going where they are. I think the reason my friends did not join Bluesky despite me inviting them is that it just isn't as good of a product as Twitter. You can't post videos or DM. I am not a tech exe…

No video in 2024 is a total deal breaker for most users. That's insane.

Video is also prohibitively expensive outside of Google-scale endeavors and will likely crush both third-party BGSes and PDSes. Everyone doing video is either selling you ads (whether it's in that video or around it), selling you the video itself, or is losing money. Possibly all three.

As it is, og-embeds do work for video and audio from a few different providers.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#112

Post by hathawsh »

packetlost wrote: post #106
hathawsh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the problem with Twitter/X. It appears that Elon's tweaking has caused the service to switch from left-leaning to right-leaning. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/01/after-mus...

That study is based on user sentiment/survey, so I wouldn't really put any stock in to be completely honest. The only thing this study tells me is there was a change relative to some baseline, not that there was any sort of absolute lean.

Fair enough. Personally, I like to watch both sides, and it has been interesting to see conservatives becoming more favorable toward Twitter/X. If I were working on a social network (like Bluesky, the topic of this discussion), I would be watching Twitter/X closely right now to try to understand the effects that certain tweaks (such as moderation policy) may have.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#113

Post by brigadier132 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #100

This I applaud as the tech in me. It will quickly become a mess in the real world. People will run pods on cheapest VPS and they will get hacked, run out of money, get bored, go broke etc. Imagine as fractions of content goes missing for a while or is just deleted. One guy runs a small pod with some people, kills it, 60.000 messages gone. How does that impact interconnected discussions? If I own my own data. (good),…

> People will run pods on cheapest VPS and they will get hacked, run out of money, get bored, go broke etc.

> Imagine as fractions of content goes missing for a while or is just deleted.

All of your complaints apply for the internet. Would you say the internet was a bad idea?

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#114

Post by layer8 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #104
layer8 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of Bluesky is to build a social network that is not incentivized by advertising. They don’t rule it out completely, but it can’t be a major part of their revenue.

> They don’t rule it out completely, Well, > Are you thinking about advertisements at all? > > There will always be free options, and we can't enshittify the network with ads. This is where federation comes in. The fact that anyone can self-host and anyone can build on the software means that we'll never be able to degrade the user experience in a way where people want to leave. https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ce…

In their business-plan post, they stated: “We set out to build a protocol where users can own their data and always have the freedom to leave, and this approach means that advertising couldn’t be our dominant business model.” Which reads like advertising could still be a possibility, but not as a dominant factor.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#115

Post by [deleted] »

emceestork wrote: post #31

I switched to Bluesky but then moved back to twitter. I'm glad that they are trying to compete with Twitter (Twitter is a conservative cesspool), but all of my non-technical friends have stayed on Twitter. So, I end up going where they are. I think the reason my friends did not join Bluesky despite me inviting them is that it just isn't as good of a product as Twitter. You can't post videos or DM. I am not a tech exe…

[deleted]

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#116

Post by wmf »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #100

This I applaud as the tech in me. It will quickly become a mess in the real world. People will run pods on cheapest VPS and they will get hacked, run out of money, get bored, go broke etc. Imagine as fractions of content goes missing for a while or is just deleted. One guy runs a small pod with some people, kills it, 60.000 messages gone. How does that impact interconnected discussions? If I own my own data. (good),…

With great power comes great responsibility. In a decentralized system you need to take responsibility for your data; specifically you need to backup your data. Bluesky has much better migration/backup/restore than Mastodon. If you want someone else to take responsibility for your data you can use a centralized system like Threads.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#117

Post by steveklabnik »

layer8 wrote: post #114
steveklabnik wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don’t rule it out completely, Well, > Are you thinking about advertisements at all? > > There will always be free options, and we can't enshittify the network with ads. This is where federation comes in. The fact that anyone can self-host and anyone can build on the software means that we'll never be able to degrade the user experience in a way where people want to leave. https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ce…

In their business-plan post, they stated: “We set out to build a protocol where users can own their data and always have the freedom to leave, and this approach means that advertising couldn’t be our dominant business model.” Which reads like advertising could still be a possibility, but not as a dominant factor.

Fair!

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#118

Post by emceestork »

sergiotapia wrote: post #83
emceestork wrote: post #31

I switched to Bluesky but then moved back to twitter. I'm glad that they are trying to compete with Twitter (Twitter is a conservative cesspool), but all of my non-technical friends have stayed on Twitter. So, I end up going where they are. I think the reason my friends did not join Bluesky despite me inviting them is that it just isn't as good of a product as Twitter. You can't post videos or DM. I am not a tech exe…

> Twitter is a conservative cesspool I disagree. If anything now it's more balanced, every "right of Portland-liberal" is no longer hidden and shadow-banned or worse. I like it a lot more! Now you can actually read and learn about stuff you care about.

Yeah, maybe we just have different politics and I'm too dismissive of alternative worldviews.

Still though, I get like Matt Gaetz' tweets recommended to me. Does anyone like that dude? How is this happening? Why on earth would I want that? I feel like all this conservative stuff is surfaced by the application to me.

[Proof](https://ibb.co/ypHS8fN)

I got notifications, on my dang phone, for the dumbest fucking takes. I don't get them for liberal people. Possible I am just in the demographic of people they think would swing conservative so they target me.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#119

Post by mort96 »

jakebsky wrote: post #6
bayindirh wrote: post #3

Does that mean after Bluesky reaches critical mass, it'll turn the federation off, like Google Chat killing its XMPP federation? For clarity: I'd love to see this comment and say "I was wrong" 5 or 10 years later.

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

How can it "lock open"? If 90+% of users are on the official bluesky servers, what could possibly technically prevent bluesky from just no longer federating with other hosts?

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#120

Post by mariusor »

unshavedyak wrote: post #108
mariusor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather underwhelming from which point of view?

From the point of view of a small federated client developer, exploring the ActivityPub protocol. Far from thorough or objective.

There is barely any project that supports client to server ActivityPub protocol, so from that point of view is underwhelming, yes. If you tried to implement a Mastodon compatible client, that's a different thing though.
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