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Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

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Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#151

Post by dorfsmay »

steveklabnik wrote: post #129
j-james wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see how BlueSky's moderation system can ever work. Decoupling moderation and hosting means there's no onus to do the moderation that they describe: which makes me think it will be BlueSky Inc., and only other corporations, that have resources to throw employees at a now thankless, Facebook-style moderation job. And instances have to moderate anyway , in order to not host illegal content.

I hear you on some level. That said, we are already seeing people creating blocklists, and tools to share them with others. That is happening alongside the company's investment in paying people to work on T&S related issues on their instance. I am not sure if it will succeed or fail, but I am interested to see how it plays out.

Blacklists feel more like reinforcing the echo chamber than moderation.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#152

Post by steveklabnik »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #140
steveklabnik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you at a high level explain why people are mad about this? Is there a difference in the sort of people on Bluesky vs Mastodon, or is it a technical disagreement?

Again, please keep in mind that this is my perception of others' arguments, and so may have some bias. I am going to try and counteract that with my wording here, but maybe someone who holds this position can drop by and give their own summary.

I have seen two main complaints:

* This is opt-out not opt-in, and I don't like that.

* BlueSky is bad because it is run by a company (sometimes with a suggestion that Jack Dorsey owns and runs the place), and I think the fediverse should be free from corporate influence, and so I object to the idea of a bridge.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#153

Post by bigstrat2003 »

hathawsh wrote: post #112
packetlost wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest, I think Twitter (and other similar sites) are a huge negative for society no matter who dominates the echo chamber. Training everyone to dump 140-char hot takes as a dominant form of "discourse" has been a genuine evil for the world. Twitter delenda est.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#154

Post by Balladeer »

steveklabnik wrote: post #109
secstate wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's sort of why Bluesky is not really decentralized, just federated. It's a pretty significant difference. Mastodon is federated and decentralized. Twitter is non-federated and centralized. Bluesky is trying to be the federated, centralized option. Whether that works, we'll see. I for one just gave up social media about 8 years ago and, while feeling like I'm missing something flares up from time to time, it's…

How is BlueSky centralized? I could see that argument before this feature shipped, but "BlueSky is trying to be the federated, centralized option" goes counter to what the team has said directly. I could maybe see an argument not based on technical premises, but instead something like "it will defacto become one because running a relay is too expensive" or such. Is that what you're going for?

I'm not who you replied to, but yes, that's my main concern: Bluesky is still a company building a thing to pay back the money it owes investors.

I worry that Bluesky becomes the de facto central actor and, due to having no stated business plan and a countdown to repay the money they took, pulls a Google, leveraging its dominance to introduce proprietary, breaking changes.

Yes, right now, the tech, team, interviews, etc sound mission-driven, but "revenue is the dominant term"[2] in the equation of a company's life, and there's still a very real chance that Bluesky dominates whatever federated AT Protocol network ends up forming, then uses that leverage to walk back all this promised openness.

I'm cautiously interested in Bluesky, but I'm watching for this kind of de facto dominance and we're probably too early on to see where the AT network is headed.

- [1] https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/20/revenue-model-not-cultu...

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#155

Post by steveklabnik »

dorfsmay wrote: post #151
steveklabnik wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you on some level. That said, we are already seeing people creating blocklists, and tools to share them with others. That is happening alongside the company's investment in paying people to work on T&S related issues on their instance. I am not sure if it will succeed or fail, but I am interested to see how it plays out.

Blacklists feel more like reinforcing the echo chamber than moderation.

Then you are free to not subscribe to any of them, and see every post. It is under your control.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#156

Post by orthecreedence »

steveklabnik wrote: post #78
orthecreedence wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A self hosted instance will have no such moderation. Maybe I'm missing something here. Are the federated instances less functional than the main instance? Is this some kind of weird freemium thing they're doing? (I'm actually asking, I'm not familiar with Bluesky much at all.)

I have not yet reviewed the code, but the federated instances should be equally as functional as the main instance. However, having the option of functionality does not mean that they will operate the same way. Your parent is not making a technical claim, but a social one: that there will be instances that are effectively unmoderated, because the people who run it hold that up as some kind of ideal, and that that is…

> Your parent is not making a technical claim, but a social one: that there will be instances that are effectively unmoderated, because the people who run it hold that up as some kind of ideal, and that that is a problem.

Ah that makes sense. Thanks for reframing this. I don't particularly agree either, but I think I now understand the viewpoint better.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#157

Post by steveklabnik »

j-james wrote: post #149
steveklabnik wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you on some level. That said, we are already seeing people creating blocklists, and tools to share them with others. That is happening alongside the company's investment in paying people to work on T&S related issues on their instance. I am not sure if it will succeed or fail, but I am interested to see how it plays out.

That relies upon the benevolence of corporations to much more of an extent than I am comfortable with. 20 years of social media has convinced me that that's a bad idea. And, I think, it removes much of the benefits of federation: if the only way to sustainably moderate is to rely upon gifts from BlueSky Inc., moderation is going to be necessarily dependent upon them.

To me, the company moderating their instance feels like additional moderation capacity, rather than replacing it.

I don't believe I subscribe to any blocklists on BlueSky. If I end up doing so, it is much more likely to be one run by someone I trust than by a company. Having the option of either seems worthwhile to me.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#158

Post by yborg »

numpad0 wrote: post #147
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluesky's successes is really making me feel that the first S of the abbreviation S.N.S. do stand for what it stands. There's tons of alternate social media out there. Forums, Subreddits, Tildes, Discourse, Matrix, IRC, Mastodon, Lemmy, Usenet, and on and on. The truth is the S in SNS is always what social networks have been about.

And a lot of them failed for their technical shortcomings and many others from social aspects. IRC failed in technical side due to the failure in committee development model around IRCv3, Reddit succeeded by sole social factor despite being a carbon copy of Digg. To me, Bluesky vs Mastodon, and also Twitter vs Mastodon situations seems closer to the latter, even with controversial waitlist and the big turmoil, respec…

>used for 30+ years = failed

I don't understand why so many technical people equate monopoly with success. I use IRC every day.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#159

Post by packetlost »

djur wrote: post #150
packetlost wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! My own gut feeling is that it leaned pretty heavily left and it's now closer to center than ever, and people are noticing the delta . Every time I open BlueSky it's like 50% Liberal rage-bait and like 40% people posting mostly about their sexual and gender identities.

The posts you see on Bluesky by default are the posts made by people you follow. There are other options to select whichever feeds you prefer. If you're seeing a lot of that content, it's because you're following people who post a lot of that stuff.

This is not on my following feed, it's on discover.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#160

Post by bigstrat2003 »

djur wrote: post #142
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Twitter has a lot of very right-wing posters and a lot of very left-wing posters. Which of these you're likely to see as a huge problem and which you're likely to dismiss as a few insignificant goofballs is probably going to be based on your own political orientation. It would be surprising if there hasn't been a rightward shift, though, considering that causing such was one of the current owner's explicit goals. I d…

I'm certainly willing to believe that there's been a shift. But it's completely implausible that in just a year (two? I forget how long it's been) since the sale, Twitter has transformed into a "conservative cesspool". What the poster I replied to is almost certainly seeing is that there's actual balance now, instead of being absurdly hard left like it was before.
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