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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

#201

Post by kstrauser »

Arnt wrote: post #40
clot27 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, what is the status of integration with the activitypub protocol? as its currently the most popular protocol in federated social media

There's a bridge nowadays, but… see https://pleromanonx86.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/mastodon-date... which also links to https://wedistribute.org/2024/02/tear-down-walls-not-bridges... https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/bluesky-and-mastodon-users... and https://news.itsfoss.com/bluesky-mastodon-bridge/

That was quit the mess. Ryan Barrett is a smart guy and seems quite nice, but it was very ill-advised to unilaterally decide to build an opt-out bridge. In general, if users one platform A want their stuff to be on platform B, they'll find a way to make that happen. If someone else takes it upon themselves to copy everything from A to B, people understandably get pretty bent about it.

If it had been an opt-in system, the response would probably have been far different.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#202

Post by vidarh »

steveklabnik wrote: post #145
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #134

Does Bluesky allow different federations to require everyone they federate with to share a block list? Mastodon has this problem and it makes it where you have to have multiple accounts if you actually want to use the platform. This might sound like not a problem, but it'll naturally lead to whatever account has access to 51% of your content being the one you use consistently, and you eventually just forget about the…

I linked to primary sources on moderation upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471973 Block lists don't work at the instance level, so the answer to your question isn't just "no", but that it is impossible.

Only in the strictest sense and if you assume nobody will build graphs of interactions to use to block instead.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#204

Post by timeon »

numpad0 wrote: post #163
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.

One of difficulties with content moderation is it's been targeted by some as a tool available for the few to control and shape public opinions to far narrower degrees than legally required, which is harmful to free speech. I'm not completely sure but externalizing that part probably mitigates that issue a bit. EU is moving towards requiring all social media obey EU laws, under loose notion that their laws is the leas…

Interesting that you have picked EU, while sites like Twitter are already blocking or removing content on request of countries like Turkey, China or Russia.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#205

Post by DerSaidin »

Can a server hosting an account read all of the data belonging to that account?

The feature I'd like to see from federated social network like this is encrypt everything to keys only held client side (in the style of keybase), so servers can't read content (only some surrounding metadata so they know which other servers to communicate with about the content).

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#206

Post by pr337h4m »

KerrAvon wrote: post #51
pfraze wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fair point and we definitely debated it, but it was too important to us that we complete the mission.

Debated videos and DM? Mastodon has those features; if you're not doing them at all you may want to reconsider.

Mastodon DMs have absolutely no privacy: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079

For a decentralized protocol doing things right is much more important than doing things fast, it is very difficult (and in a lot of cases impossible) to break backwards compatibility.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#207

Post by Repulsion9513 »

kstrauser wrote: post #201
Arnt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bridge nowadays, but… see https://pleromanonx86.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/mastodon-date... which also links to https://wedistribute.org/2024/02/tear-down-walls-not-bridges... https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/bluesky-and-mastodon-users... and https://news.itsfoss.com/bluesky-mastodon-bridge/

That was quit the mess. Ryan Barrett is a smart guy and seems quite nice, but it was very ill-advised to unilaterally decide to build an opt-out bridge. In general, if users one platform A want their stuff to be on platform B, they'll find a way to make that happen. If someone else takes it upon themselves to copy everything from A to B, people understandably get pretty bent about it. If it had been an opt-in system,…

Public is public.

And someone else will just go build an opt-out (or maybe even no opt-out!) bridge.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#208

Post by vidarh »

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?

People don't like the perception that someone is doing something to their posts without them opting in.

Mastodon is very sensitive to that.

People will still bridge the two in various ways.

People will also bolt on more direct bridging to Mastodon if there's any demand from Bluesky users.

Basically, unless Bluesky totally fails, it will be embraced and extended by the broader broader Fediverse, because why not?

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#209

Post by kstrauser »

steveklabnik wrote: post #152
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Do…

In my experience, the former was the majority of the complaints. The common sentiment I saw boiled down to "if I wanted my posts to be on Bluesky, I'd have posted them there." I agree with that completely. It wasn't so much that it was Bluesky in particular, as that someone made an opt-out system that would re-publish all their content elsewhere.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#210

Post by Repulsion9513 »

pr337h4m wrote: post #206
KerrAvon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debated videos and DM? Mastodon has those features; if you're not doing them at all you may want to reconsider.

Mastodon DMs have absolutely no privacy: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 For a decentralized protocol doing things right is much more important than doing things fast, it is very difficult (and in a lot of cases impossible) to break backwards compatibility.

DMs on any other service also have no privacy. Signal or Telegram could read your DMs by simply releasing an update to their code, for example. You always have to trust the person running the service you use. (Unless you have E2EE/something like OTR, in which case you have to trust the persom who makes that code!)
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