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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

#51

Post by KerrAvon »

pfraze wrote: post #41
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…

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.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#52

Post by steveklabnik »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #45
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.

… and if not, what the heck is the business model here?

BlueSky's first revenue generation (in my understanding, I don't work there) has been a partnership with NameCheap that makes it easy for non-technical users to purchase a domain name and use it as their BlueSky username.

They have been a bit vague about other ways to generate revenue, except in one case: they will not be using advertisements to monetize.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#53

Post by micromacrofoot »

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.

what binds this? I have no interest in joining if Jack can sell to Elon again and a switch gets flipped

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#54

Post by unshavedyak »

mm263 wrote: post #4

I think they nailed every Mastodon criticism that I've heard floating around and addressed it, however I'm especially curious to learn about the moderation layer in-depth.

I'm kind of tired of social networks in general, but this is attractive to me just because of that. I like Mastodon, but the underlying ActivityPub protocol was rather underwhelming.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#55

Post by steveklabnik »

clot27 wrote: post #42

C'mon ya'll just use AP?

I am not interested in Mastodon and interested in Bluesky partially due to the differences in protocol. "just use AP" isn't interesting. This is.

(To me! others feel the exact opposite. Diversity is good here.)

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#56

Post by pfraze »

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.

Debated prioritizing them before federation, not debated their existence. They are a must-have for social.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#57

Post by Hamuko »

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.

Every time Bluesky comes up as a topic on Mastodon, the discussion becomes a total shitshow. I think most people are just going to be happier if the two stay separate.

This post immediately comes to mind: https://bsky.app/profile/caseynewton.bsky.social/post/3kktr3...

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#59

Post by danabramov »

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.

We definitely want to implement these features, the question was whether they should hold back releasing support for federation or not. Since federation is a core constraint on any features we'd like to build, the team felt that there is no reason to hold federation back, and that releasing it as it's ready makes sense.

We're thinking about Bluesky as both a product and a protocol (informing each other's design), and you're 100% right that for the end user, the product itself is what matters. Because we've taken on the decentralization constraint, we take longer to "catch up" to features that centralized platforms tend to have from the start, but it's definitely going to be a major area of focus for us going forward. (Ofc Mastodon isn't centralized, but note that it's had a few years of head start on feature development. We'll get there.)

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