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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

#71

Post by orthecreedence »

colesantiago wrote: post #48
orthecreedence wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument against federation and open communication is that bad people might use it? What's to stop bad people from using the main Bluesky instance?

There is a form of moderation on the main instance. A self hosted instance will have no such moderation.

> 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.)

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#73

Post by shkkmo »

colesantiago wrote: post #29

This is good and all but, sigh are we really celebrating letting self hosting get into the hands of bad actors to federate with Bluesky? And don’t say “lets defederate with said bad actors” since they would still exist and anyone can join said bad actors instances. It’s akin to telling antelopes surrounded by lions to close their eyes and the lions are ‘gone’ yet the lions still exist around them.

This is entirely by design:

> Moderation on Bluesky is not tied to your server, like it is on Mastodon. Defederation, a way of addressing moderation issues in Mastodon by disconnecting servers, is not as relevant on Bluesky because there are other layers to the system. Server operators can set rules for what content they will host, but tools like blocklists and moderation services are what help communities self-organize around moderation preferences. We’ve already integrated block and mute lists, and the tooling for independent moderation services is coming soon.

The whole point is to decentralize moderation so that users aren't stuck with only the moderation provided by their host.

Decentralized moderation and the tools needed to support it are not solved problems but are instead ongoing projects. Block and mute lists clearly won't be sufficient to enable robust decentralized moderation so it will he interesting to see how support for third party content filters get implemented.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#74

Post by steveklabnik »

threeseed wrote: post #70
steveklabnik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That business model is laughable. The percentage of users who care about a domain name, are willing to pay a subscription for it and don't have one already has to be in the single digits. They better have a good answer to this because it's a threat to the ecosystem as a whole if they don't. Because relying on VC money in this environment is not the smartest thing to do.

I would agree that if that were "the business model" instead of "a thing that generates some revenue," it would be laughable. However, nobody, including BlueSky, believes that this is solely enough to power the business.

I agree that a healthy Bluesky PBLLC is a good thing, and hope they manage to pull it off. Time will tell.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#76

Post by wmf »

Brendinooo wrote: post #7

This seems like what Berners-Lee’s Solid project is trying to do, at least in principle. Is that correct? Seems intriguing regardless. Congrats on making it happen!

Solid is more generic than social media but yeah, it has a similar storage/app split as Bluesky.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#77

Post by whyrusleeping »

doublerabbit wrote: post #67
jakebsky wrote: post #5

Hey HN, the engineering team at Bluesky is especially excited to get to this point! We're happy to help answer questions and help anyone trying to run their own PDS host. Things should work pretty well for self-hosters right now, but we're standing by to help if there are any problems. Technical details and the installer are in the GitHub repo https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds And we're on Discord available to he…

Will this work for bare metal? I use BSD, and all I see is a installer for Debian/Ubuntu. No guide in sight for bare metal nor telling you what services/software are required.

yeah it works fine on bare metal, you'll just have to do a bit more set up work yourself (https terminating and such). The installer script should be instructive in how to run it but you'll have to figure out the BSD specific stuff

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#78

Post by steveklabnik »

orthecreedence wrote: post #71
colesantiago wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a form of moderation on the main instance. A self hosted instance will have no such moderation.

> 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 a problem.

I do not share this opinion personally, but have seen many people express it, so I feel like I am representing it accurately.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it's incorrect, and not just an opinion, because unlike in Mastodon, moderation is not tied to your instance. Of course, whoever owns an instance can decide to kick someone off of it, but that's not the primary moderation mechanism in BlueSky, which allows you to choose your own set of moderation tools, regardless of which instance you or anyone else belongs to. I linked to the main three posts to understand BlueSky's moderation stances and features upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471973

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#79

Post by t_mann »

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…

Not sure I agree. Being the thing that the tech folks find cool isn't a bad starting position at all. And it's significantly harder to achieve than DM's.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#80

Post by shkkmo »

colesantiago wrote: post #48
orthecreedence wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument against federation and open communication is that bad people might use it? What's to stop bad people from using the main Bluesky instance?

There is a form of moderation on the main instance. A self hosted instance will have no such moderation.

A self hosted instance will have whatever moderation the host chooses to implement (such as CSAM monitoring if required by law.)

On top of that, user defined moderation will be applied from block and mute lists. Hopefully this will include using 3rd party lists and eventually, user specified content filters.

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