I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky
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I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
My expectation was it was unlikely we'd ever see this happen because "federation" on ATProto means basically reproducing the entirety of the Bluesky software stack. In old Big Data terms, on ActivityPub your instance is a "horizontal shard" of the network; ATProto forces full DB replicas only.
Still, we're seeing movement on this front, which I'd split into two categories:
1. Your fault (you reading this)
2. Aaron Rodericks's faultee@mcc@mastodon.social looks like an ini
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@alter_kaker @mcc hmm, apparently not that much knowledge is required, and the cost dropped significantly, I still don't trust any of it though
@esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker @mcc This is curious to me, because it looks like he's running a relay as an actual relay, just passing along data, which would explain why it's relatively low-cost. But the Relay described by the Bluesky white paper was more than just a relay— it was a replacement (or rebrand) for the earlier Big Data Server that was supposed to not only pass data, but also store and index it all for the network. And I can't tell if those other, more expensive functions got offloaded to other services, or if there are two types of relays in the infrastructure, or something else.
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If you sign up with https://blacksky.community you get:
- Blacksky's "appview"/web frontend
- Optionally, Blacksky's PDS
- Blacksky's moderation layer (and you can optionally enable Bluesky's too)Almost-complete independence! What I'm not clear on is to whether, or to what degree Blacksky relies on Bluesky's "relay":
@mcc (if this is too off topic just ignore!)
I noticed that Blacksky asks for a birth date when you make a new account.
Bluesky didn't use to ask. No idea what they do now, but I would not have made an account with them if they required a birth date.
I'm sure people make up dates but I was still surprised. I'm guessing this is related to age verification laws? I don't know much about them.
Have any Fediverse servers started to ask for a birth date when a new account is created?
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@benroyce @mcc @aeva No argument from me on that account. I mean even if they were completely benign, just being a VC funded enterprise means they're going to need an exit (ideally a profitable one for the investors) and one way or another it'll probably end up being a crap deal for the users.
Many of the folks who moved there for "classic twitter" even acknowledge this and are resigned to move again someday... valuing the familiar experience over everything else.
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@mcc great thread. I've been thinking about this, and about the ActivityPub alternative. Which to me looks like either
- Best case: "Gertrude" can speak freely on a friendly instance (which she used originally) and unfriendly instances/users can block her. But she keeps posting to her audience
- Worst case: "Gertrude" is banned by her instance, and now does not even have the option to continue speaking to her followers, she has to start a new account/identity from scratch, try and integrate into the community again, prove she's not an impostor, etc
With ATProto you don't get that best case scenario. But you don't get that worst case scenario either.
Btw, I saw pfrazee say they don't do PDS deletions except for illegal content (since they have to by law in that case). But on that note, they could even go further if they wanted (I think?) and block PDS migrations at which point we are back in the worst case scenario.
The comparisons and tradeoffs here are really complex! Just starting to wrap my head around it.
@makeworld All I know is I see reports over the last week of posts just disappearing. This seems(?) to be a new event borne of the moderation staff finding too much content they feel they should moderate and panicking. If I were on a bluesky pds right now I'd be getting out before it happened to me.
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@mcc Which PDS implementation are you self hosting with?
@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.
Is there a reason to pick another?
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@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.
Is there a reason to pick another?
@mcc I don't know :) Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive?
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@lrhodes there's the other piece that is still totally controlled by bsky pbc, maybe that's it? I'm not clear on what it is
@esoteric_programmer @mcc -
Doing my part on gaygeek. To get more users, we need central, sadly. It's just beyond older non tech people to figure out. Not impossible though. I put mastodon.lol on my mom's phone...
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The biggest movement on this front has come from the community formerly known as Black Twitter, which now has complete, viable alternative dupes of the whole stack:
https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:w4xbfzo7kqfes5zb7r6qv3rw/post/3lyq3wh2i5k2u
This makes intuitive sense to me! My first question, looking at ATP, is "why do free dev for this protocol, controlled by one corporation, when Fediverse is right there and is more complete?". But the black dev community, from everything I saw, tried to adopt Fediverse *first* and basically got harassed off.
@mcc "tried to adopt Fediverse first and basically got harassed off."
what does this mean, exactly? you don't have to interact with any other instance on the whole stack if you don't want to. what I'm guessing is this actually means people tried to signup for mastodon.social which is a shithole and then that got conflated with the whole fediverse -
@mcc (if this is too off topic just ignore!)
I noticed that Blacksky asks for a birth date when you make a new account.
Bluesky didn't use to ask. No idea what they do now, but I would not have made an account with them if they required a birth date.
I'm sure people make up dates but I was still surprised. I'm guessing this is related to age verification laws? I don't know much about them.
Have any Fediverse servers started to ask for a birth date when a new account is created?
@ahimsa_pdx I don't know. I didn't make an account, apparently.
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@mcc There's also https://plc.directory/, the
did:plc:database, also run by Bluesky.("
plc" stands for "placeholder", because they aspire to figure out something blockchain decentralized later.)I think Bluesky can inconvenience people at best, or hijack their accounts at worst, especially if they were using a Bluesky PDS and Bluesky has all the keys. But I don't know/remember the exact implications.
@mnordhoff yes, the plc is another really frustrating thing
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@mcc I don't know :) Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive?
@fabrice yeah, I dunno. I haven't noticed a load problem from the typescript implementation. I don't have a very data oriented operation over here tho
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And that's why I say, TLDR:
- I am legitimately excited about the work being done by Blacksky Algorithms! I am using their frontend and happy with it.
- Northsky is an interesting development to watch
- If you're on a Bluesky PDS, I recommend migrating off with one of these tools https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ii5jchdzlmcojjw4dqczcgkh/post/3lyt6t6qfa22u
- Everything Sucks. A LOT of things would have to change at a social level for *any* entity other than Bluesky to have power or independence in the ATP ecosystem. I still don't trust Bluesky.
As an update since posting the above thread I have received replies from two people, one saying I am underestimating the level of stack coverage Blacksky has, another saying I am overestimating it. Also a "AppView" and "Client" are different. Sorry.
The stack is just so tall! There are *so many* layers in this protocol's model. And it seems like every single one of them is an opportunity to introduce censorship
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@lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker oh God so I could have sworn the early documents I read talked about the Big Data Server and then suddenly that's gone and they talk about the "relay" but is that why I'm confused? The BDS got split in two, into the relay and appview? :(
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I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.
My expectation was it was unlikely we'd ever see this happen because "federation" on ATProto means basically reproducing the entirety of the Bluesky software stack. In old Big Data terms, on ActivityPub your instance is a "horizontal shard" of the network; ATProto forces full DB replicas only.
Still, we're seeing movement on this front, which I'd split into two categories:
1. Your fault (you reading this)
2. Aaron Rodericks's fault@mcc Look, Bluesky has some nice advantages over the fediverse, mainly that it's not confusing at all because it gets to the point of just being old Twitter.
Federation is not their strong point and will never be, whether we like it or not, if you want federation and multiple communities, Activitypub is by far the best option.
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@lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker oh God so I could have sworn the early documents I read talked about the Big Data Server and then suddenly that's gone and they talk about the "relay" but is that why I'm confused? The BDS got split in two, into the relay and appview? :(
@mcc @lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker
Feel like the best 'simple' explanation for AT Protocol that makes some sense of the different components is this document from Kuba @mackuba
https://mackuba.eu/2025/08/20/introduction-to-atproto/
Kuba is also a great resource here on the Fedi for all things AT Protocol. He may be able to clear up any misunderstandings.
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What I saw happen when Black Twitter came to Fediverse is attempts to build community resources— like shared cross-instance blocklist infrastructure— get demonized by white queers as being anti-queer (because they, personally, wound up moderated— due to, as far as I saw, entirely real racism). I saw multiple projects shut down or hobbled by this and good people driven off fedi. I don't know if any devs from that era are involved in the new Bluesky efforts. But the Bluesky efforts *are* thriving.
@mcc thank you for posting about this. Did a quick stop over to Black sky and found a lot of the people I miss here and followed on Twitter over there. Thank you! My social media morning routine now feels a lot better again.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@mcc sad stuff 😢 Thanks for the history lesson and analysis.
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@mcc Yeah. I don't see how that's sustainable. I'm not sure it's even sustainable for Bluesky.
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@lrhodes Depends on how you do it I imagine. But remember that's several terabytes for the like what, three years or something Bluesky has been running. We will expect it to grow endlessly, and we should expect the growth to grow endlessly as Bluesky becomes more popular.
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@mcc What's the monthly cost on maintaining several terabytes of data in perpetuity?
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@game sì, ci sono anche soluzioni (purtroppo non previste da Mastodon) in cui alcuni utenti (i minori) accedono solo alle risorse locali o a un bouquet selezionato di istanze esterne, mentre altri possono utilizzare la federazione. Ma non sono di facile implementazione
@mapto @informapirata
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t yet
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@mcc I read your thread only now, and I wanted to thank you for posting all that. I am no fan of Bluesky and their one-instance federation, but I have a phony account there, to follow how it's going for them. Threads like yours fill in additional context. 🙏
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Bonjour ! @Neko0001
