I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky
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@swetland that is pretty much the intention of the ATmosphere's design. The vision of this "composable moderation" is to allow independent "labeller" or filter services be able to process the firehose of relay traffic.
I do find the atmosphere approach interesting but its "service oriented" design seems to fight against the nature (or original intentions at least) of the host-centric internet we all try to navigate.
I think that, if reasonableness prevails, ATproto and ActivityPub will end up cross pollinating ideas and resembling each other more. Oddly enough they are both hobbled by the same problem to some degree...the dominance of a single entity hampering the true potential each has (Bluesky and Mastodon or at least Gargron's Big Instances).
One thing is pretty certain at least... The dominant platform within the fediverse driving certain communities away was a more significant factor in why Bluesky gained traction than any technical design decisions either network made.
@msh @swetland @mcc @gbargoud I think it is good to keep looking at fediverse's decentralisation too but of course there's a huge difference between the degrees to which these two are controlled by a single entity.
Why do you say this was a significant factor in driving communities away from the fediverse? It sounds surprising to me.
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@mcc @aeva I continue to be annoyed that whenever anyone brings up legitimate gripes with how bsky is operated, the staff claim "open protocol", "federation", and "user freedom", when the reality is that with only a handful of alternate towers that represent maybe a single digit percentage of users at best, for all intents and purposes it is not federated in any way that brings meaningful choice to the average user.
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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 as I understand it the cost of a relay has gone down because you can run it without keeping full account of the message history for all time and instead restrict what you have to a time-window.
Raises the question of whether that's good enough if we want real alternatives to the official company infra though.
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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 I think they just straight up renamed the "Big Graph Server" or BGS to Relay.
They announced it in Nov 2023 here: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/1847
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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.
@mcc what exactly is the benefit of migrating to a non bluesky PDS? I understand being on an entirely different vertical stack like Blacksky or Northsky but what does being on a PDS give you? Aren't you still (almost) entirely at bluesky's mercy?
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@mcc what exactly is the benefit of migrating to a non bluesky PDS? I understand being on an entirely different vertical stack like Blacksky or Northsky but what does being on a PDS give you? Aren't you still (almost) entirely at bluesky's mercy?
@mcc personally I've decided to sidestep bluesky's moderation issues by only posting about my game development projects there from now on and nothing else. The culture there is very bad for my mental health and it isn't safe regardless of moderation decisions given an extremely mild post I made there got reposted on a right wing rag ragebait article
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@mcc For my own understanding: while the server architecture is different, the same thing could happen on the Fediverse, right? (Except portability is worse.) The only thing saving it is that mastodon.social is only the plurality of users, maybe a majority, but not the overwhelming majority?
@jrose @mcc Even the portability being better is somewhat theoretical right now because if your identity is using did:plc then you are unable to move away from did:plc and Bluesky PBC has custody of your keys... And also like people have noticed hosting your own data in a PDS does not really make you independent from their actions so the point of doing it is somewhat unclear.
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@mcc @jrose I suspect their share goes up when there's a mass migration event and goes down otherwise, because in a mass migration event people want the easy answer and that's the easy answer the Mastodon website gives them. But otherwise there's probably a lot of accounts on m.s that don't stick around, while people on other instances might be more sticky (at least unless their instance shuts down).
It's been a while since one of those migrations came here so I think overall that's probably correct.
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@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@nullpotential @mcc people on Bluesky who have soured on fedi often complain about having been lectured about using alt text and CWs for what it's worth.
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this is the ticking time bomb
venture capital has sunk a big investment in bluesky, and at some point they are going to ask for a return
and then bluesky goes the way of twitter
"black fedi vs queer fedi" is mostly confined to a few notable drama ego characters
it's not devouring communities, there's plenty of black folk and queer folk on the fediverse completely untouched by it
but drama *is* drama
it does drive people away
and the bullying is real
@benroyce @txtechnician @mcc the funding is an interesting one. If we don't hear anything new about another BSky funding round in the next 6 months they'll start being close to running dry (they're currently closing in on one year since the last round that was supposed to be for two years and had a failed one early 2025)
Some of these recent troubling decisions may already be influenced by that. They've said they want to start running ads and that has implications for moderation for example.
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May be a stupid question but I don't know enough about ATProto, ActivityPub or Bluesky infrastructure to be sure
Would it be possible for one of those systems that is forking Bluesky to make it so they use both ATProto and ActivityPub streams so they can be on here without a bridge?
You mean https://app.wafrn.net ?
(Truth be told wafrn doesn't have its own relays… Yet? But in any case the docker stack was recently updated to point to blacksky's, and underneath it DOES talk to both ATProto and ActivityPub so you can interact with both without the need of a bridge. And before anyone gets scared, no, posts from the fediverse aren't automatically crossed over when interacted from wafrn, they are kept fedi-only; same goes for bsky posts. And also as a wafrn user you need to manually opt in to the bsky network)
Disclaimer: I am a user of my own self-hosted wafrn instance and would very much like to see it grow
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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 I am sure I've missed a lot of important things, but whatever happened to the ATProto indexer that was going to be built if cory doctorow's buddies could raise tens of millions of dollars?
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@msh @swetland @mcc @gbargoud I think it is good to keep looking at fediverse's decentralisation too but of course there's a huge difference between the degrees to which these two are controlled by a single entity.
Why do you say this was a significant factor in driving communities away from the fediverse? It sounds surprising to me.
@ikuturso it is talked about in this thread @mcc started but I will reiterate and add my take.
The fediverse is way more diverse in terms of operation to be sure, but it has been greatly dominated by a single *platform* (Mastodon) and application (micro blogging). As such the founder and his organisation have outsized influence on what functionality is deployed. For example quote toots were delayed for many years entirely because Gargron, and many victims of brigading in queer and neurodivergent communities, very strongly opposed implementing them. But BIPOC folk often used the feature in a supportive fashion, and even when suggested protections were offered they were shut down.
Anyways the dominance of one application and platform and the early adopters' community and culture here were off putting and occasionally hostile to BIPOC people especially who arrived in later waves. And it wasn't just with devs it was also in larger community initiatives like fediblock...
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@ikuturso it is talked about in this thread @mcc started but I will reiterate and add my take.
The fediverse is way more diverse in terms of operation to be sure, but it has been greatly dominated by a single *platform* (Mastodon) and application (micro blogging). As such the founder and his organisation have outsized influence on what functionality is deployed. For example quote toots were delayed for many years entirely because Gargron, and many victims of brigading in queer and neurodivergent communities, very strongly opposed implementing them. But BIPOC folk often used the feature in a supportive fashion, and even when suggested protections were offered they were shut down.
Anyways the dominance of one application and platform and the early adopters' community and culture here were off putting and occasionally hostile to BIPOC people especially who arrived in later waves. And it wasn't just with devs it was also in larger community initiatives like fediblock...
...this is just a surface level commentary on what happened, but if you were BIPOC or followed prominent BIPOC folk here you could eventually see a pattern in the interactions.
I know Bluesky is definitely not a panacea in this regard either (otherwise why the tremendous effort out into blacksky?), but they did address the wants and needs of nonwhite people better at least initially, at the app level.
Anyways what I am seeing is that both ecosystems here are making similar mistakes and facing similar challenges, and it is to do with some aspects of insufficient diversity both technically and socially.
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@bhasic @benroyce @swetland @mcc @aeva Alt text -
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World -
(Avoiding describing anything as easy for what should be obvious reasons)
@gbargoud @mcc #Friendica/#Hubzilla has been on #ActivityPub for a long time, and it already speaks #ATProto. It's the go-to Fediverse software for multiple protocols - I used it to read Twitter before they closed their API, and you can also subscribe to RSS and interact with Diaspora.
I don't know the details on how their ATProto implementation works though.
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@mcc @cthos @aeva I feel like fedi's cost/scaling problem mostly centers around issues with the implementation and deployment of Mastodon (the most popular server), with some features of the protocol being not entirely optimal, compared to the fundamental design of atp being hostile to lightweight independent instances.
Somebody could build a "better Mastodon" and instantly give people a lower resource / less complicated option for small or self-hosted yet fully interoperable fedi servers.
@swetland
That already exists in the form of microblog.pub, gotosocial, snac2 at the very least, and yes they all take very few resources compared to BigM. Even pleroma/akkoma is better on this front.
@mcc @cthos @aeva -
@mcc @cthos @aeva I feel like fedi's cost/scaling problem mostly centers around issues with the implementation and deployment of Mastodon (the most popular server), with some features of the protocol being not entirely optimal, compared to the fundamental design of atp being hostile to lightweight independent instances.
Somebody could build a "better Mastodon" and instantly give people a lower resource / less complicated option for small or self-hosted yet fully interoperable fedi servers.
@swetland @mcc @cthos @aeva Mostly true, but Pleroma and Misskey have most of the same features, and are simpler to install, yet haven't supplanted Mastodon.
I think the true killer feature of a "better Mastodon" would have to be in-place migration: allow upgrading an existing Mastodon server by reading its entire database, and provide a UI similar enough to Mastodon that it's a seamless transition for users.
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@mcc @alter_kaker "I would join the Bluesky API Touchers discord"
But... why are they not using... no OK never mind.
I'm so glad for this thread! I've had a bazillion questions about AT but nowhere to ask them. I really think there should be an "other protocols" channel on activitypub.space though. This is not "Technical discussion about ActivityPub-related topics" and sooner or later someone's gonna get angry at us.
mat@friendica.exon.name I am not opposed to a category discussing alternatives protocols.
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@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.
@mastodonmigration @mcc @lrhodes @esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker BGS, Big Graph Server, that was the old name, got renamed to relay at some point.
And last November they made a switch to "non archival relays" which now only pass through, but don't store complete repos for everyone.
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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
