I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky
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And this is a problem because the Bluesky moderators are *having a time*. This leads us to impetus #2 for Bluesky decentralization: A huge faction on Bluesky is leftist shitposters and trans folks who fled Twitter early under looming threat of censorship by Elon Musk. Bluesky *does not* seem to want this group in their userbase and repeated "odd" moderation decisions have reduced trust in Bluesky among this user community to zero. The death of Charlie Kirk has brought this to a breaking point.
I don't want to talk about Charlie Kirk, so I won't. Skipping forward:
We're now seeing a "Northsky" copy of the ATP stack coming together which seeks to be a Blacksky equivalent for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. This will probably be viable within the next couple weeks, unless it collapses in toxic queer-community infighting (which may already be beginning).
So. Three fullstack ATP instances soon. Is Bluesky "decentralized" now? Well, no, not really. Let me run through a Hypothetical Scenario.
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I don't want to talk about Charlie Kirk, so I won't. Skipping forward:
We're now seeing a "Northsky" copy of the ATP stack coming together which seeks to be a Blacksky equivalent for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. This will probably be viable within the next couple weeks, unless it collapses in toxic queer-community infighting (which may already be beginning).
So. Three fullstack ATP instances soon. Is Bluesky "decentralized" now? Well, no, not really. Let me run through a Hypothetical Scenario.
Imagine a hypothetical comic artist, "Gertrude". One day a hypothetical podcaster named "Louis CK" dies, and "Gertrude" posts something rude about this. Bluesky bans her. She's now deleted from the Bluesky PDS, blocked from the Bluesky relay and appview. Say, hypothetically, that virtually everyone agrees this was a bad moderation decision.
But Bluesky is decentralized, so we don't have to use the Bluesky PDS, relay, moderation service, or appview! We can Credibly Exit! Right? Right? (1/3)
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Imagine a hypothetical comic artist, "Gertrude". One day a hypothetical podcaster named "Louis CK" dies, and "Gertrude" posts something rude about this. Bluesky bans her. She's now deleted from the Bluesky PDS, blocked from the Bluesky relay and appview. Say, hypothetically, that virtually everyone agrees this was a bad moderation decision.
But Bluesky is decentralized, so we don't have to use the Bluesky PDS, relay, moderation service, or appview! We can Credibly Exit! Right? Right? (1/3)
I (me, mcc) never trusted Bluesky, so I've been self-hosting my own PDS from the start. I've been happily using blacksky.community for the last month (since Bluesky started gating access to their appview/web frontend on clicking to agree to a new TOS that seemed to me sketchy). Hypothetically, "Gertrude" could do the same. She can join Northsky PDS, make posts through Zeppelin, and Bluesky blocks her but Blacksky just fetches the posts from her PDS for me, and I get to read them.
Right? (2/3)
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I (me, mcc) never trusted Bluesky, so I've been self-hosting my own PDS from the start. I've been happily using blacksky.community for the last month (since Bluesky started gating access to their appview/web frontend on clicking to agree to a new TOS that seemed to me sketchy). Hypothetically, "Gertrude" could do the same. She can join Northsky PDS, make posts through Zeppelin, and Bluesky blocks her but Blacksky just fetches the posts from her PDS for me, and I get to read them.
Right? (2/3)
No. Because "Gertrude", in our hypothetical, *won't bother making those posts*. Because the vast, incredible, overwhelming majority of Bluesky users are still on the Bluesky network, and she is excommunicated. She *could* cultivate a group of followers who all use the Northsky infrastructure just so they can see her posts. But she could also cultivate a following on her Patreon. So Hypothetical Gertrude ignores Bluesky, posts to Patreon, and her Patreon posts get *shared* to Bluesky. (3/3)
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No. Because "Gertrude", in our hypothetical, *won't bother making those posts*. Because the vast, incredible, overwhelming majority of Bluesky users are still on the Bluesky network, and she is excommunicated. She *could* cultivate a group of followers who all use the Northsky infrastructure just so they can see her posts. But she could also cultivate a following on her Patreon. So Hypothetical Gertrude ignores Bluesky, posts to Patreon, and her Patreon posts get *shared* to Bluesky. (3/3)
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.
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undefined julian ha condiviso questa discussione
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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 do you think this work (on Blacksky or northsky's part) will lead to more independent atproto towers showing up in the future?
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@mcc do you think this work (on Blacksky or northsky's part) will lead to more independent atproto towers showing up in the future?
@aeva "Tower", that's a good word for it.
I think observably, the fact blacksky exists as a full stack (or at least end to end) example *is* inspiring more towers to stand up, and I'd put northsky as the example. (Or so I assume, I don't know for a fact the order of events.)
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@aeva "Tower", that's a good word for it.
I think observably, the fact blacksky exists as a full stack (or at least end to end) example *is* inspiring more towers to stand up, and I'd put northsky as the example. (Or so I assume, I don't know for a fact the order of events.)
@aeva The question as always with ATP though is "why?". That is *why* would anyone bother splitting from bluesky. What we've seen so far is two demographic communities with reasons to distrust platforms they don't operate themselves.
So like who else would bother? You wouldn't see like, a fishing community standing up their own tower because they have no reason to expect Bluesky will target them specifically, and it costs so much more than running a Mastodon instance.
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@aeva The question as always with ATP though is "why?". That is *why* would anyone bother splitting from bluesky. What we've seen so far is two demographic communities with reasons to distrust platforms they don't operate themselves.
So like who else would bother? You wouldn't see like, a fishing community standing up their own tower because they have no reason to expect Bluesky will target them specifically, and it costs so much more than running a Mastodon instance.
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@cthos @aeva I don't have an answer to this question. I've seen various claimed attempts to ballpark this number, but I expect it will change month to month, so even if I trusted the numbers I saw (I don't) there's no guarantee they're still accurate.
The Big Problem as I see it is since every "tower" contains the entire network, if the amount of traffic on bluesky doubles, the operating costs of each tower doubles. The "oh shit this is harder than I thought" problem is even worse than fedi.
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@cthos @aeva I don't have an answer to this question. I've seen various claimed attempts to ballpark this number, but I expect it will change month to month, so even if I trusted the numbers I saw (I don't) there's no guarantee they're still accurate.
The Big Problem as I see it is since every "tower" contains the entire network, if the amount of traffic on bluesky doubles, the operating costs of each tower doubles. The "oh shit this is harder than I thought" problem is even worse than fedi.
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Ormai per l'Italia è tardi, ma da qualche parte nel mondo è ancora #silentsunday, quindi beccatevi 'sto tramonto.
#sunset
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Presentazione di “Diario da Gaza”
@anarchia
VENERDI’ 19 SETTEMBRE’025 alle 19 @ CIRCOLO GUERNELLI, VIA GANDUSIO 6 Wi’am Qudaih è una studentessa di diciannove anni della Striscia di Gaza. Il 7 ottobre 2023 la sua vita, come quella di ogni palestinese, viene stravolta; dopo i primi...Vedi l'articolo
https://www.rivoluzioneanarchica.it/presentazione-di-diario-da-gaza/
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@mcc @cthos ah :( I was hoping Blacksky found a way around that problem, but I have no idea whether or not that is even possible because I have no idea how AT works.
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@cthos @aeva Every Bluesky replica is, probably without realizing it, making a bet that Bluesky has already plateaued.
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@cthos @aeva I don't have an answer to this question. I've seen various claimed attempts to ballpark this number, but I expect it will change month to month, so even if I trusted the numbers I saw (I don't) there's no guarantee they're still accurate.
The Big Problem as I see it is since every "tower" contains the entire network, if the amount of traffic on bluesky doubles, the operating costs of each tower doubles. The "oh shit this is harder than I thought" problem is even worse than fedi.
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@mcc @aeva Is there a good breakdown of the overall costs? Like I saw a lightweight AppView implementation still has to store roughly 2 gb of data per day, indefinitely, and...that's a _lot_ of storage.
I assume there's also a fair amount of bandwidth and other cost involved.
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@aeva The question as always with ATP though is "why?". That is *why* would anyone bother splitting from bluesky. What we've seen so far is two demographic communities with reasons to distrust platforms they don't operate themselves.
So like who else would bother? You wouldn't see like, a fishing community standing up their own tower because they have no reason to expect Bluesky will target them specifically, and it costs so much more than running a Mastodon instance.
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@aeva "Tower", that's a good word for it.
I think observably, the fact blacksky exists as a full stack (or at least end to end) example *is* inspiring more towers to stand up, and I'd put northsky as the example. (Or so I assume, I don't know for a fact the order of events.)
