I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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.)

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@jdp23 oh dear.

[cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev]

@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.

[esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club]

@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

https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

[swetland@chaos.social]

@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.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@cthos @aeva Every Bluesky replica is, probably without realizing it, making a bet that Bluesky has already plateaued.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@swetland @mcc @aeva

because #bluesky operates on the #cryptoBro credo (since bluesky is run by crypto bros)

in #crypto, the con is:

1. promise a lot
2. don't deliver
3. but nevertheless generate adoring devotion off of the promise

this works like gangbusters

because people want to believe. they even get defensive and angry when you point out promise vs reality

it's a hack of human psychology

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@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.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@swetland @aeva Yeah. I am using the exact alternate infrastructure that the bluesky reps point to as proof their system works. And I *still* cannot tell, if Bluesky banned someone and Blacksky disagrees with the ban, if I would be able to see that person's posts or not. In response to this thread I've had one person tell me I'm underestimating Blacksky's stack coverage and another tell me I'm overestimating it.

[jdp23@neuromatch.social]

@mcc well, it's incremental implementation. Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky, so is useful in its own right even though it doesn't get all the way there. The real value of the appview will kick in once it's got the equivalent of local-only posts.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@jdp23 "Having their own client lets them make different blocking decisions from Bluesky"

How?

[jdp23@neuromatch.social]

@mcc Blocks are "enforced" at the client level. I know, I know, that probably merits another "oh dear" but that's how Bluesky is doing it. So blacksky.community as a client doesn't do age verification for DMs in the UK, or block access to Mississippi.

Takedowns by contrast are at the AppView and someties PDS level.

[groupnebula563@mastodon.social]

@jef @mcc well, it's better to be optimistic. if you condemn yourself to never believing something will happen, then what's driving you to try anyways

[alter_kaker@hachyderm.io]

@esoteric_programmer so this is all within my ability. But what about the rest of the stack? To my understanding, the PDS and view? As @mcc says things have to change in a social level but the first step is more nodes...

[contrasocial@mastodon.social]

@mcc

I'm mainly surprised that the facade fell so early with Bluesky. I expected atleast another few years before something happened to expose the reality.

[bhasic@mastodon.social]

@benroyce @swetland @mcc @aeva

[fabrice@fosstodon.org]

@mcc Which PDS implementation are you self hosting with?

[mnordhoff@infosec.exchange]

@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.