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

[lrhodes@merveilles.town]

@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.

[ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social]

@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?

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.

Is there a reason to pick another?

[fabrice@fosstodon.org]

@mcc I don't know :) Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive?

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@ahimsa_pdx I don't know. I didn't make an account, apparently.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@mnordhoff yes, the plc is another really frustrating thing

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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

[mcc@mastodon.social]

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

[ozamidas@mastodon.social]

@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.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@bhasic @benroyce @swetland @mcc @aeva

Yup. And get very defensive defending the charlatan.

[mat@friendica.exon.name]

@mcc @alter_kaker @esoteric_programmer I think the key point is: "Every Bluesky replica is, probably without realizing it, making a bet that Bluesky has already plateaued." This is a worthwhile experiment, as long as you can pull the plug at a moment's notice and lose nothing.

[mat@friendica.exon.name]

@lrhodes @mcc @alter_kaker @esoteric_programmer My understanding is that relays have a "replay since timestamp X" functionality, so that consumers that go down for a while can get back up and running. Originally relays by definition had to support any X back to the beginning of time, leading to absurd storage costs. Today they are allowed to have a much shorter window, meaning in effect the storage cost is insignificant and it's the network cost that dominates. Unless I'm mistaken, the canonical store of a user's posting history is and always was the PDS.

[mat@friendica.exon.name]

@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.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@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?

[julian@activitypub.space]

mat@friendica.exon.name I am not opposed to a category discussing alternatives protocols.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@jdp23 Rudy says they're appview and also client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyvbqh3m3s2e

[mcc@mastodon.social]

Update: Rudy who operates blacksky.community responded to this thread on bluesky. Above I said I wasn't clear on how independent Blacksky was of the Bluesky infra. His answer is "completely". They run their own relay (which scrapes PDSes itself), the relay feeds into their own appview, the appview feeds into their own client. https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3lyv5rwpc722c

And since they bridge end-to-end, in my Hypothetical Example above, they *could* choose to make different moderation decisions from Bluesky PBC.

[jdp23@neuromatch.social]

@mcc so I saw! I responded over there. I was in a video disucssion on Friday and I could have sworn he said that the appview wasn't released yet, but it looks like I was just confused. If so, sorry for the misinformation!

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@jdp23 Blacksky is not only hosting a Bluesky alternative, they are *coding* a Bluesky alternative (in Rust, where Bluesky prefers a combination of TypeScript and Go). I assume(?) the combination of Rudy's statements should be interpreted to mean that the self-authored AppView is not ready yet, so he is hosting a PDS he wrote, hosting a relay he wrote, hosting Bluesky's appview and client on top of that, and he intends to replace Bluesky's appview soon. I assume.

[jdp23@neuromatch.social]

@mcc it's certainly possible! I didn't think they were running a separate appview yet but I could easily be wrong.

(blacksky.community is currently a fork of the Blluesky app-aka-client, it hasn't diverged much yet. not sure if and when they're planning on writing their own implementation of that)