I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky
-
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 -
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 faultThe 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.
-
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.
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.
-
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.
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":
-
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":
Why does the "relay" matter? Well, because although Bluesky's claim is that moderation is "composable" in their system— that you can choose which moderators to follow— moderation decisions made by Bluesky are hard binding on systems they control. Someone blocked by Bluesky is blocked from the Bluesky appview, their content will get removed from the Bluesky PDS if they were using that. The Bluesky relay censors content that violates the data "schema"; I suspect (?) it enforces moderation also.
-
Why does the "relay" matter? Well, because although Bluesky's claim is that moderation is "composable" in their system— that you can choose which moderators to follow— moderation decisions made by Bluesky are hard binding on systems they control. Someone blocked by Bluesky is blocked from the Bluesky appview, their content will get removed from the Bluesky PDS if they were using that. The Bluesky relay censors content that violates the data "schema"; I suspect (?) it enforces moderation also.
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.
-
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.
-
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)
-
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)
-
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)
-
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.
-
undefined julian ha condiviso questa discussione
-
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?
-
@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.)
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
-
In questo libro illustrato Darryl Cunningham esplora le bufale e i falsi miti su questioni di #scienza molto dibattute, passando dall’evoluzionismo al cambiamento climatico, dall’omeopatia ai vaccini.
Per Nessun Dogma, progetto editoriale dell'Uaar. 👇
https://nessundogma.it/libro/racconti-di-scienza/
-
@osma In my humble opinion, it's impossible to have a perfect moderation, one that got all my nuances, for free, on a millions user social network.
You can have that, just on decentralized social networks, if you own the instance, or the pds.
Or if you are a journalist and it's owned by your newspaper.Then you're responsible for what you say, and for what your readers understand.
-
E' uno sporco lavoro ma qualcuno deve pur farlo.
-
L'idiozia al potere.
https://mastodon.uno/@rgrendene/115206513415912311
-
Listen, Bluesky fails in moderation and when it happens, you're 100% silenced. But Mastodon teams regularly fail in moderation too, and some of them have influence which spreads through the fedi. Not sure it's much better.
https://aftermath.site/bluesky-charlie-kirk-dead-rest-in-piss
-
Vedo solo ora. Ci sono creme apposite al cortisone, io mi ero informato prima ancora che gonfiasse e l'avevo prevenuto.
-
non succhiare, come va Alberto, meglio? 🦶🏻
-
Gli automobilisti di auto più costose sono più stronzi
Ovviamente si tratta di una statistica, ma questo è uno dei risultato di uno studio che cercava correlazioni tra status sociale e comportamenti non etici. La correlazione c'è, e non credo che qualcuno sua sorpreso
In particolare nel secondo studio è evidente quanto chi guida auto più costose non abbia, in media, rispetto dei pedoni.
