I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky
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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 -
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.
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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.
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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":
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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.
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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.
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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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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 I'm curious, but I haven't had any time to look into this, so if you know off the top of your head, cost aside, how much work/knowledge does it take to stand up the whole stack at this point? Does Blacksky, for example, or Northsky, have their software available and documented? I think that it would be fun to try to try, but I have limited time and this isn't really my specialization.
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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.
@mcc it really is a shame that there was all that racism happening. I've been seeing less and less of it, and hopefully it gets taken care of altogether soon so everyone (except bigots, they can fuck right off) feels welcome on fedi
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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 I am very much waiting to see what Northsky does. I'm not at the point where I'm willing to run my own PDS, but I'd love to be on a relay and client combo that isn't run by the corp.
(I'd use their PDS instead of hosting my own.)
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@mcc it really is a shame that there was all that racism happening. I've been seeing less and less of it, and hopefully it gets taken care of altogether soon so everyone (except bigots, they can fuck right off) feels welcome on fedi
@GroupNebula563 @mcc Would be nice! Won't happen though.
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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":
@mcc Right now, its only Blacksky's feeds and moderation service that are using their own relay.
They're not currently running their own AppView (although a lot of people are confused about this -- I even saw Masnick get it wrong) . They're working on this and saying it should be out fairly soon, at which point I believe the plan is to have blacksky.community switch over (or maybe offer the choice of which AppView to use, the way deer.social currently does). I assume their AppView will use their own Relay but haven't verified this.
Another current dependency is on Bluesky's platform-level moderation, the automatied scanning for CSAM, malware, and spam. At the technical level it's easily replaceable -- Bluesky outsources it -- but it's not cheap (especially since video is supported); Rudy estimated $160,000/year.
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@mcc I'm curious, but I haven't had any time to look into this, so if you know off the top of your head, cost aside, how much work/knowledge does it take to stand up the whole stack at this point? Does Blacksky, for example, or Northsky, have their software available and documented? I think that it would be fun to try to try, but I have limited time and this isn't really my specialization.
@alter_kaker I'm not the person to ask. I would join the Bluesky API Touchers discord (yes, it's really named that) and ask there.
Blacksky has all their software on GitHub (they are using a mix of original Bluesky software and their own stuff) but not instructions on how to deploy it as a whole stack.
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@mcc Right now, its only Blacksky's feeds and moderation service that are using their own relay.
They're not currently running their own AppView (although a lot of people are confused about this -- I even saw Masnick get it wrong) . They're working on this and saying it should be out fairly soon, at which point I believe the plan is to have blacksky.community switch over (or maybe offer the choice of which AppView to use, the way deer.social currently does). I assume their AppView will use their own Relay but haven't verified this.
Another current dependency is on Bluesky's platform-level moderation, the automatied scanning for CSAM, malware, and spam. At the technical level it's easily replaceable -- Bluesky outsources it -- but it's not cheap (especially since video is supported); Rudy estimated $160,000/year.
@jdp23 "They're not even running their own appview"
I don't understand. What is the website I have been using to access bluesky for the last month, then?
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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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@jdp23 "They're not even running their own appview"
I don't understand. What is the website I have been using to access bluesky for the last month, then?
@mcc it's a client (aka app) that uses an appview -- currently the Bluesky appview
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FYI all the Mastodon team is looking for feedback on featured collections (aka "starter packs") so they may check in on this post 🙂
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@anna @adrienne @eniko @mcc all the records in your PDS contain references to your identity (DID document), it's theoretically possible to modify the data to change that but requires rewriting your entire PDS for that account, so not particularly practical.
It's the DID that is moderated against in the higher layers, not your handle.
So it doesn't matter if you're @fred.example or @jason.example, if the DID used for one becomes the DID used for another handle.
It's kinda like how on ActivityPub, software has often encoded your username into the identifier for all your posts, meaning you can't change it without breaking everything.
(Though Mastodon is starting to fix this long-standing issue, there's fix only applies on new accounts, there's no protocol level way to fix it yet — it's kinda a weakness in JSON-LD)
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@mcc yeah have a look at Rudy's thread there, he makes that very clear. And similarly Northsky is saying well, our original plan was do PDS as Phase 1, Relay as Phase 2, and AppView as Phase 3, but now we're acceslerating Relay and AppView up and treating it all as Phase 1. My take is that everybody always took the approach of treating Bluesky PBC as a potential adversary but didn't expect them to be this adversarialy this quickly.
(If this is all an N-dimensional chess play to blow up the company to speed up the decentralization ... well as shitposting goes, that's pretty darned epic. But it's probably just horrbile comms accelerating and magnifying the tensions that were always inherent. Time will tell I guess.)
@by_caballero it's true that's a huge hole in the composable moderation model (and Rudy and others had been looking at it even before this -- https://discourse.atprotocol.community/t/how-should-we-fairly-split-the-costs-of-commons-moderation-across-producer-and-consumer-apps/122 is interesting thinking from the Eurosky perspective although doesn't yet point to any conclusions). But for this particular case they just need an appeal method for community members that allows themm to override the Bluesky mod service's app-level takedowns in their own AppView. On the deeper issue though I feel pretty vindicated because I've always said that composable moderation is interesting and valuable in some important use cases but doesn't actually solve the moderation scalability issue.
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@mcc @jdp23 here guys this might help clarify why Rudy has to rearrange his epics in jira:
https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3m2j6ccx2bs2t
moderation can only be additive until/unless you pony up the CSAM/hashmatch API key money plus roll and run yr own mod sys at scale. thats the real Achilles heel of composable moderation-- replacing the bottom layer is incredibly expensive
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@adrienne @eniko @mcc one thing i was never clear on, if you have your own pds and get permad, can you migrate and get around the perma, or is it some kind of cryptographic seed/hash of your pds data that's perma'd so you're fucked?
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@eniko @mcc if you're on your own PDS, you at least don't lose all your existing posts if bsky decides to permaban you. (If you're on one of their mushroom PDSes, they'll nuke all your content along with a permaban.)
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I really don't understand the point of packs when Mastodon has hashtag follows. Mastodon is already winning in terms of discovery here and in fact I still don't use Bluesky because its impossible to discover content there.
On Bluesky you get a pack of people but in linear timelines the power spammers just take over and then you have to do all that personal curation anyway but it's often even a worse starting point than just blank slate. With hashtag following I just subscribe to #fediverse and discover new content and creators organically.
Instead I'd like to see Mastodon commit more to organic discovery rather than consolidation of power users by expanding post classification system like using AI classification that attaches topic hashtags to posts etc to help users discover content they actually want to see not follow personalities.
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@jdp23 What's interesting to me here is, the bluesky line is "ha ha it's super good everyone is angry at us because it accelerates federation", but you're making it sound like Rudy is having to upend his software engineering schedule to do stuff he otherwise wouldn't have had to do at all early, because of this incident forcing him to protect his users
