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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undefined julian@activitypub.space shared this topic on
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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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@whitequark (More charitably: If one considered fast, full-text search to be a highest priority feature, and it was merely *unimportant* to the designer whether a second full-service node could ever function… then one might make the decisions bluesky made here.
As for scaling, I assume when the day comes they need it to actually scale they'll either discontinue or break the externally-published linear event stream?)
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@whitequark If hypothetically, just hypothetically, we imagine that a core design requirement of the protocol was "regardless of what happens in future, it must continue to be necessary that the company Bluesky LLC exists"… the decision becomes a lot less confusing.
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@mcc it's such a confusing aspect of the protocol. why does everything need the firehose? how do they expect it to scale/?
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@mcc its really weird for it to be controversial to compare ATProto to blockchain when it was an explicit selling point of the protocol before blockchains became embarrassing to develop for!!
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Follow up, 2025-12-27: Rudy here confirms the Blacksky appview is still being worked on (eg: blacksky uses bluesky's appview still)
https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3maykethsbk24
The sticking point, as he describes it, is "backfill". This alludes to the issue that makes me compare ATProto to blockchain: to get the features users expect, every node on the network must mirror the network's entire history. This is impractical, which is why bluesky is as of this moment a federated network with effectively only one node.
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@michelelinux @elettrona @fediverso@forum.pierobosio.it @Ali_per_Viaggiare @deedend @peertube @morrolinux @fediverso@diggita.com @anaru_sensei esattament, l’eccessiva frammentazione è la maledizione del fediverso, un po’ come accade su Linux, alla fine troppe scelte confondono le persone e spesso si ritrovano in istanze sbagliate su cui si trovano male o perché troppo affollate come Mastodon social o perché poco attive o poco affini ai propri interessi.
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@deedend @filippodb @peertube @morrolinux @fediverso @anaru_sensei basterebbero gli sponsor teoricamente. Però è un indotto che va creato con più difficoltà. Ma in questo mondo, dove tutti vogliono tutto, subito e facilmente la vedo dura...
