undefined
@jrose I mean, observably, a *lot* of servers are outright blocking mastodon.social and the users seem entirely happy.
The question is whether a non mothership community can be viable without the mothership. That's the case on Mastodon. Bluesky isn't close and we're only now starting to see *movement toward* it getting close. The difference between 51% and 99.9% is meaningful.
@lritter I think this happening with m.s is a real risk, but the thing I'd point to to say it hasn't happened in practice is that m.s is probably the most blocked instance and none of the instances blocking m.s seem unhappy!
@gbargoud Sure. You could do that. I'm aware of a patch to the PDS (backend) software that allows it to flat out publish via ActivityPub. I haven't seen a *frontend* that merges the streams yet though.
There's also the problem that you can't reeeallly monitor *just part* of the Bluesky network. To follow part of it you're supposed to drink the entire firehose and filter out the parts you care about.
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.
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)
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)
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 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.
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.
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.
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":
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.
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.
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
What I'm listening to today: "icm", a773
One last track from the musician I've been calling "the fusion-jazz-on-modular-synths guy". So thing is, mixing jazz and electronic music is not odd, it's just what you're *expected* to do is cut up the jazz as a backing for sampled breakbeats. This raises a question: What if a773 made a track with breaks? Turns out it turns out extremely well. Something here for both prog and Ninja Tune lovers. Nice understated bassline groove.
What I'm listening to today: "Late Morning", Breakbeat Era
A couple days ago I linked the song from this album I thought had the closest chance of getting mainstream euro radio recognition for this odd Roni Size project. This (incidentally the next song on the album) is the track I think appeals best if you just like SOUNDS. Six minutes onrushing bull head down subway to an afternoon headache, breakbeat jungle boiled down to annihilation of all thought, moksha in motion
What I'm listening to today: "Imouha", Etran de LAïr
Incredible surfrock¹ jam by a band that describes themselves as "the stars of the Agadez guitar scene" (Agadez is the fifth largest city in the Republic of Niger). Do not miss the video-toaster-core video. Dudes rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeytuhn0irM
I found this as the YouTube algorithm's next recommendation after watching "Prisencolinensinainciusol".
¹ Sahara rock?
What I'm listening to today: "Time 4 Breaks", Breakbeat Era
This album was supposed to be the Roni Size clique's breakout moment into pop domination, but a series of odd decisions left it as a one-off artifact that you've either never heard of or are still obsessed with 25 years later. This track shows the project at its best: A pop song structure with heart-gripping vocals and the production gloss of 1999's best D&B production team. Progressive but goes down smooth.
What I'm listening to today: "Cosmic Interlude", LTJ Bukem
Chill jazzy electronic from the year 2000 with delicious stand-up bass sounds. Bukem spent the mid 90s staking a flag on what he called "Intelligent Jungle" (as far as I can tell he invented "the Dreamcast menu sound") but then as the 90s ended pushed past that and crafted a distinct brand of self-confident instrumental jazz with skeletal drum&bass patterns as support. Would feel at home on a Ninja Tune mixtape.
What I'm listening to today: "Biology 101", Dr. Octagon ft. "Chewbacca"
Removed track from Kool Keith's career-redefining "Dr. Octagonecologyst", present on the original indie release but not the Dreamworks version. The point where they apparently went "too far". Too weird, too creative, too surprising, too hard to follow, too "Kool Keith". A Dan the Automator groove slowed down to the breaking point, with a flood of incredibly dense sci-fi rap wordplay running over it.