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

@swetland @mcc @aeva

because #bluesky operates on the #cryptoBro credo (since bluesky is run by crypto bros)

in #crypto, the con is:

1. promise a lot
2. don't deliver
3. but nevertheless generate adoring devotion off of the promise

this works like gangbusters

because people want to believe. they even get defensive and angry when you point out promise vs reality

it's a hack of human psychology

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 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

@alter_kaker @mcc hmm, apparently not that much knowledge is required, and the cost dropped significantly, I still don't trust any of it though

https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

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 Which PDS implementation are you self hosting with?

@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.

Is there a reason to pick another?

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.

@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 There's also https://plc.directory/, the did:plc: database, also run by Bluesky.

("plc" stands for "placeholder", because they aspire to figure out something blockchain decentralized later.)

I think Bluesky can inconvenience people at best, or hijack their accounts at worst, especially if they were using a Bluesky PDS and Bluesky has all the keys. But I don't know/remember the exact implications.

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

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.

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

@benroyce @swetland @mcc @aeva

@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.

@swetland that is pretty much the intention of the ATmosphere's design. The vision of this "composable moderation" is to allow independent "labeller" or filter services be able to process the firehose of relay traffic.

I do find the atmosphere approach interesting but its "service oriented" design seems to fight against the nature (or original intentions at least) of the host-centric internet we all try to navigate.

I think that, if reasonableness prevails, ATproto and ActivityPub will end up cross pollinating ideas and resembling each other more. Oddly enough they are both hobbled by the same problem to some degree...the dominance of a single entity hampering the true potential each has (Bluesky and Mastodon or at least Gargron's Big Instances).

One thing is pretty certain at least... The dominant platform within the fediverse driving certain communities away was a more significant factor in why Bluesky gained traction than any technical design decisions either network made.

@mcc @gbargoud

@alter_kaker @mcc hmm, apparently not that much knowledge is required, and the cost dropped significantly, I still don't trust any of it though

https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

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 For my own understanding: while the server architecture is different, the same thing could happen on the Fediverse, right? (Except portability is worse.) The only thing saving it is that mastodon.social is only the plurality of users, maybe a majority, but not the overwhelming majority?

@mcc "tried to adopt Fediverse first and basically got harassed off."

what does this mean, exactly? you don't have to interact with any other instance on the whole stack if you don't want to. what I'm guessing is this actually means people tried to signup for mastodon.social which is a shithole and then that got conflated with the whole fediverse