When discussing Bluesky, people on here really need to stop thinking in terms of instances, i.e.
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so is fedi for people who knows atproto!
seriously, both are decentralized architectures but knowing one doesnt helps to understand the other one. in fact it makes it worse
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so is fedi for people who knows atproto!
seriously, both are decentralized architectures but knowing one doesnt helps to understand the other one. in fact it makes it worse
@gabboman @volpeon @kopper
With AP there are at least some similarities to e-mail to rely on for the high level understanding and I'd hazard a guess most of the pain with AP is in the interop between servers (ex. wafrn <-> mastodon or akkoma <-> sharkey, or even kbin <-> gts) rather than the high level idea.I wouldn't be surprised if that interop is way less painful with ATProto thanks to relays and shit due to more stuff having to be actually standarized to make this work.
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@gabboman @volpeon @kopper
With AP there are at least some similarities to e-mail to rely on for the high level understanding and I'd hazard a guess most of the pain with AP is in the interop between servers (ex. wafrn <-> mastodon or akkoma <-> sharkey, or even kbin <-> gts) rather than the high level idea.I wouldn't be surprised if that interop is way less painful with ATProto thanks to relays and shit due to more stuff having to be actually standarized to make this work.
Atproto is RSS
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I have gotten one dismissive reply, so let me add something: Blind fanaticism isn't just unnecessary, it actively prevents positive change from happening because it refuses acknowledgement of problems that always do exist. Nothing is perfect.
I have criticized the fediverse a lot over the years. Especially the instance = community boundary is a huge problem because they serve as both a social space and a gateway to the network all in one package. However, community matters and provider matters are very different. If an instance defederates from another, people don't just lose access to that community - they lose access to communicating with people on an instance entirely until they create a new account elsewhere.
Imagine if a Discord server admin banned you and Discord also blocked your communication with the server members even in other servers or 1-on-1. That's fedi.
This means your choice of an instance is extremely important and happens at a time when you don't even know anything about the fediverse at all.
This is why I think what absolutely needs to happen here is to give instances less importance by implementing communities on a higher layer, independent of those boundaries. Is this happening? I doesn't look like that to me. Hell, we don't even improve on the microblogging formula in a meaningful way. I think the ecosystem at large has become complacent with the existing structure and has no interest in making fundamental changes.
ATProto seems closer to the ideal I have in mind, so obviously I've taken an interest in it.
(Improved wording)@volpeon I'm in favor of small federated communities, but you have a point about the control. If your personal data is under the control of someone else, that opens a door for abuse and tyranny. I'm ok with having several approaches to solve one issue. I'm not against the AtProto projects if they are not under the hood of the company running Bluesky.
My idea for solving the control issue is to have community governance tools, which no protocol has yet.
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@volpeon I never took the "dictator admin" thing seriously because not only does that sound childish at face value, but in my experience, what I find when I go looking for myself because internet drama queens love to keep it vague - it's racism. It's white fragility. That's what gets called petty and stupid on here.
If I'm not taking you or any other posts like this seriously, it's not because I'm a blind fanatic, it's just that I don't trust you guys. I have to be careful.
As a general rule, if a story is exaggerated, out of context, sounds fictional, and doesn't show any proof, then I doubt it.
@EatingHawaiianP1zza There are of course admins who're doing a good job, too. But I've been on the receiving end of unfair practices a few times over the years. One time it was because I was on an instance which got a bad reputation that got out of hand because of lacking research by those perpetuating it. Sometimes I don't even know what I've ever done wrong and could only guess. Having your entire means of communication with people on other instances cut off like that is bewildering and frustrating.
In any case, I have explained my reasoning not to convince anyone to move to Bluesky, but to say that it's good to stay critical even of things you like. Problems can only be solved if you acknowledge that they exist. I like Android, but Google's control over it is bad and we should find ways to get rid of it or create good alternatives. I like Linux, but if the installer is difficult to use then it should be changed. I like Apple's idea to make UIs more tactile again, but their implementation has serious legibility issues. I like ATProto's vision, but right now it's still too centralized. -
When discussing Bluesky, people on here really need to stop thinking in terms of instances, i.e. running the entire stack themselves.
If many people run only parts of it -- and this is happening now that running relays has become easier -- and members of the network spread out, then that's perfectly fine. If your relay does some bullshit, you can take your PDS to a different one and get to keep your entire history. Relay admins and PDS admins are less incentivized to play stupid blocking politics because neither are a useful boundary for communities. This is better than what we have here.
The real problem is getting people to spread out to different PDSes and relays because most simply don't care about decentralization. This is pretty much like the "mastodon.social vs. the rest of the fediverse" situation, just more severe.@volpeon one big problem with many of the parts of ATproto is that not only are admins less incentivized to play stupid blocking politics, they're not really incentivized to run those services in any way at all so they are likely to also run the other services where they do get incentivized to play stupid blocking politics. The lack of incentives for your average person is also a recipe for increased centralization.
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@volpeon @kopper there aren't many fully independent relays and Bluesky devs have even said maybe there will never be more than a few. This is because of high resource usage and the unsolved architectural problem in scaling the amount of independent relays up when every one of them have to subscribe to all the PDSes.
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@volpeon @kopper there aren't many fully independent relays and Bluesky devs have even said maybe there will never be more than a few. This is because of high resource usage and the unsolved architectural problem in scaling the amount of independent relays up when every one of them have to subscribe to all the PDSes.
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pds are "websites", and each appview could be something like google reader (RIP), feedly, etc.
Ok, the firehose relay is an extra step, but yeah thats it
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I have gotten one dismissive reply, so let me add something: Blind fanaticism isn't just unnecessary, it actively prevents positive change from happening because it refuses acknowledgement of problems that always do exist. Nothing is perfect.
I have criticized the fediverse a lot over the years. Especially the instance = community boundary is a huge problem because they serve as both a social space and a gateway to the network all in one package. However, community matters and provider matters are very different. If an instance defederates from another, people don't just lose access to that community - they lose access to communicating with people on an instance entirely until they create a new account elsewhere.
Imagine if a Discord server admin banned you and Discord also blocked your communication with the server members even in other servers or 1-on-1. That's fedi.
This means your choice of an instance is extremely important and happens at a time when you don't even know anything about the fediverse at all.
This is why I think what absolutely needs to happen here is to give instances less importance by implementing communities on a higher layer, independent of those boundaries. Is this happening? I doesn't look like that to me. Hell, we don't even improve on the microblogging formula in a meaningful way. I think the ecosystem at large has become complacent with the existing structure and has no interest in making fundamental changes.
ATProto seems closer to the ideal I have in mind, so obviously I've taken an interest in it.
(Improved wording)Also worth noting that one of the creators of ActivityPub is critical of the role instances play here, too: codeberg.org/spritely/ocappub/src/branch/master/README.org#headline-8
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I have gotten one dismissive reply, so let me add something: Blind fanaticism isn't just unnecessary, it actively prevents positive change from happening because it refuses acknowledgement of problems that always do exist. Nothing is perfect.
I have criticized the fediverse a lot over the years. Especially the instance = community boundary is a huge problem because they serve as both a social space and a gateway to the network all in one package. However, community matters and provider matters are very different. If an instance defederates from another, people don't just lose access to that community - they lose access to communicating with people on an instance entirely until they create a new account elsewhere.
Imagine if a Discord server admin banned you and Discord also blocked your communication with the server members even in other servers or 1-on-1. That's fedi.
This means your choice of an instance is extremely important and happens at a time when you don't even know anything about the fediverse at all.
This is why I think what absolutely needs to happen here is to give instances less importance by implementing communities on a higher layer, independent of those boundaries. Is this happening? I doesn't look like that to me. Hell, we don't even improve on the microblogging formula in a meaningful way. I think the ecosystem at large has become complacent with the existing structure and has no interest in making fundamental changes.
ATProto seems closer to the ideal I have in mind, so obviously I've taken an interest in it.
(Improved wording)@volpeon from what i see, atproto is genuinly better, but i can't trust the people behind it, if it were forked by trustable people, however, i could see myself use that
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I feel like there's definitely a lack of explaining that "relays can grab information from any PDS they want to" but here's my favourite post explaining some of the atproto basics:
https://steveklabnik.com/writing/how-does-bluesky-work/ -
When discussing Bluesky, people on here really need to stop thinking in terms of instances, i.e. running the entire stack themselves.
If many people run only parts of it -- and this is happening now that running relays has become easier -- and members of the network spread out, then that's perfectly fine. If your relay does some bullshit, you can take your PDS to a different one and get to keep your entire history. Relay admins and PDS admins are less incentivized to play stupid blocking politics because neither are a useful boundary for communities. This is better than what we have here.
The real problem is getting people to spread out to different PDSes and relays because most simply don't care about decentralization. This is pretty much like the "mastodon.social vs. the rest of the fediverse" situation, just more severe.@volpeon the activitypub tech stack is a flaming dumpster fire, that will eventually kill this place. I mean, kill it like happened to ostatus, relegate it to a few leftovers while everyone goes elsewhere -
@volpeon the activitypub tech stack is a flaming dumpster fire, that will eventually kill this place. I mean, kill it like happened to ostatus, relegate it to a few leftovers while everyone goes elsewhere@sun @volpeon The sunk cost will probably prevent AP from dying and instead make efforts to fix it with a compromise between the current (non-)spec and something more ideal. The issue right now is that the people that want to improve the spec are mostly destroying it (the whole https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public being banned and replaced with mandated as:Public thing)
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When discussing Bluesky, people on here really need to stop thinking in terms of instances, i.e. running the entire stack themselves.
If many people run only parts of it -- and this is happening now that running relays has become easier -- and members of the network spread out, then that's perfectly fine. If your relay does some bullshit, you can take your PDS to a different one and get to keep your entire history. Relay admins and PDS admins are less incentivized to play stupid blocking politics because neither are a useful boundary for communities. This is better than what we have here.
The real problem is getting people to spread out to different PDSes and relays because most simply don't care about decentralization. This is pretty much like the "mastodon.social vs. the rest of the fediverse" situation, just more severe.@volpeon The decentralization part should be emphasized by the bluesky development team that just so happens to be getting tons of venture capital, and the centralized moderation service fiasco should be.. fixed. The latter is being addressed apparently, but it wouldn't surprise me if it takes a comically long time for it to actually *get fixed*.
I don't think the Bluesky dev team has our best interests in mind. -
@volpeon from what i see, atproto is genuinly better, but i can't trust the people behind it, if it were forked by trustable people, however, i could see myself use that
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I have gotten one dismissive reply, so let me add something: Blind fanaticism isn't just unnecessary, it actively prevents positive change from happening because it refuses acknowledgement of problems that always do exist. Nothing is perfect.
I have criticized the fediverse a lot over the years. Especially the instance = community boundary is a huge problem because they serve as both a social space and a gateway to the network all in one package. However, community matters and provider matters are very different. If an instance defederates from another, people don't just lose access to that community - they lose access to communicating with people on an instance entirely until they create a new account elsewhere.
Imagine if a Discord server admin banned you and Discord also blocked your communication with the server members even in other servers or 1-on-1. That's fedi.
This means your choice of an instance is extremely important and happens at a time when you don't even know anything about the fediverse at all.
This is why I think what absolutely needs to happen here is to give instances less importance by implementing communities on a higher layer, independent of those boundaries. Is this happening? I doesn't look like that to me. Hell, we don't even improve on the microblogging formula in a meaningful way. I think the ecosystem at large has become complacent with the existing structure and has no interest in making fundamental changes.
ATProto seems closer to the ideal I have in mind, so obviously I've taken an interest in it.
(Improved wording) -
@volpeon The decentralization part should be emphasized by the bluesky development team that just so happens to be getting tons of venture capital, and the centralized moderation service fiasco should be.. fixed. The latter is being addressed apparently, but it wouldn't surprise me if it takes a comically long time for it to actually *get fixed*.
I don't think the Bluesky dev team has our best interests in mind.@kirby I really do wonder how they're planning to get any money out of this. :wlfThink: It's not like they're sabotaging the decentralization efforts. I heard they handed the central identity server over to some other company (take with a grain of salt because I only saw that in passing), and they also significantly lowered the cost of running a relay by dropping the "keep the entire message history for all of time" requirement. Blacksky is replicating the entire stack, too. So that's quite an improvement since the last time I looked into ATProto (which was when they allowed self-hosting the PDS).
