There are a lot of cool features from at protocol that activity pub should steal. The way users can pick their algorithm is game changing
The tradeoffs Bluesky made to achieve that means that Bluesky doesn’t have private posts. In fact, Bluesky doesn’t have private blocks.
Private posts is planned, but it’s not trivial. Mastodon can’t exactly brag about their nonintuitive technically just not broadcasted posts, where multiple implementations keep making private messages publicly discoverable due to bugs.
So why does everyone keep referring to Bluesky as decentralized or even comparable to the fediverse
Bluesky is the newest iteration of privately owned and controlled social media
Because silicon valley thinks it can define reality however it wants and keep telling us not to believe our lying eyes.
Weirdly this seems to work better on techy people who don’t like thinking about politics but understand the technical details of this extremely well than it does on normie progressives because progressives just see the obvious predatory reality and don’t get distracted in minutiae connected to very obviously empty promises.
The tech press does not ever talk to progressives though…
Does it? None of my normie progressive friends are on the fediverse. The ones that tried it didn’t like it.
calling people normies tends to do that
this seems to work better on techy people who don’t like thinking about politics but understand the technical details
Not weird at all; this was the case with cryptocurrency too. Otherwise qualified and intelligent people would invest in centralized scam coins because they had no understanding of economics, just tech.
It’s sad but cool that it works the same way with social capital.
So why does everyone keep referring to Bluesky as decentralized or even comparable to the fediverse
They call it marketing, I call it propaganda.
Because, despite being wildly impractical, it’s technically built on tech that COULD be decentralized. Only recent a new host launched called Black sky. So it is no longer just one host. But it’s been one host for so long it almost doesn’t matter because so few people will switch.
Technically, yes, if you squint; but, practically, no. It was designed with a prioritization of passing the information/data around to avoid any lack of missing anything (so you get a closer experience to the connectedness of Twitter than Mastodon) which means every instance hosts, basically, the entire world. Naturally, there’s only going to be a few entities that can store and afford to store the entirety of the data of the network. There’s no such thing as a small instance, in their protocol.
i’m so tired of these posts. okay, fediverse, you won! you are more decentralized than bluesky. maybe it’s time to create real useful and interesting content instead of reveling in your elitism?
But…I came here just for the gloating fediverse content.
What else could there be?
I mean I agree… it’s kind of the constant crux isn’t it?
The IT nerds pick a protocol that’s uncontrolled, you need to select options and servers, because… well obviously that’s kind of the definition of uncontrolled.
Some big name with big VC backing makes a big platform, makes it simple as possible, no choices, no control but good defaults. Average joes all flock there, build huge communities, users happy. Obviously the bulk of the creative types, celebrities etc… that most people care about flock there.
Big corp or VCs start demanding more monetization, or political censorship, or whatever kind of enshittification they inevitably always will. Users complain, but it all continues to amplify… open communities announce “hey we’ve got our alternative here”, they say “thanks but nah that’s too complicated, and you don’t have the users that I want to see anyway”. People complain more… and either adapt and accept the enshitification as normal… or maybe another big VC backed individual or other corp opens an alternative and pulls off the impossible critical mass goal, and process repeats.
I don’t really know the solution, just know the pattern. Bluesky is IMO the new twitter… fundimentally I don’t see it as super different than the old twitter. Only way I really see everything working is if say… a corporate backed giant actually played nicely and allowed interoperability with a federated protocol that’s actually… well hostable.
It’s basically like exactly what happens out in the real world… walmart comes offers better convenience and lower prices than local competitors… local economy adapts to walmart, individual stores shut down… half of owners, etc… forced to working for walmart for garbage pay.
I think the difference is that while other services boom and bust, the fediverse keeps growing slowly because it is decentralized, and can’t be enshittified in the same way.
It is not as easy or attractive as Bluesky right now, but it keeps growing slowly and getting more kinds of people.
Maybe it won’t be the network of choice for journalists, metal celebrities, etc, like twitter and bluesky, but it already is making its way as something more like old school tumblr – some people like it, some don’t.
yeah it matches that old school tumblr vibe, i like it
Capitalists love interoperability when they can use it to disrupt other capitalists. When they get in a dominant position they hate it.
It’s basic enshittification theory.
Wait, there are 1600 BlueSky instances to join? Are they counting people using a custom domain name as an entire instance?
I suppose PDS instances are included: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
OK so it sounds like there is still just the single BlueSky that is “federated” with a handful of single-user BlueSkies?
Yes. The relevant metric:
99.55% of posts are on a single instance. That is not “federated” in any meaningful sense.
I’m moreso curious if it federated in a literal sense. Is it even possible to participate without using bsky.app’s servers?
Self-hosting a Bluesky PDS means running your own Personal Data Server that is capable of federating with the wider Bluesky social network.
A PDS still requires BlueSky’s servers
Oh, I misunderstood. So you mean federating with their network from other software implementing the AT Protocol? From skimming the docs it looks like it should be possible as long as you implement the correct schemas, but I didn’t dive very deep.
No it doesn’t. If other people on bluesky servers want to see your content then obviously it will go through bluesky servers, but if you connect to a 3rd party relay and use a separate appview like zeppelin.social and use DID:Web for account ID then nothing involving the bluesky servers was used and it still behaves like native
