Post AoaJaRu3ZJLeyBMC3M by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) More posts by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) Post #AoaDLEEVVoZcVIHWme by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:06:48Z
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Christine Lemmer-Webber, ActivityPub co-editor and founder of @spritely, recently answered the rhetorical question, 'How decentralized is Bluesky really?'https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/Christine has the soul of a diplomat and the technical chops of a master, so her nuanced take is worth the read.TL;DR"Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either. However, this is not to say that Bluesky is not achieving something useful"(1/?)#BlueSky #ATProto #Spritely
(DIR) Post #AoaDrKyNzLhAfr3GZk by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:12:38Z
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You may worry that Christine's judgement, like @evan Prodromou's, is biased by her intimate involvement in AP. But @rabble says similar things about BS. He was happy to jump ship from Scuttlebutt (Planetary.social) to Nostr (Nos.social) because he thinks it's technically better as a protocol. If ATProto was better, he would have pivoted to that instead.The most generous, true thing we can say about BS right now is that theoretically, it could become decentralised in the future. But ...(2/?)
(DIR) Post #AoaDwRhgOLgqzqfu3E by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:12:56Z
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You may worry that Christine's judgement, like @evan Prodromou's, is biased by her intimate involvement in AP. But @rabble says similar things about BS. He was happy to jump ship from Scuttlebutt (Planetary.social) to Nostr (Nos.social) because he thinks it's technically better as a protocol. If ATProto was better, he would have pivoted to that instead.The most generous, true thing we can say about BS right now is that theoretically, it could become decentralised in the future. But ...(2/2)
(DIR) Post #AoaF45xxCANxqjUrtw by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:26:06Z
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Coda:One way I've seen people describe the blockchain that BitCoin runs on is 'physically distributed, but logically centralised'. Think of the Borg in Star Trek, or the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica; many bodies (apps, wallets, miners, etc), one overmind (the public ledger).The net, at its deepest level, is the opposite; physically centralised (the fibre "backbone") but logically distributed (many independent servers and clients).BlueSky is like BitCoin, ActivityPub is like the net.
(DIR) Post #AoaFXnj5Zgyly2i0Su by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:31:29Z
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"... for mere tens of dollars... everyone [could] get a cheap computer and self-host something like GotoSocial and ... from an architectural perspective, it's certainly possible. The primary challenge preventing this future is in the technical difficulty of hosting these services presently (and the way the internet has generally become hostile to home-hosting, but shared hosting for this level of service is also still relatively cheap for individuals)."https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/(1/2)#hosting
(DIR) Post #AoaGU84O60a1rEU4gq by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:42:02Z
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"the internet has generally become hostile to home-hosting"#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024My understanding is this originally happened because the same ISPs were selling net connections *and* hosting services. Back when the net was so niche that regulators couldn't be bothered mitigating this obvious conflict of interest;https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/It's probably time they enforced an unbundling of net connections from server hosting, and both from the service business ("apps").#PolicyNZ
(DIR) Post #AoaGbw3kdLegvPuOtU by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:42:38Z
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"the internet has generally become hostile to home-hosting"#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024My understanding is this originally happened because the same ISPs were selling net connections *and* hosting services. Back when the net was so niche that regulators couldn't be bothered mitigating this obvious conflict of interest;https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/It's time they enforced an unbundling of net connections from server hosting, and both from the service business ("apps").(2/?)#PolicyNZ
(DIR) Post #AoaGpyGbDws5pCbwhs by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-11-30T23:46:00Z
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@strypey Self hosting becomes trivial when you use peer to peer with proper holepunching.Of curse it is non-trivial and hard when the technology isnt fitting the task. The solution is already out there, but many people chose to ignore it.🤷♀️
(DIR) Post #AoaGvGgUAwTCOTFFaq by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:46:59Z
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Because as a result of hosting over consumer grade net connections being suppressed, businesses had to pay for expensive hosting connections for their on-premises servers, or move to The Cloud. In other words, server hosting ISPs centralised around hyperscale datacentres.This, in turn, drove smaller net connection ISPs to the wall. So that market centralised around a handful of giant ISPs that acquired them all. As most people here will know the DataFarms did the same to app services.(3/?)
(DIR) Post #AoaHXcR7kX9ErSLYnY by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:53:54Z
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One practical consequence of this is half the fediverse running on scAmazon AWS or BorgSoft Azure - and costing a mint - when all of those servers except the very largest could be running in people's basements.There's really no reason to let ISPs leasing net connections stop their customers from using them for non-commercial hosting. Nor to charge an arm and a leg for commercial hosting connections, to drive up demand for hosting services they run or resell.Regulators need to step up.(4/4)
(DIR) Post #AoaHuI0pqrXYB4rQ1Y by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-11-30T23:58:00Z
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@serapath > Self hosting becomes trivial when you use peer to peer with proper holepunchingIn theory, sure. In practice, that's a bit like saying;Magick becomes trivial when you use self-theory with proper semiotic holepunching, to make your way out of your current reality tunnel. It's technically possible (maybe), but that doesn't make it trivial for most people.I've yet to see a pure P2P network scale to the size of the fediverse, let alone BS. Can you name one that has?
(DIR) Post #AoaIlDWrFffTcW4oxE by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T00:07:34Z
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Note: I was referring there to public posts. "But you may notice! Bluesky provides direct messages! So surely not all information is publicly available, because otherwise else direct messages would simply not work! So how do direct messages work in Bluesky?The answer, if you guessed it, is centralization. All direct messages, no matter what your Personal Data Store is, no matter what your relay is, go through #Bluesky, the company."#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
(DIR) Post #AoaJAuek2jVUcH16uG by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T00:12:12Z
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"Why would Bluesky roll out a direct message system that they have acknowledged is not the long term direct message system they would like long term?"Exactly the same reason Mastodon added DMs (now called Specific People posts) in response to an earlier mass exodus from Titter;"... Bluesky wanted to provide a feature-complete platform from the perspective of a user who is looking for an exit from Twitter now."#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/(2/3)
(DIR) Post #AoaJaRu3ZJLeyBMC3M by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T00:16:50Z
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But at least @Gargron did *not* do what BlueSky have done, and implement a totally centralised system where every DM runs through mastodon.social. He made Mastodon Direct posts decentralised, like any other kind of post.After a few teething problems (eg devs of other fediverse software not realising they existed and displaying them as public message), we ended up with a system Chistine describes as"about as private as [unencrypted] email."This is already streets ahead of BS DMs.(3/3)
(DIR) Post #AoaKs0GFBDbWPDfYMy by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T00:31:09Z
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More quotes from #ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/"I find it surprising and alarming that reusing the same key per user was ever the case."Indeed."It feels like this flies in the face of the fundamental goals one would have around building a DID system and it is difficult for me to fathom how such a decision could ever have been made."Easy; "move fast and break stuff". Instead of building slowly and carefully from spore to mycelium network, as fediverse devs do.
(DIR) Post #AoaPlbJFXHJ13MqEqG by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T01:25:57Z
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@strypey it depends on what you mean.keet scales to thousands of ppl in one chatroom.there can be billions of peers all sitting in their own chatrooms.i havent yet seen a chatroom or scenario with 100k+ peers in a single chatroom, but even in social networks - an individual has only so many followers and follows only so many.maybe it doesnt work for those weird super peers with millions of followers, but i dont k ow anyone persobally with those problems and maybe those numbers are fake
(DIR) Post #AoacBtSlrXtEKobC9g by mima@makai.chaotic.ninja
2024-12-01T03:45:19.178Z
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@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nzI've yet to see a pure P2P network scale to the size of the fediverse, let alone BS. Can you name one that has?BitTorrent? :sagume_think:@serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
(DIR) Post #AoadRPTJElxfuDoUEa by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T03:59:16Z
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"The truth of the matter is: Bluesky controls users' keys, and therefore even if users "move away" they must trust Bluesky to perform this move on their behalf. And even if Bluesky delegates authority to that user to control their identity information in the future, there is still a problem in that Bluesky will always have control over that user's key, and thus their identity future.#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/#BlueSky #ATProto
(DIR) Post #AoawNRxDxoR1ZldBeC by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T07:31:20Z
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To be fair to the BlueSky team, a lot of the features Christine is point out their system and its protocol don't really have, are things the fediverse doesn't have either. At least not in the current usage of ActivityPub. Which is what we'd need to talk about to make a fair comparison to Christine's analysis of ATProto. I guess the difference might be that we don't promote the verse as having these things inherently. We try to be clear about what's current and what's in R&D. I think?#BlueSky
(DIR) Post #AoaxRQzTaY2LhR9FdA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T07:43:08Z
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"Blaine Cook said that the correct version of ActivityPub and the correct version of ATProto are "the same picture" at one point. This is true insofar as I believe addressing the serious issues of both converges on a shared direction"#ChristineLemmerWebber, Nov 2024https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/Hmm. Intriguing. Christine goes on to explain some ways each one could evolve, and how that would make them more similar.It seems very much RSS and Atom all over again.#ActivityPub #BlueSky #ATProto
(DIR) Post #AoayTli1d1GuUSf8k4 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T07:55:00Z
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You know how people say things like, 'that's an hour I'll never get back'? How do you say exactly the opposite of that?I got massive informational value for the time I gave to reading Christine's article, as well as getting to bask in some refreshing self-awareness and emotional intelligence along the way.Great stuff, would go again : P@cwebber
(DIR) Post #AobBcgd1BdKyk7u448 by mehdi_benadel@mastodon.balamb.fr
2024-12-01T10:22:04Z
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@strypey It does depend on ISP offers. In France, we can have proper static IP and even reverse DNS from some ISPs.My services are actually home-hosted. It still costs material and electricity but it's working well and worth it.
(DIR) Post #AobCb7h9gM3441emEC by saxicola@toot.community
2024-12-01T10:33:08Z
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@strypey Well, there's the "A" in ADSL and the fact that for many years my connection was dial-up. Upload speed is still a fraction of download speed. Only now is it practical, for me, to self host in terms of bandwidth.So as far as I am concerned, in regard to self hosting, the internet is getting better not worse.
(DIR) Post #AobFdsjc3ojSOdoULI by fluepke@chaos.social
2024-12-01T11:07:11Z
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@strypey @leyrer I disagree.Home internet (upload) bandwidths are faster than ever. IPv6 adoption is increasing. Hardware costs are lower than ever. There are ready-to-use Raspi images and tutorials. The technology has become accessible to non tech-savvy people.Hosting a server is no magic wizardry reserved for big telcos and ISPs.The thing is: One does not see a lot of this “dark” or “hidden” net on the clear-net, because of closed user-groups.
(DIR) Post #AobpqNo7xHBaalBXzU by cwebber@social.coop
2024-12-01T17:51:43Z
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@strypey aw thanx :)
(DIR) Post #Aobq94POIv3ZvfWeqO by lianna@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T17:56:16Z
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@strypey @cwebber "I feel like I just got 60 minutes of my life back!"
(DIR) Post #AobrLseJR6oLB2B41A by Steve@social.coop
2024-12-01T18:09:50Z
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@strypey @cwebber Time well spent?
(DIR) Post #Aoc84rMwdnh5VLWWYK by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T21:17:15Z
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@serapath> maybe it doesnt work for those weird super peers with millions of followersWhat about organisations? Governments, large NGOs and companies, etc?
(DIR) Post #Aoc8G4ln9pWgFfUgGu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T21:19:19Z
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@mima> BitTorrent?Nope. That relies on trackers, which are servers, like Nostr relays. Not pure P2P, any more than WebRTC is.@serapath
(DIR) Post #Aoc8KBWM01h4LdES6y by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T03:53:03Z
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@mima @strypey sure. bittorrent as well.dat is an evolution on it, so you can have version controlled torrents for any type of data.an example app built with it is https://keet.ioIts a cross platform messenger without any servers or cloud involved and rooms can easily have thousands of users inside.Its all still fresh and soon many more apps will follow 🙂
(DIR) Post #Aoc8KCZw4C9Xd1upKi by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T21:20:02Z
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@serapath> an example app built with it is https://keet.ioHave they published source code yet?@mima
(DIR) Post #Aoc8aAFyT2QV3oBrfM by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T21:22:55Z
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@strypey Now there is no issue with having data, a data feed, consumed by as many peers as you wish, just like bittorrent, the more peers seed a feed, the more it becomes available. All data using dat is always stored in torrent like feeds which only authors, such as the government, can append updates to.Now if you want a livestream, it shpups stipl be possible, because peers can subscribe to a feed and the author can update in real time - there is no fundamental blocker here..., but
(DIR) Post #Aoc92MNsyFNymXKrgG by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T21:28:00Z
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@strypey @mima trackers is one option, but you also jave bittorrent mainline DHT you can use to lookup torrents to download it.trackers were used in the past, prior to mainline DHT. you can check that on wikipedia as well.
(DIR) Post #Aoc9Ca1T7OALybiulE by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-12-01T21:29:51Z
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@strypey @mima The keet messenger as such is closed source UI, but they do publosh the peer to peer technology, including the pear and bare runtimehttps://github.com/holepunchtocheck the repositories. there are many.So nothing you would need to build your own messenger is missing, but you need to make your own branded UI and package it cross platform.There is stipl an outstand8ng promise to repease keet itself once it hits beta - we'll see
(DIR) Post #Aoc9FSxlp2ZAwyMzLc by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T21:30:25Z
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(1/2)@saxicola> there's the "A" in ADSL and the fact that for many years my connection was dial-upWhat's your point? AFAIK all TCP/IP is asynchronous, like all packet-switched networks. BBS and USENET - the original social media - were served over dial-up. While slower connections certainly force software and protocol devs to be more efficient, that's not a bad thing.
(DIR) Post #Aoc9H0SCn0MJ6sL8TY by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-01T21:30:25Z
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(2/2)> Upload speed is still a fraction of download speedThat's ISPs throttling your bandwidth, not an inherent limitation of dial-up or ADSL. Other changes that pushed against self-hosting include offering DHCP instead of static IP, achingly slow roll-out of IPv6,, and 'fair use' policies outright banning self-hosting over the connection.See the link I posted to The Digital Imprimatur.
(DIR) Post #AocOSBggrVHERqu9yq by saxicola@toot.community
2024-12-02T00:20:43Z
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@strypey The A in ADSL is for Asymmetric, not asynchronous. It's designed to be slower for upload.
(DIR) Post #AocVfULJVrdnkZCBSy by JNogueira@fosstodon.org
2024-12-02T01:41:36Z
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@strypey > The Bluesky PDSes therefore hold these signing keys custodially on behalf of users, and users log in to their home PDS via username and password. This provides a familiar user experience to users, and enables standard features such as password reset by email.When she talks about user keys is she talking about Bluesky's hosted PDSes at bsky.social or is she talking about self-hosted PDSes?Because Self-hosted PDSes have their own keys and don't depend on bsky.social.
(DIR) Post #AocczgBjseA3xXIA88 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-02T03:03:43Z
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@JNogueira> When she talks about user keys is she talking about Bluesky's hosted PDSes at bsky.social or is she talking about self-hosted PDSes?Can you clarify @cwebber?> Because Self-hosted PDSes have their own keys and don't depend on bsky.socialHow sure are you about this?
(DIR) Post #AocjcOSWKZqdzWz7Zo by JNogueira@fosstodon.org
2024-12-02T04:17:54Z
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@strypey @cwebber 100%The current PDS implementation has its own private signing key for the DID.Also see: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/ACCOUNT_MIGRATION.md
(DIR) Post #AodUp1lsgrLNEkZCy0 by cwebber@social.coop
2024-12-02T13:06:41Z
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@strypey @JNogueira Yes I was talking about the vast majority of users who *started on* bsky.social's "mega-PDS node"
(DIR) Post #AodlSa9IPJbqPxOymW by JNogueira@fosstodon.org
2024-12-02T04:24:01Z
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@strypey @cwebber my understanding of the current atproto network setup is if bluesky disappeared today the 750 or so existing self-hosted PDSes could set up their own relay (for pretty cheap with only like 750 or so users it needs to handle) and a client and continue to operate like normal
(DIR) Post #AodlSbUbPaFMaKNVdA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-02T16:13:14Z
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(1/2)@JNogueira> if the current atproto network setup ... disappeared today the 750 or so existing self-hosted PDSes could set up their own relayOK. But the difference between this and the fediverse is that if the 5 biggest structures in the fediverse disappeared tomorrow, taking a big chunk of the population with them, the remaining servers would have to do ... (checks notes) .. nothing at all. They might notice the drop in chatter, but otherwise they'd carry on as normal.@cwebber
(DIR) Post #AodlabsVrU5U67NblI by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-12-02T16:14:44Z
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(2/2)As you'd expect in a decentralised network. The fact that those 750 PDS servers would be a useless as tits on a bull without BlueSky's relay, until they organised a replacement, is why it's not (currently) accurate to call it decentralised. Which was the upshot of Christine's analysis, and my point in quoting from it.
(DIR) Post #AoeJysiwHKwxjceARE by JNogueira@fosstodon.org
2024-12-02T22:40:02Z
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@strypey Ah, so you mean that the network is centralized *now*, not that it *has* to be centralized.Yea that's something a bunch of the people hosting their own PDSes have been talking about. Problem is that there's not much incentive to set up and run a relay at the moment, as none of the bluesky Appviews or Clients allow you to set your desired relays. I expect that to change when somebody puts that feature in. Hosting a relay for only 750 servers should be pretty cheap.