Posts by bnewbold@social.coop
(DIR) Post #AoSLNCMgeHDN83cQcb by bnewbold@social.coop
2024-11-27T00:35:29Z
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wrote up a reply to @cwebber's "How decentralized is Bluesky really" blog post:https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t
(DIR) Post #AoSLNEIVSn3j7fg7No by bnewbold@social.coop
2024-11-27T00:53:21Z
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this was pretty long so I didn't get in to DID / DNS stuff.contact lists are awesome and under-utilized, and petnames are part of that. but they don't make sense for big-world or discovery.we like DNS. it is technically centralized but power/governance is pretty devolved.
(DIR) Post #AoSLNG0V6hqQQPGlay by bnewbold@social.coop
2024-11-27T00:53:48Z
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we didn't pick DIDs because they have "decentralized" in the name, they are basically just an abstraction barrier to uncouple identity mechanisms.PLC needs work, but is self-certifying and that keeps a lot of paths open.
(DIR) Post #Ath36oKiLdyIzsgxfs by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-05-02T19:35:17Z
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@wjmaggos that blog post is focused on a single piece of infrastructure: relays. in the past there was a fixation from some folks on the cost and control of that piece of infrastructure, and this is a response to that.there are still other pieces of atproto/bluesky infrastructure which are not easy to get up and running at scale; and there are folks working on making those easier.
(DIR) Post #AxWCmxUKTwIdSuJA2q by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:41:25Z
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@xgranade ATProto is designed to be broken up in to components which can be operated by different folks. This is a lot like the web/internet, but not like Fediverse, in that Fedi folks often expect to have one server combine "the whole stack".Some major ATproto components:- identity (DIDs)- hosting (PDS)- transfer (Relay)- indexing (AppView)- client app- moderation (Labeler)
(DIR) Post #AxWCmyvJ97TRurwDjc by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:44:05Z
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@xgranade I'll give examples for each of this which aren't controlled by Bluesky PBC, and all work together. Nobody I know independently runs *all* these things in a *single* org.And i'm not going to claim that Bluesky isn't the dominant service provider for all of these for most people in the network. The intent is that there is at least real working proof-of-concept / running code for all these today (and for some time).
(DIR) Post #AxWCn05GpZ2NW3bgu0 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:49:22Z
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@xgranadeIdentity: I recommend most folks just use did:plc (which gives strong ownership and doesn't require domain registration), but did:web is supported and totally doesn't touch Bluesky PBC. Here is a (long, detailed, technical) guide:https://blog.smokesignal.events/posts/3lwopvsmtx22a-creating-a-did-method-web-identity-for-atprotocolhttps://handles.net/ is a cool service independent of Bluesky which shows how to give folks semi-custom domain handles at large scale (independent of PDS hosting)
(DIR) Post #AxWCn1MK5eGvTEap7Y by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:53:11Z
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@xgranadeHosting (PDS): folks have been running independent PDS instances for more than a year now. It costs on the order of $5/month to run a full PDS with a small group of users. A recent community-scale effort has been Blacksky getting hundreds of folks to migrate.Most PDS instances require an invite code (otherwise spam bots sign up), similar to Fediverse.You can see a list of independent PDS instances here: https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdsesthere are other dashboards around
(DIR) Post #AxWCn2MiLgBAajmeMy by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:55:17Z
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@xgranade Relay: I have a blog post describing how to run an independent full-network relay here:https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3kwzl7tye6u2yA community member (phil) runs a handful of relays in different world regions, just for fun.Blacksky community has their own relay implementation and runs an instance.
(DIR) Post #AxWCn3FJ4hqdK3KFSi by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T01:58:01Z
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@xgranade Indexing (AppView): focusing on bsky microblogging (ignoring things like blog posts, events, forums, etc), there are a couple different approaches to independent indexing, to serve things like reply threads.https://zeppelin.social/ is both a full-network bsky AppView, and a client app. It has been getting attention so might be slow right now.https://reddwarf.whey.party/ is another approach which builds on generic network indexes.
(DIR) Post #AxWCn3vqWXsLRzEDlg by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T02:00:19Z
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@xgranadeClient Apps: these are usually pretty simple front-end apps which talk to AppView backend. But apps are still super important in atproto! They are ultimately where product features happen, and set defaults for which infra is used, and what moderation providers are required. as well as other policy decisions.The Bluesky client app is open source, and several folks run forks, like https://deer.social/https://deck.blue/ is a from-scratch independent client app
(DIR) Post #AxWCn4o5GtGEACbXJA by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T02:03:18Z
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@xgranade finally moderation. which of course is the hardest and perhaps most important part of the whole system!The "Ozone" moderation service is open source and has self-hosting instructions:https://github.com/bluesky-social/ozone/There are dozens of instances focused on different aspects or "verticals" of moderation. A good example of a serious indie service is the Blacksky moderation team, which has more than 5 trained+compensated moderators (last I counted)
(DIR) Post #AxWCn5b0L0OObvUbYm by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T02:22:36Z
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@xgranade that is a lot of components!if you have the perspective of wanting it to be easy to run the whole stack as a "single instance", this is a big pain (compared to, eg, the mastodon software distribution).from my perspective, it is *good* to have it broken up in to specialized components. they can be run by focused folks, recombined/reused externally. folks can build apps or contribute to moderation w/o having to host account data, for example.
(DIR) Post #AxWCn8OLwV3THYb2ky by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T03:27:54Z
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@xgranadeThanks for the clear clarification!For an end user in a situation like that, ideally i'd send them to https://blacksky.community/, which is a client app, and has a "Create Account" button which will result in an account hosted by Blacksky, under their ToS (this would require an invite code). If they already had a Bluesky-hosted account, they could migrate it instead.
(DIR) Post #AxWCn98RB9uzaU9qaW by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T03:31:40Z
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@xgranade the caveats there are the same with AP: how do you find these apps/hosts and get an invite? what incentivizes folks to run them? how independent are they really from upstream devs and other large players in the ecosystem? what are the economics of the moderation labor?
(DIR) Post #AxWCnH7fTu3YMPrLV2 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-24T03:41:33Z
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@xgranade another answer, which I love, is that folks could also just create fediverse accounts and use the bridge!in the near future they might even be able to migrate their account through the bridge:https://blog.anew.social/bounce-a-cross-protocol-migration-tool/
(DIR) Post #Axi7Cvn98zgVu9d8S0 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:24:43Z
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@ricci @jdp23 FWIW, I think this is is a helpful contribution to the conversation because it is specific, and I think what is being measured does matter.I don't think that it is the *only* thing that matters, but it is a measurement/metric I would like the atmosphere to improve on over the years.
(DIR) Post #Axi7xjFpZjLwdCMVQ8 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:33:10Z
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@ricci @jdp23 it also buttresses the argument of some folks who say "bluesky is centralized": if what they mean is that the atmosphere "market" is centralized, today, then they are correct! this specificity/framing helps avoid folks from talking past each other
(DIR) Post #Axi84yYp46Kg87hVrM by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:28:51Z
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@ricci @jdp23 one thing i'd point out is that (I assume) this counts the vast majority of Threads users as not "part of Fediverse". otherwise Threads would dominate fediverse in a big way (though maybe not as much as bsky dominates atmo PDS hosting!).which I think is accurate!
(DIR) Post #AynvhGWha2lXqQONto by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-10-02T02:06:29Z
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@paul_ipv6 @FinchHaven our understanding is that the IETF community would *not* want to take on a giant stack of protocol components all at once. we think bringing the pieces which fit well in that venue, starting small to get established, is the best path foward.if you are interested we have an broad overview I-D:https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-newbold-at-architecture/and an I-D covering the parts we would charter to bring first:https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-holmgren-at-repository/we have a BoF coming up in Montreal