[HN Gopher] Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralize...
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Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter
Author : redbell
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-11-05 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.geekmetaverse.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.geekmetaverse.com)
| chatterhead wrote:
| So he created a Mastodon clone?
| intothemild wrote:
| Yes.. but with the power of blockchain(tm)
| pessimizer wrote:
| Mastodoncoin
| muglug wrote:
| You can have decentralisation or you can have sub-second
| responses to whole-network search queries, but you cannot have
| both.
|
| Twitter has two killer features: the people who use it, and
| search functionality that allows you to get near-instant results.
| Mastodon (and I assume Bluesky) cannot compete on either.
| dorkwood wrote:
| > closer inspection reveals that the underlying technology will
| not be purely blockchain-based. "I'm confident in our decision
| not to put social media content on a blockchain," tweeted Bluesky
| CEO Jay Graber. "It's blockchain independent and optional."
|
| What does it mean to be blockchain optional?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Amazing Jack signed off on this, being so blockchain obsessed
| that he is.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Micropayments or similar will likely utilize a blockchain?
| yrgulation wrote:
| I feel like he should have taken a long holiday. Not being rude
| or anything, but a new social network needs thorough thinking.
| For instance everywhere i read about the topic on casual forums,
| someone mentions myspace. Maybe it is time that such a network is
| built - fun customisations and neutral content.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "The thing you have to ask yourself ... is why the content was
| neutral ... do you feel lucky, punk?"
| hprotagonist wrote:
| now hire back the twitter moderation team, and you've effectively
| recapitulated the freenode/libera hard fork of 2021!
| INTPenis wrote:
| Oh lord I just made that parallel between the kid who took over
| freenode and Elon the other day. Both spoiled brats.
|
| The two situations are actually very similar, even down to the
| crowd that took over freenode when everyone sane left for
| libera.
| mlindner wrote:
| Can you elaborate on why Elon is a "spoiled brat"? The term
| "spoiled brat" generally is implied toward people who were
| raised in a pampered lifestyle. Contrary to that Elon was
| bullied as a child in a motherless household with a task
| master of a father. Further, he had to work for his college
| payments rather than having his parents pay for it.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| tell me, have YOU ever seen andrew lee and elon musk
| together?!
|
| stay tuned for the secret south african prince NFTs :)
| Imnimo wrote:
| https://atproto.com/guides/applications#record-types
|
| So if I'm a social media platform that implements this protocol,
| am I restricted to supporting only the activities that Bluesky
| supports? Like if I wanted to have a network that distinguishes
| people I follow from people who I personally know, am I just out
| of luck because protocol doesn't support that distinction? And if
| I do create that distinction, what is its meaning when a user
| decides to migrate that data elsewhere?
| aquanext wrote:
| No thanks. I'm done with Jack and I'm done with Elon. Mastodon is
| great and it's already starting to feel like home.
|
| Don't need anymore drama from these reckless people.
| mlindner wrote:
| Mastodon is only free of issues because the masses haven't
| found it yet. Give it a few years and it'll be the same as or
| worse than twitter, given Mastodon's lack of moderation.
| SamWhited wrote:
| Mastodon doesn't have a lack of moderation, in fact, it's
| architecture tends to segregate people out into instances by
| interest, making it easy to moderate as long as you keep your
| instance small (most of the really bad stuff will be on a
| handful of instances that allow it, so you can just block
| them and only have to deal with the minor problems on your
| own instance). Mastodon also tends to have one or more
| moderators _per instance_ , so it probably has a lot more
| people with moderation privileges than a big centralized
| company, which can only afford to hire so many people in the
| call center to handle moderation.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| The key here is mastodon isn't a business, so moderation
| isn't entirely focused on being cheap. Mastodon, correctly
| in my opinion, identifies social networks as community
| resources not as entities to extraft profit from.
| serf wrote:
| this is written as if you don't understand federated
| services.
|
| How will it be the same or worse? Which member of it?
|
| Mastodon is simply a social federation enabling software;
| it's similarly abstract to refer to Twitter's software
| infrastructure.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Moderation shmoderation, but irt "the masses" it seems like a
| lot of this fediverse stuff tops out in the hundreds of users
| per instance, not in the thousands or tens of thousands. I'd
| love to be corrected on this, as I'm afraid that if Mastodon
| gets one good news day, the entire network would instantly
| crash.
| losteric wrote:
| > Give it a few years and it'll be the same as or worse than
| twitter, given Mastodon's lack of moderation.
|
| Why is lack of moderation a problem on Mastodon?
|
| Twitter pushes content from random users you don't follow,
| that creates a responsibility to moderate (plus they need to
| keep the advertisers happy).
|
| The Mastodon timeline is direct follows. If I see some stuff
| I don't like, I can talk with that person or simply unfollow
| them.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Twitter pushes content from random users you don't follow
|
| and the TweakNewTwitter browser add-on rejects it, along
| with "trending" and all the rest. Add in ublock origin and
| you've pretty much got Twitter the way I thought it should
| be.
| [deleted]
| trident5000 wrote:
| Why does this feel so forced and astroturfed on this site and
| yet has essentially no traction
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Musk's idea is to piss off 10% of the left and right of the
| spectrum and keep the middle 80% happy.
|
| The left 10% will hang out on Mastodon or Fediverse, the
| right 10% will go on Gab or whatever. I think what's
| happenning is great for all. You do you(tm).
| trident5000 wrote:
| Works for me. Getting these clowns off the main sites
| sounds wonderful.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The 20% has caused so much havoc in society, 80% needs to
| push back and make the world better.
| gjm11 wrote:
| For what it's worth, it doesn't to me.
|
| Discussing Mastodon is hardly "forced" when the overall topic
| is a new decentralized alternative to Twitter, since Mastodon
| is a decentralized alternative to Twitter that's been around
| for a while.
|
| It seems unlikely that this is astroturf given that the
| person who posted it has been on HN for over a decade (though
| admittedly not super-active) and their comments are on a wide
| range of topics and not just Twitter or Mastodon.
| INTPenis wrote:
| (EDIT: No it's not) This is the scuttlebutt protocol to anyone
| wondering. First mentioned on HN many years ago.
|
| I'm very into this stuff. I was into scuttlebutt long before
| bluesky was announced even.
|
| But the problem I see is that with ActivityPub I already have a
| whole ecosystem of software and libraries, while with ssbc I have
| no idea where to even start. When ssbc was first announced I
| tried using it briefly but it was very basic, I hope they've come
| further.
|
| With the fediverse I can literally jump straight into a container
| and have an instance running within minutes.
|
| Is there an equivalent to activitypub.rocks for sscb?
|
| https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ maybe this
| guide.
| [deleted]
| geoah wrote:
| > This is the scuttlebutt protocol to anyone wondering.
|
| Bluesky is not related to secure scuttlebutt, they are working
| on a new protocol currently called "AT Protocol".
| https://atproto.com
|
| ATP is mainly federated so a bit closer to mastodon/matrix than
| SSB which is quite a bit more decentralized iirc. Do check out
| their docs, it's a work in progress but should give you a
| better insight to what they're doing.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I stand corrected. I thought I read at some point that
| bluesky was SSB.
| [deleted]
| holografix wrote:
| Alternative title:
|
| "Twitter ex CEO announces half-baked and social signalling
| fuelled, competitor product to entice as many as possible to
| leave Twitter and help line his pockets"
| ratg13 wrote:
| Curious why he would remain so invested in Twitter despite
| wanting to compete with them.
| prvc wrote:
| *unveiled (on Oct. 25)
| cathdrlbizzare wrote:
| Decentralized means complicated and no regular people will use
| it.
| [deleted]
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Since it appears that regular people ruin every social network,
| I don't see this as a bad thing :-)
| zajio1am wrote:
| Like no regular people use e-mail nor phones/SMS.
| frizlab wrote:
| Indeed less and less people are using those. And when they do
| use email, they are using its centralized version, gmail.
| redwood wrote:
| Similar to or compatible with TBL's Inrupt?
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think there are two interesting sides to this here: First is
| that essentially a key part of this strategy is ideological, not
| pragmatic. Centralization came out of pragmatism, not ideology.
| It seems hard for me to believe that deliberately choosing the
| less efficient solution is a good idea for a start up.
|
| The second is that we seem to be seeing a lot of VC brain here.
| By that I mean, I can scream at a VC "OMG THERE'S A TRUCK COMING
| AT YOU AT 100MPH" and the VC will respond "Well what we need to
| do is look at how the concept of a truck is cha-" before becoming
| a fine pink mist. I'm not impressed by people who can't answer
| basic questions about their product. I know Jack will hate to
| actually address this, but: how do you balance speech, censorship
| and moderation? I get we can wax lyrical about freedom of speech,
| but how are you actually going to address thousands of people
| shouting the N word at your users? And if your answer is "It's
| decentralized, it's down to X,Y,X people" then I have to point
| out, you've just outsourced the most difficult differentiator of
| a social media startup.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Centralization came out of pragmatism
|
| Sort of? Centralization is more profitable and easier than
| building new open internet protocols and formats.
| saghm wrote:
| Those are certainly more pragmatic than ideological concerns,
| which is the point GP was making.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| And I agree. I just think monetization is the larger
| factor.
| cma wrote:
| > It seems hard for me to believe that deliberately choosing
| the less efficient solution is a good idea for a start up.
|
| Many crypto scam startups have made bank with this less
| efficient strategy. Have you seen all the companies selling
| banks on internal proof of work blockchains and stuff?
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| If the speech is illegal in whatever jurisdictions apply, then
| remove it; otherwise, it should stay. Yes, even trolling and
| slurs. If a platform emulating the public square goes beyond
| what is legal, it ceases to be a neutral platform and
| inevitably becomes a vehicle for propaganda. I realize that
| means propaganda could be spread by the users, but I'd rather
| than than the platform _and_ users spreading it.
|
| The real question here is defining "public square" legally.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| Elon?
| labster wrote:
| Spam is 100% legal in all jurisdictions, so your legal free
| speech plan sounds like a total hellscape.
| vntok wrote:
| No it certainly is not.
|
| Here's the Canadian jurisdiction against SPAM:
| https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-1.6/index.html
|
| > An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the
| Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that
| discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out
| commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-
| television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the
| Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and
| Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act
| (S.C. 2010, c. 23)
|
| > Unsolicited electronic messages 6 (1) It is prohibited to
| send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address
| a commercial electronic message unless
|
| > (a) the person to whom the message is sent has consented
| to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied;
| and
|
| > (b) the message complies with subsection (2).
|
| And here's the European jurisdiction against SPAM:
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
|
| > Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of
| the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of
| personal data and the protection of privacy in the
| electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and
| electronic communications)
|
| > Unsolicited communications 1. The use of automated
| calling systems without human intervention (automatic
| calling machines), facsimile machines (fax) or electronic
| mail for the purposes of direct marketing may only be
| allowed in respect of subscribers who have given their
| prior consent.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Probably not remotely practical, but I wonder what an
| online equivalent to the "do not call" list would look
| like.
| nullc wrote:
| After it went through congress? Something like this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
| youguyssuck wrote:
| There are definitely laws against spam
| klyrs wrote:
| Are there laws against spam that aren't narrowly defined
| as email or phone spam? I'm not aware of laws against
| forum/wiki/social media spam. The US postal service is
| largely spam-funded, as is Canada Post.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _are definitely laws against spam_
|
| Almost none of them in competent jurisdictions even
| attempt to define spam with an eye towards balancing
| against free speech.
| nullc wrote:
| Bleh, I find your position is boring because it's so easily
| shown to be unworkable.
|
| Imagine there have a platform run as you suggest and I don't
| like what you're saying on it: I flood you and anyone that
| supports you with not-quite-illegal abuse, misinformation,
| non-sense, spam, false flag support from people with
| deplorable views. Copy-cats of you that take your positions
| but weakly argued or with a touch of added genocide. At the
| end of the day almost no one will see what you wrote, and
| most of those that do will think you're probably a kook with
| deplorable views (since that's what you're surrounded with).
|
| Censorship that works by outright blocking speech is a
| largely outmoded concept in a world where communications
| networks connect every one to everyone else. In such a world
| flooding with noise that undermines the conversations people
| want to have and undermines their willingness to attempt the
| conversations is a _more_ effective tool to censor
| communications. Outright blocking isn 't very effective,
| unless it's done secretly, because people will route around
| it and plugging leaks is extremely hard (requiring
| essentially AI complete filtering).
|
| As such, censorship is now essentially its own opposite.
|
| This means there really are no magical silver bullets. We
| ought to stop pretending that private spaces are public
| squares though-- though this is a problem offline too: with
| eminent domain being used to seize land and create giant
| privately owned open air shopping malls in many places... but
| at least offline doesn't have the same scaling properties
| that make it so easy to censor by inundating with noise.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| There are quite a few websites with little or no moderation
| working just fine, like 4chan.
|
| But I honestly don't understand this whole argument.
| Twitter is a social network, you just need to only receive
| messages from your network or "friends of a friend".
|
| You can't have both a global network and get offended given
| the multitude of opinions and laws in the world.
|
| The problem seems to be less that people are offended by
| something, but that some people don't want other people to
| even be exposed to some thoughts. Some paternalistic
| higher-than-though attitude.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > There are quite a few websites with little or no
| moderation working just fine, like 4chan.
|
| Even taking at face value what you just said, it doesn't
| logically follow that if having one or more places like
| 4chan is just fine, having online venues be like 4chan
| would be just fine as well.
| stovenctl wrote:
| Laws aren't static. Also, when someone thinks they've been
| violated, it takes a lot of time and humans to settle it.
|
| It's already hard enough to keep up with the laws in
| software.
| markstos wrote:
| > how do you balance speech, censorship and moderation?
|
| Decentralization does help a lot here. The X, Y and Z server
| owners don't have to agree or coordinate. The fact that they
| will disagree on their policies is part of the answer. There
| won't be a one-size-fits-all policy. Different servers will try
| different things and ideas will be shared about what works and
| what doesn't.
|
| Z server can choose to allow saying mean things and X and Y
| server can block and ignore posts from Z.
|
| Some servers may have a political bias one way or the other and
| individuals can choose which to join and pay attention to.
| tootie wrote:
| This is not a new Twitter. This is a new phpBB or something.
| Absent centralization you don't get the "town square" factor. In
| marketing parlance, you don't get "reach". And you avoid
| controversial moderation tactics by making it not your problem.
| Dorsey just cut bait and declared moderation and profitability to
| be impossible while watching Google pull off both. Even
| Zuckerberg is looking like a genius next to this guy.
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(page generated 2022-11-05 23:01 UTC)