[HN Gopher] Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable decentralized so...
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Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable decentralized social media
Author : lawgimenez
Score : 160 points
Date : 2024-02-06 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I'm always contrasting this with Matrix in my head. E.g reading
| https://matrix.org/blog/2023/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update...
|
| A lot of sort of economics/approach stuff contrasts to mull over
| in the background.
| Arathorn wrote:
| I'd love to know what your line of thought is on this (from my
| pov as the author of that matrix blogpost).
|
| For instance, we tried to propose Matrix as the basis of
| bluesky (hence https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-
| cerulean/) - but obviously they went and built atproto instead.
| Meanwhile, both projects have effectively taken VC funding
| (Element, founded by the core Matrix team has raised from VCs -
| although Matrix itself is governed by the independent non-
| profit Matrix.org Foundation). I'm honestly entirely sure how
| they contrast together :D
| indigochill wrote:
| TBH I'd be 100% more interested in Bluesky had they built it
| on Matrix since Matrix's decentralization makes a lot more
| sense to me and has more history behind it and battle-testing
| in real-world use cases like German government and military
| than AT.
| josephg wrote:
| Eh - they solve different problems. Bluesky is optimised to
| be able to aggregate likes across billions of tweets
| happening in a as-federated-as-possible way. That's a hard
| technical problem. I don't believe any existing federated
| solution can be "dropped in" to solve it. It's tricky even
| in an entirely centralised system.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| A few things:
|
| - I think the revenue streams you all have from a Federated
| EU make an actually federated Matrix ecosystem much more
| likely :). - It's a pity that EU economic
| policy is so terrible, and constitutionally so. I bet
| Matrix's finances would be a in a much better position if
| European countries could run healthy deficits like the US
| does.
|
| - AFIAK their excuse was that Matrix didn't have account
| migration. I wonder if Matrix having had that would have made
| them use it, or they were looking for an excuse for NiH
| anyways. - Conversely, now that they *do*
| have it, it does make Matrix at some point getting it a bit
| more important.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Transparent account migration is one of the most
| interesting parts of AT to me, as a user, so I for one am
| glad they went their own way.
|
| That said I don't really know Matrix at the protocol level,
| so I can't really speak to it, but just based off of what
| you said.
| Arathorn wrote:
| So Matrix also has account portability (almost) -
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-
| proposals/blob/keg... and
| https://github.com/devonh/matrix-spec-
| proposals/blob/cryptoI..., implemented in Dendrite.
| Unfortunately dev is paused on it currently thanks to
| lack of $ though.
|
| The AP approach (prioritising portable identities over
| portable account data) is cute though, and perhaps we
| should have prioritised that as an alternative to
| fullblown cryptographic IDs & account portability.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Thanks for the context! I use Matrix daily, so I am
| interested in these details, I just haven't found the
| time to dig into things yet.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The ideal situation is that BlueSky and Matrix (/Element,
| let's be real) are giving hoards of money and are dancing
| around each other in a daring game of adversarial
| interop.
|
| I want a Cold War-scale federation competition, dammit!
| :)
| Arathorn wrote:
| I would _love_ both BlueSky & Matrix (and/or Element) to
| be given hoards of money and for us to race each other to
| the best federation imaginable (and then bridge it all
| together and live happily ever after)
| olah_1 wrote:
| > their excuse was that Matrix didn't have account
| migration
|
| Neither does BlueSky... or if they do "have" it, it's never
| been used because there is still only one server.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| You're not _wrong_ but you 're also not fully right:
| there has been a second instance that the devs have been
| using to test out the federation code. It's not yet open
| to the public because they are still working on the
| implementation. At the protocol level, it is very much
| there, but you are right to point out that the advantages
| haven't been fully realized just yet.
| olah_1 wrote:
| That makes sense. I guess I would just add that the users
| don't know if it's a good experience yet.
|
| Maybe it sounds good on paper but in practice it amounts
| to a nothingburger and is essentially the same as
| manually moving instances in the fediverse.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| It is very different than manually moving instances in
| the Fediverse, in my understanding. For one, it's totally
| transparent to the people that are following. All of your
| data comes with you. You don't lose your posts, your
| followers don't lose following you. I know Mastodon has
| at least recently gained account portability to some
| degree, but https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
| has some serious drawbacks that aren't present in the AT
| model.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| In general, it seems like ActivityPub is terrible, and
| all the mastodon people are deluded or worse about its
| technical merits.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I feel like that is extremely uncharitable but you are
| entitled to your opinion.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Well, you are more public persona than I, so you have to
| be more diplomatic :)
| josephg wrote:
| Activitypub is the federation equivalent of an at-home 3d
| printer. It's easy enough to understand how it works and
| do stuff with it. And very hackable. Bluesky is trying to
| be more like Firefox: it's much more complex and built by
| experts to be well optimised for the problem it's
| solving. But it's much harder for lay people to
| understand how it works internally.
| apitman wrote:
| I've tried to love Matrix multiple times in the past 8 years or
| so. Sadly my current feeling is that the spec is simply too
| complicated to build reliable and performant systems on.
| Hopefully that feeling changes at some point. I really want it
| to be good.
| Arathorn wrote:
| i'd have been in danger of agreeing a year ago, but
| thankfully we proved otherwise with Element X:
| https://element.io/labs/element-x. Bit embarassing that we
| didn't get there sooner, but human fallibility and all that.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| > to provide a simple user experience that does not burden users
| with complexity arising from the system's decentralized nature.
|
| I think this is the most important factor that Fediverse (and
| Mastodon) got wrong. My prediction is that Bluesky will be
| successful because of ease of use, not because of the distributed
| nature. Most users don't care about being distributed at all.
| TylerE wrote:
| I'll go farther: for most users being distributed is actually
| worse.
|
| They don't care about copyleft or "information wants to be
| free". They want a feed that isn't full of Nazis and that all
| their friends post on
|
| They don't want to think about platforms, peering,
| distribution, server mutes, or any of that faff.
| psionides wrote:
| Personally, I haven't really seen any "Nazis" on Twitter that
| I keep hearing about (though that probably depends on the
| definition), I'm just excited about Bluesky because it has an
| open API that's not controlled by one dumb guy who can shut
| down whole businesses like Tapbots with a flip of a switch or
| decide that $100 per month is a fair price for "hobbyists" to
| use it... but I guess I'm probably an outlier.
| TylerE wrote:
| There a tons of truly vile fediverse instances.
| hypocrticalCons wrote:
| But fediverse isn't run by one man that personally uses
| his position to push those opinions.
| runarberg wrote:
| I think the difference is that moderation is easier on
| the fediverse (as well as on Bluesky). If you want that
| vile content you kind of have to either be in that circle
| your self, or you have to explicitly look for it. On
| Bluesky there are popular mute and blocklists, hateful
| accounts get mass blocked, and engagements around hateful
| content is diminished (not proliferated like on Twitter).
| The Fediverse is even more so, where whole servers are
| mass blocked by because hateful content is allowed to
| fester.
| TylerE wrote:
| Someone has to do it though. A default federate-
| everything install will, well, federate everything.
| runarberg wrote:
| True, but apart from moderation, the engagement driven
| algorithm on Twitter also does a ton to proliferate vile
| content. On the federated platform the algorithms tend to
| be simply chronological and limit the content to account
| you explicitly follow. Meaning there is way less exposure
| to undesired content. One of your follows must be the one
| to repost it (which may warrant an unfollow or mute,
| etc.) or you must opt into an algorithm that gives you
| unwanted content (which you may then simply swap out for
| a better one).
| Zak wrote:
| Sort of. Somebody still has to follow the other or find a
| post from outside their server and comment on it before
| any communication takes place. How likely that is depends
| on who's on your server.
|
| If you're hosting people who already have a large
| audience, or are especially vulnerable to harassment,
| that's probably going to happen sooner or later and it
| would be wise to craft or copy a denylist before it does.
|
| I run my own Mastodon server and I've never had to take
| any moderation actions with a few hundred followers. I
| know the names of a few vile servers and can't recall
| seeing them among my followers. I suspect I'm fortunate
| in just not being interesting enough to vile people.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| .. and I as a mastodon server admin can just unilaterally
| block them at the behest and for the benefit of my users.
| runarberg wrote:
| On the Icelandic twitter, Nazis--or at the very least
| extremely and explicitly xenophobic rhetoric--has been
| getting more and more prominent. There was a time where you
| could look past it for the most part, but currently every
| time I go on Twitter I'll spot a very hateful comment or
| two.
|
| It may be that most of my circle has migrated over to
| Bluesky and the only people left on Icelandic twitter are
| either public figures or nazis. So the nazi content is just
| a greater proportion of the diminished Icelandic content.
| Or that nazis feel empowered inside the current Twitter
| atmosphere, which honestly is very scary to think of. I
| tend to think that the reason is a mix of both.
| TylerE wrote:
| How does Iceland end up with Nazis? Isnt Polish your
| largest non-native ethnicity? Don't think they were
| exactly fans, by and large.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's surprising. Before I left twitter I had probably
| came across more than ten accounts that were openly white
| supremacist or explicitly calling for the extermination of
| the Jewish race
| ulrischa wrote:
| I played around with the api and it is one of the most easiest
| apis I have seen. Very good for hobby projects as well as
| advanced usage
| nightpool wrote:
| Except for the fact that it requires a centralized directory
| server that you can be banned from at any time, with no
| recourse. And for users, being independent from Bluesky
| requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly--a big step
| backwards from Mastodon where a group of users can come
| together and live on a server run by an admin they trust
| without needing their own DNS names. It replaces social trust
| that's more accessible for a lot of non-technical users with a
| more complicated kind of technical trust that requires a high
| level of technical sophistication (Can you imagine hundreds of
| thousands of twitter users all signing up for a registrar and
| buying their own domain names?)
| BryantD wrote:
| Well, or a group of users can come together and attach their
| identity to a DNS server run by an admin they trust. If I
| register pinksky.com, it is fairly cheap for me to hand out
| subdomains to Bluesky users -- certainly easier than running
| a Mastodon instance.
|
| I think the questions about indexers and firehose servers are
| more relevant to the question of centralizations. Identity is
| much easier to solve.
| nightpool wrote:
| The other issue is that I fundamentally don't think the
| problems of moderation and hosting are "separable" as the
| paper claims--the moderation of your content is _intrinsic_
| to the question of "who wants to be responsible for hosting
| and paying for this content?". And people are going to want
| to use moderation systems that make moderation decisions they
| agree with and support--they're not going to want to be
| paying for a hosting provider that hosts content they
| disagree with. That's why I see the fediverse "plurality of
| networks" federated model winning out in the end, because it
| can be funded and operated by small groups of people
| interoperating with each other rather then requiring large
| centralized directory resources that nobody wants to pay for.
| detourdog wrote:
| Moderation is only an issue at "commercial" scale. Any
| small community can easily solve moderation. One critique I
| have about most modern business plans is that they are
| looking for large scale and little responsibility.
| rrix2 wrote:
| Nightpool has been an admin of AcitvityPub servers of all
| sizes for years now and is versed in the moderation
| challenges therein, I'm not sure they'd agree :) I'm not
| sure _I_ agree that it 's a solvable issue at community
| scale.
| nightpool wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think moderation is "solved" at all on the
| community scale, but my point is that ActivityPub servers
| are just way more likely to _be at_ that "community"
| scale, and Bluesky--as a more flat protocol with a lot of
| discovery and indexing features--is not. So I think they
| have a lot better chance of having communities that can
| reach a local moderation equilibrium.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I helped run a moderate a small forum community in the
| early aughts. We only had maybe 800-1000 active users at
| our peak. Moderation was fucking terrible, and not
| 'solved'. We had several users we elevated into moderator
| positions and still.. I think we were running about 1.5
| moderators per 100 active users on average.
| detourdog wrote:
| 800 to a thousand sounds like a lot to me. The early
| aughts were also different times.
| axus wrote:
| I thought it was cheaper not to look at the content, than
| to look at it. That just leaves legal responsibility as an
| issue.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > And for users, being independent from Bluesky requires
| owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly
|
| This is not really true. DNS allows you to set your name to a
| domain, but ultimately all of your posts are tied to your
| DID. If you wanted to move from steveklabnik.bsky.app to
| steveklabnik.whatever.app, you could do that still, no DNS
| required. You won't lose anything. The DNS stuff is
| effectively vanity.
| supermatt wrote:
| At present all the DIDs issued through bluesky use plc for
| resolution, which is a centralised directory managed by
| bluesky
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Yes, I agree this is a weak point. It's also one that the
| team is aware of and seemingly has the right amount of
| discomfort with. I see temporary compromises like this as
| an example of the pragmatic decision making needed to
| ship, and trust that they will do the right things here,
| but I also understand some skepticism.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| It's not a 'weak point' it's a fatal flaw.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Given that it is a non-essential part of how the protocol
| works, I disagree, but I understand that reasonable
| people may differ.
| pfraze wrote:
| PLC uses signed logs similar to certificate transparency.
| We have a lot of options for where to take it. There may
| be a distributed/decentralized hosting system if we can
| settle on a consensus model we're comfortable with.
| Otherwise it will be some kind of org management model.
|
| The other direction we've got is did:web, which is
| already used in some cases, and has some tradeoffs but is
| a strong option.
| josephg wrote:
| For now. As I understand it (from talking to them in
| person a few years ago), they don't want it to stay like
| that forever. They want to eventually invite more
| organisations to run name resolution servers, and they
| have some clever ideas about how to keep all those
| servers & organisations honest.
| nightpool wrote:
| My understanding is that this only works if you're using
| their centralized PLC DID, which I think only works if you
| sign up through their website? Maybe I'm mistaken about
| that or they removed that restriction, I don't see any
| mentions of that in the docs today. Users using the `web:`
| DID need to use the .well-known resolution system
| predicated on owning a domain name and their identity is
| tied to that domain name.
|
| In general, I guess I'm just pessimistic of the ability for
| any DID system to exist that isn't either centralized or
| majorly user-unfriendly. I think that reasoning on a "local
| scope" like ActivityPub does and worrying less about global
| identity is just a better long-term solution for users and
| works better with how people are practically using social
| media today (think about the proliferation of a million
| discord servers each with effectively their own user
| identity....)
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Yeah, as you can see from the sub-thread, I maybe over-
| stepped a _small_ amount here. I am thinking about what
| is required by the protocol, and that is just 'any DID.'
| You are right to point out that web: and plc: both have
| certain practical drawbacks today. I am confident that
| because this problem is considered carefully by the team,
| that this will be 100% true in the future, but you're
| also right that there are real restrictions today. I will
| be sure to be more careful in the future.
|
| > In general, I guess I'm just pessimistic of the ability
| for any DID system to exist that isn't either centralized
| or majorly user-unfriendly.
|
| That's fair. Time will tell :)
| apitman wrote:
| You've identified a real problem but blamed the wrong target.
| We don't need to avoid using domain names, we need to make
| them an order of magnitude easier for laypeople to buy and
| use.
|
| 99% of people who could benefit from owning a domain should
| never have to know what a DNS record or TLS cert is. This
| should all be managed by apps through a simple delegation
| system built on OAuth2.
|
| You log on to bsky.app, they say, "want to connect a
| domain?". You say yes and get redirected to your domain
| registrar, where you grant access to for bsky.app to have
| control over bsky.example.com until you revoke access.
|
| DomainConnect[0] should solve this but in practice it's
| turned out to be very gatekeepy in my opinion.
|
| [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/
| nightpool wrote:
| This is an interesting take! I don't necessarily disagree
| with it--we could definitely make the DNS system more
| accessible than it is today--but I don't think it's the
| panacea either, there are still a lot of costs and
| paperwork involved with owning a domain name that aren't
| related to the actual technical knowledge required. How is
| my 12 year old cousin whose parents don't understand
| technology supposed to buy a domain name just to be able to
| comment on a youtube video?
| apitman wrote:
| Certainly I think there are regulatory and social issues
| as well. The current system was built in a time where it
| made far less sense for that 12 yo to have their own
| domain name. But they also didn't have their own phone
| numbers back then, but the phone system evolved so they
| could. DNS needs to evolve too.
| hermanradtke wrote:
| I believe the client is the _most_ important thing to focus on,
| but is often secondary to the needs of the server.
|
| True RESTful (HATEOAS) APIs are really powerful, but they are a
| major pain for any client to implement. GraphQL APIs are worse
| than HATEOAS, but the client tooling is amazing. GraphQL won.
|
| I think the same thing will happen here. The distributed nature
| of the Fediverse is really powerful, but creating clients are a
| huge pain. The API is so complex.
|
| In contrast to the Federvise API, the BlueSky API is easy to
| use which will allow more people to "play" with different
| clients and use cases.
| hobs wrote:
| And then in a few years they will close the gate after the
| walled garden is complete.
|
| Same stuff, different platform.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Question is: when BSKY goes belly-up, will all those users have
| somewhere they can turn to?
|
| The death of a Mastodon node is inconvenient, but not identity-
| ending (especially if one uses static indirection to link your
| abstract Mastodon ID to a concrete instance).
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The death of a Mastodon node is inconvenient, but not
| identity-ending (especially if one uses static indirection to
| link your abstract Mastodon ID to a concrete instance)._
|
| Can you tell me more about that? If you just redirect
| webfinger requests, don't you still lose everything if your
| current instance disappears or you move to a new instance?
| apitman wrote:
| I would also like to hear more about this. AFAIK there's no
| way to keep your ActivityPub identity if you (or the
| instance owner) loses access to the domain it's hosted on.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You lose your history, but that's the same story as every
| situation where someone else is hosting your content
| ("there is no cloud, there's just someone else's
| computer"). But once you set up on a new instance, you can
| redirect your webfinger and everyone following that will
| know where to find you.
|
| It's a good point, though not one I'd really considered
| because I never consider microblogging to be anything but
| ephemeral data (note the lack of a robust search solution
| also; this is not a place to chisel the words for which
| countless generations will remember you).
|
| I'd love to see the ability to import a timeline. Sadly,
| that's not a feature of Mastodon right now AFAIK (though an
| admin handed a SQL dump and relevant image blobs could
| probably merge it into their node, but it'd be a hassle).
| CharlesW wrote:
| Thanks, I appreciate the additional detail!
| snarfed wrote:
| The other key thing you lose is your _identity_. In the
| fediverse, your identity is your Webfinger handle, ie
| @user@server.com. Your server is literally part of it.
| Sure, you can migrate to @user@newserver.com, and keep
| the username part, but your identity still changes.
|
| Truly portable identity via DIDs, ie you can keep your
| underlying identity even if you migrate servers, is one
| of the key reasons the Bluesky team made their own
| protocol. https://atproto.com/guides/faq#why-not-use-
| activitypub
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You can indirect webfingers, so @you@site-you-own points
| to @you@someone-else-owns-this-server.
|
| It's not ideal because there isn't a _reverse_ link; if
| someone-else-owns-this-server dies, people who were
| following you on it will see you evaporate. But you can
| edit @you@site-you-own to point to @you@your-new-site so
| that at least people holding your _ur_ -name can find
| you.
|
| But unfortunately, there are few better solutions when
| someone else owns the data. One nice thing about the
| Fediverse is you can ameliorate most of this by setting
| up your own server (though I won't pretend that's going
| to be the solution that replaces everyone using Twitter;
| I maintain my own server and it is the same pain in the
| ass that self-hosting has always been).
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Was the death of MySpace identity-ending? Or bebo or Orkut or
| pownce or friendfeed or any other service? Users will move on
| regardless, and it won't be identity-ending.
| jes5199 wrote:
| shouldn't Metcalfe's law apply here?
| wmf wrote:
| Metcalfe's Law is fake BTW. There's no one answer to these
| questions because some people want to be part of a tight-knit
| community and other people want to be part of a global
| network.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I still don't know what this supposed burden is [0] ... you
| pick an instance (is that actually hard?) ... done.
|
| [0] migration is a challenge if your instance vanishes without
| warning, but that's true of Bsky too.
| pants2 wrote:
| If being distributed means the API is more easily accessed than
| other apps', it can contribute to its success by facilitating
| excellent third-party clients that users love.
| Osmose wrote:
| Is there a good reason this is formatted like a scientific paper
| and submitted to arxiv besides "it makes this ad look more legit
| and innovative"?
| riffic wrote:
| historically these kinds of things are submitted to the RFC
| editor but I suppose the team had a good reason for doing it
| this way.
| josephg wrote:
| RFCs are used by IETF. I don't think the Bluesky team is
| proposing an internet standard just yet. Nor should they -
| that's not quite what the IETF is for.
| zaik wrote:
| Why not? The IETF defines many internet standards on the
| application layer. SMTP and IMAP for Email, XMPP for
| instant messaging, CalDAV for synchronization of calendars,
| ...
| VHRanger wrote:
| Makes it easier for the academic community to engage with it
| (format they're used to, they can cite this, etc.)
| jakebsky wrote:
| Martin Kleppman is a technical advisor to Bluesky but his real
| job is as a researcher in distributed systems and security at
| the University of Cambridge. He also wrote Designing Data-
| Intensive Applications, which many of us on the team have been
| fans of for years.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Oh wow. Didn't realize that. I was a big fan of the big too
| when it launched.
| russdpale wrote:
| That book is amazing, I recommend it to everyone.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| This really doesn't belong on Arxiv. Also, the at protocol
| doesn't bring anything _better_ to the federation aspect. In fact
| it does quite a few things worse and seems to he different just
| for the sake of not being ActivityPub. Like the concepts of being
| nomadic identity but not really. Zot protocol gets that part
| right. It's trying to be the solution to a problem that doesn't
| exist, and doing it _worse_ than AP
|
| _at least its not AP!_
| bowsamic wrote:
| arXiv allows almost anything that isn't blatant crackpot
| science. If you want some kind of quality control you should
| look elsewhere
| davidy123 wrote:
| There is a good analysis here:
| https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/111885148573895886
| pfraze wrote:
| This analysis is incredibly incorrect. Relays are not fixed.
| There can be as many relays as anybody wants to run. There are
| backlinks. There are ways to dereference a PDS from a username.
| davidy123 wrote:
| I don't think it is contradicting the first part, but I was
| wondering about the second part since it is based on DIDs. I
| think it adds some important notes past that.
| edavis wrote:
| I have been poking around bluesky and atproto as nothing more
| than an interested developer since around May 2023. I certainly
| don't know everything, but I've exercised most aspects of the
| protocol by now (firehose, custom feeds, sandbox federation,
| etc).
|
| If you've always wondered something about this platform/protocol
| and want the opinion of a non-team member, ask away.
| dataangel wrote:
| is there anything particularly compelling about it compared to
| a centralized platform? honestly still just waiting for the
| android app to not have terrible startup time and for there to
| be anybody on it
| steveklabnik wrote:
| So, there's two things: AT, and BlueSky.
|
| BlueSky feels like a centralized platform, which is (IMHO)
| important for user experience. Especially as a new user. But
| it's got the underlying tech of a distributed one, which
| means cool things. For example, I can run my own "algorithms"
| (in the sense that lay people talk about "the twitter
| algorithm" or "the facebook algorithm") or use ones that
| others have made, easily. There's a lot of interesting things
| technical users can do, and it's designed in such a way that
| non-technical users can take advantage of those things.
|
| As a practical example of this, someone I follow posted a
| link to various algorithms they like:
| https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3kkre625bse23
|
| To use this, I just click through, and then "pin to home." it
| becomes a regular tab that I can view my feed through, just
| like the default ones. The "Quiet posters" algorithm here is
| one I'm actually interested in: I have often said one issue
| with the default algorithm is that I feel like I miss people
| who aren't actively posting when I happen to actively load up
| BlueSky. Now I can just check in on this feed and see those
| posts! What's going on here is very technically interesting,
| but as a user, I don't need to worry about any of that.
|
| AT is what enables this, but is also broader than "short text
| posts." I am interested by future possibilities for AT, but
| that's more of a vision than something concrete today.
| whyrusleeping wrote:
| happy to answer any questions people might have about
| custom feeds, the post linked above is me
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| On the Bluesky community:
|
| The community is interesting and while it definitely has a
| tech-y bias, it's a lot less Liberachat adjacent than big
| Fediverse instances are, so you get people in other niches
| using it. The community is still a lot smaller than Twitter
| though, which lends itself to feeling like a community more
| than being part of The Conversation that I presume Twitter
| goes for. The UX is very similar to Twitter. For me, my
| hobbies just aren't that well represented on Bluesky yet, but
| I like how nice the community feels. Just my impressions.
| edavis wrote:
| > is there anything particularly compelling about it compared
| to a centralized platform?
|
| As a user? I'd say custom feeds. You can create alternative
| feeds using whatever algorithm you want that users can
| subscribe to in a way that is very smooth and user friendly.
| Third party alternatives have the feel of first party
| features.
|
| As a developer? The protocol is "locked open," as it were. I
| feel confident building on it. It feels more like building
| for the web than within a walled garden. Bluesky could have
| made things easier for themselves by making certain aspects
| centralized, but they didn't compromise.
|
| > honestly still just waiting for the android app to not have
| terrible startup time and for there to be anybody on it
|
| There is a alternative client (https://graysky.app/) that you
| may have better luck with. Same deal as with custom feeds.
| They are not territorial about the existence of alternatives.
| The Graysky dev (@mozzius.dev) and the Bluesky social-app
| devs are very friendly with each other and share development
| techniques all the time.
|
| Also, the official app has a Github repo
| (https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app) that accepts
| issues and PRs. I opened an issue recently as some icons were
| wrong in a particular location. Some non-team affiliated
| developer created a fix, opened a PR, and the core team
| merged it in and deployed it a few days later. That was
| pretty cool.
| evbogue wrote:
| When you're developing as a third party can you interface with
| their protocol while also generating your own public/private
| keypairs?
| whyrusleeping wrote:
| "Kinda" and "Soon", the soon part is that interactions with
| the site are signed by a key thats usually held for you by
| your PDS (Personal Data Server), this month we are opening
| things up more so you can run your own PDS, and thus use your
| own keys.
|
| The Kinda part is that your identity by default is backed by
| a DID that delegates authority to specific keypairs. The
| keypair that your PDS uses to sign is included in there
| automatically, but on account creation you can currently set
| a backup keypair that allows you to manually sign identity
| operations.
| evbogue wrote:
| This would be very cool. Thank you to the team for
| exploring in this direction.
| edavis wrote:
| I realize this may already be on the roadmap for after open
| federation, but I would love some sort of "bluesky for the
| truly paranoid (affectionate)" guide that explained soup to
| nuts how to participate in the network by running your own
| PDS and using did:web for identity. An answer to the
| question: I don't trust plc.directory for my identity and I
| don't trust the bsky.social PDS to host my data but I want
| to participate -- how do I do that?
|
| I have probably the least understanding of how this part of
| the protocol operates. Part of that has to do with the new
| (to me) concepts and the rest is open federation not being
| in place. I think something like this would be really
| useful and would prove your bonafides to others that
| Bluesky PBC is serious about being billionaire-proof.
|
| Congrats on opening up registration!
| whyrusleeping wrote:
| The most straightforward way to fully use the network
| without trusting us at all would be to have your identity
| backed by a did:web, and run your own PDS. From there
| your posts will be indexed by our appView and you can see
| them in the app. If you still don't trust our AppView to
| show you the right thing, you can definitely run your own
| (its a little hefty and requires indexing the whole
| network). Beyond that, if you don't trust our relay to
| feed your AppView, you can run your own and have it
| scrape all the PDSs (the endpoints for this are open on
| each individual PDS). At that point the app experience
| for you should be roughly equivalent (depending on how
| you choose to apply moderation actions) without using any
| of our infrastructure. You would still be able to
| interact with everyone, all your followers can still see
| your posts, and no normal users would notice you werent
| on the same servers as them.
| Zamicol wrote:
| What cryptographic primitives are supported?
| edavis wrote:
| whyrusleeping answered this ably. They are part of the
| Bluesky team but aren't hiding the ball.
|
| You can't do this today on the main network, no. Apparently
| they'll be "rolling out an experimental early version of
| federation" sometime later this month.
|
| As for credibility on that timeline, the only major missed
| deadline they've had that I can recall was on making posts
| visible to those without an account. It was slated for (IIRC)
| late November/early December 2023 and launched December 21,
| 2023. I believe they overhauled the frontend as part of that
| work and it delayed things.
|
| Also, they have already blessed one alternative DID method
| (`did:web`) and are open to slowly expanding that set
| (https://atproto.com/specs/did).
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I am still tremendously bullish on AT, as well as BlueSky. I
| think AT solves a lot of problems that have plagued federated
| systems, and I think BlueSky's focus on product concerns first
| and technical concerns second, while somehow still nailing the
| tech, is the right way to go.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| When it comes to federation, you really need to focus on the
| technical concerns first...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Right, which is why the separation here is important. The
| user-facing app can focus on product concerns, the protocol
| it's built on top of can focus on technical concerns. The two
| can then feed back into each other in a virtuous cycle.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I think that's a narrow perspective. When Twitter was
| sabotaged, lots of people made noise about moving to Mastodon
| - but even with all that momentum, the adoption was less than
| lukewarm. The issues were not technical, but of usability.
| The average person is less than interested in the inner
| workings of a thing, what make a service "better" in their
| eyes is how easy it is to use. Federated social media is not
| it.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| I think what matters even more to most people is not even
| how easy it is to use, but who else is using it.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| These two things are connected: if something is easier to
| use, it is more likely that the others you want using the
| thing are going to be on there. Doesn't mean they _will_
| be, of course.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Twitter was sabotaged?
| soapdog wrote:
| Yes, someone threw a billionaire of mass destruction into
| it.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Huh. Per my observation it's doing better than ever. New
| and better features, more user-hours than ever before,
| etc.
| solarpunk wrote:
| where are you observing this?
| organsnyder wrote:
| I wonder how much of the narrative about Mastodon adoption
| (or the lack thereof) was that professional content
| creators didn't know how to adapt their Twitter workflows
| to it. It's definitely retained a mostly non-commercial
| flair, which makes me think people have had a hard time
| monetizing it.
|
| The community I've found on Mastodon has been incredible--
| I'm reminded of early Usenet days.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Which Mastodon instance are you on?
| organsnyder wrote:
| I'm on Hachyderm. I'm sure instance choice makes a
| difference in one's experience.
| psionides wrote:
| They absolutely did, which is why the project was started
| sometime in 2021 I think, and they only got to where they are
| now...
| lumb63 wrote:
| Why? I don't mean this as a dig against the tech, since I'm not
| familiar with it, or with BlueSky, but where and why is there
| demand for a new social media product? I've certainly come to
| view social media as so close to useless that I don't use it,
| and it seemed to me that e.g. Twitter becoming X or Reddit
| blackouts were impetuses that people eventually were thankful
| for as they left the platforms.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Twitter is among the top three websites that has organized my
| life over the past fifteen years or so. It's now totally
| collapsed.
|
| I like having a place to post little things. I like keeping
| up with other people posting little things.
|
| It isn't Twitter, but we don't have Twitter anymore, so. Just
| kinda giving things a go. I don't think we really _can_ have
| "twitter" anymore, those days are past.
|
| But yeah, that's just BlueSky. AT isn't geared towards a
| specific thing, like it is not a social networking protocol.
| It's kind of like if RSS was Git, if I squint.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Twitter (X) is doing great and has added tons of new
| features.
|
| What do you mean it's totally collapsed? I use it daily.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Ok elon-simp, unfortunately most of the users I engage
| with left because elon is toxic. Twitter is now only
| tolerable by other elon-simps.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Besides your insults, can you provide any examples of
| Elon being "toxic" on twitter?
|
| There's tons of people on Twitter who don't like Elon, so
| that part of your statement is false.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Literally the latest post in Elon's feed right now is a
| retweet of transphobia.
| hereme888 wrote:
| The one about the recent NYT article on children who
| regretted their transition because they weren't screened
| well enough and now regret it?
|
| That's not transphobia buddy. You need to listen to what
| victims themselves say about their experience and trauma.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Talking frankly about folks who decide to detransition is
| not transphobia.
|
| Retweeting articles (he didn't RT the NYT article, which
| to be clear I did not read and have no opinion on, but
| instead a blog post talking about it) that uses slugs
| like "nyt-opinion-hey-maybe-letting-kids-inalterably-
| mutilate-their-bodies-isnt-such-a-great-idea-after-all",
| and starts with "In a largely thoughtful, meticulously
| documented and thorough review of the state of trans
| madness" is absolutely transphobia.
|
| (I mostly leave this comment for anyone who is coming to
| read this discussion later so they can understand the
| context, I don't believe that you are going to be
| convinced here and certainly I am not either, so I don't
| plan on responding more.)
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Virtually everyone I know left. That's the most important
| part of a social network. What's left is almost
| exclusively things I do not care about. Many of those new
| features contributed to its decline.
| hereme888 wrote:
| I can see how that would ruin the platform for you.
|
| Doesn't mean it collapsed, but I get the point of your
| language now.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| In the same vein, it doesn't mean it hasn't collapsed
| because you still use it.
| danso wrote:
| Making social connections seems to be a hugely popular
| usecase for the internet. Even in its dial-up modem days the
| things I remember most are USENET and BBSes. People will
| continue to abandon and switch social media platforms, but I
| don't think that means they want fewer social media options.
| apitman wrote:
| I definitely find the AT folks to be the most pragmatic when
| compared to ActivityPub and nostr. The best example IMO is how
| neither of them have a realistic identity migration story.
| ActivityPub implementations need to support bringing your own
| domain to any Mastodon/Lemmy/etc server. As for nostr, PKI has
| yet to prove that it can provide a viable UX for identity
| management.
|
| I'm still fairly optimistic about ActivityPub since a lot of
| the problems there are in theory solvable, but we'll see.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Mastodon is my primary social network for two reasons:
|
| * it has by far the highest-quality conversations I've ever
| seen
|
| * no right-wing freaks disparaging trans people in the
| replies to everything
|
| ActivityPub does have a migration story -- people move
| servers all the time. But it's not as good as it could be,
| and there are rough edges.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| On Mastodon I only have to block half of the obnoxious
| people.
| apitman wrote:
| > ActivityPub does have a migration story -- people move
| servers all the time
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong (and in this case I would love to
| be), but you can migrate your account to a new server, but
| you have to create a new identity (ie profile URI) on that
| server. This would be fairly easily solved by servers
| allowing users to bring their own domain names. In the age
| of Let's Encrypt it's much easier to manage certs for many
| domains. They've known about this for 6+ years[0]. The fact
| it's not a high priority is concerning.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668
| sunshowers wrote:
| Yes, that's the biggest rough edge -- it's not portable
| (and that was the promise of Bluesky).
| Spivak wrote:
| > trans people in the replies to everything
|
| Oh thank god I'm not crazy and not the only one. I
| genuinely don't understand what either broke these people
| or what propaganda/troll bot network is responsible but the
| replies randomly ranting about trans people in threads that
| neither involve an actual trans person in the conversation
| nor are about anything even remotely related to lgbt issues
| is baffling.
| prisenco wrote:
| Years back someone on a podcast said "once someone tweets
| about trans people they will never tweet normal again"
| and it's a social phenomenon I can't explain but keeps
| proving itself.
| danso wrote:
| Bluesky seems to operate pretty well with 3M+ users and 140M
| posts [0], but I'm fascinated to learn how the decentralized
| systems would scale if even just the Bluesky reaches within an
| order of magnitude of Twitter's scale (~500M tweets per day). Or
| from a behavioral perspective, what kind of ecosystem will evolve
| when the API has (afaik) no gatekeeping. The fact that anyone can
| see any other user's blocklist (both who they're blocking AND
| who's blocking them) probably has had at least a slight effect on
| interactions.
|
| [0] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
| behindsight wrote:
| Minor heads up for that site admin, typo of posters at the
| bottom:
|
| > Top 25 Poasters
| someone4958923 wrote:
| BlueSky is also now open for public [0], in case someone missed
| it.
|
| [0] https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-06-2024-join-bluesky
| secondcoming wrote:
| Unfortunately requires a mobile phone number to register
| IvyMike wrote:
| The AT protocol? Gonna start typing Hayes modem commands into
| this thing and see what happens.
| guyzero wrote:
| Exactly! I know naming is hard, but there had to be a better
| choice here.
|
| +++ ATH
| jes5199 wrote:
| I would love a side-by-side comparison of AT and ActivityPub.
| Shouldn't it be possible to build a translator between them?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| It's not exactly what you're asking about, but there's been
| good discussion on this on HN before, like the sub-threads of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35881905
| dartharva wrote:
| Why does no social network try to take the HN route towards post
| ranking and moderation where bad posts simply get faded and
| eventually [dead] by user votes and moderator flagging?
|
| HN's way of bestowing user privileges based on engagement and
| ensuring high quality of content is so awesome I earnestly wish
| all other social networks were like it. It incentivizes all the
| right things and prevents abuse so effortlessly with such a tiny
| team that it's remarkable.
| organsnyder wrote:
| HN relies on a very engaged professional moderation team. I
| don't see how that could scale as large as the major social
| networks.
|
| Reddit has a similar approach, with varying degrees of success
| (often depending on the community and moderation team of the
| particular subreddit).
| soapdog wrote:
| Lemmy does it with ActivityPub. Reddit does it too.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| because said social network would have 0 posts that are at all
| controversial.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Stackoverflow does this and I imagine it's why people don't
| like being downvoted.
| summerlight wrote:
| That needs colossal moderation efforts. Otherwise, trolls will
| simply game the system and eventually trump. And social
| networks usually have >1000x posts compared to HN with a
| considerably worse signal-to-noise ratio.
| wang_li wrote:
| Because social media should support multiple points of view and
| not just a single aggregate pov. Why should a person who is
| interested in the political career of Gavin Newsom give a crap
| about the downvotes from Ben Shapiro listeners?
| swozey wrote:
| I just made my bsky account, and I know I shouldn't be surprised
| I guess but.. I can't believe it looks exactly like twitter.
|
| I don't know what it'd be like but I expected some newer
| different ui/ux.
| danabramov wrote:
| We'd like to experiment with novel UX approaches in the future,
| but for now there is a lot of value in being familiar to at
| least one audience, and in reaching parity with the workflows
| they're used to. Bluesky is still quite a bit behind Twitter in
| terms of features. People in the community can already
| experiment with building novel UX in third-party clients -- see
| https://www.docs.bsky.app/ for how to build one. Historically,
| most Twitter UX innovations were codifying existing user
| behavior (e.g. RT and QT) so I wonder if a similar careful
| approach could work here.
| zamalek wrote:
| It's bizarre that this is an arxiv post instead of a IEEE-style
| RFC (or an actual RFC, why not). In my experience, the RFC format
| makes implementation extremely simple - where this comes across
| as a borderline useless PR stunt. Their official spec is also
| pretty bad - I remember walking away from it a while back, and a
| brief skim reminded me why (beyond the style of the document):
|
| > These specifications cover most details as implemented in
| Bluesky's reference implementation.
| riffic wrote:
| > IEEE-style RFC
|
| IETF, and they _do have_ a process for independent submissions:
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/about/independent/
| russdpale wrote:
| Ill pass, it's difficult to trust and give my time to something
| with Dorsey at the helm.
|
| Coming from mastodon, Im also confused, does bluesky have servers
| like mastodon? Because honestly being able to join a server that
| is aligned with my personal beliefs and actively blocks harmful
| users and servers is really awesome.
|
| Like I don't care about your freedom of speech, I really just
| want to be able to block trolls and fascists from my feed.
| wmf wrote:
| Dorsey isn't involved in Bluesky.
|
| Bluesky has servers (PDSes) but they're nothing like Mastodon.
| You can curate a community on Bluesky by following people or
| using custom feeds.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| To add on what the sibling said, here's BlueSky's moderation
| report for last year:
| https://bsky.social/about/blog/01-16-2024-moderation-2023
|
| The verge reported that about half of their 40 employees are on
| moderation and user support.
|
| BlueSky absolutely gives you tools to block fascists. Including
| things like "I want to use this moderation list another user
| who I trust created so I don't even have to do the work
| myself."
| jes5199 wrote:
| things you still can't do on Bluesky that you can do on Twitter,
| Threads, and Mastodon:
|
| * pin a post to your profile
|
| * disable reposts from an account you follow
|
| * edit a post
| josephg wrote:
| True, but it's only just publicly launched. Give them some
| time.
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