I recently finished the episode of The Verge’s podcast #Decoder with the interview to Bluesky’s CEO and it seems a quite interesting project. At the beginning I wasn’t looking really into it because of their choice of using a new protocol instead of the existing ActivityPub, but after listening to her and the reasons behind this choice maybe I’ll give them a chance.
What do you think? Do you use it alongside with the fediverse?
I don’t and I don’t want to, I hate it when everyone makes their own standard which means there is no real standard to speak of. There’s a xkcd exactly for that.
I’m using ActivityPub and that’s what I’ll be using as long as I feel it makes sense.
They could have made ActivityPub better, instead they made an incompatible protocol.
That’s almost exactly what I was thinking before listening to the podcast.
But there she explained how ActivityPub was missing some of the feature they wanted because of its instance-centric approach and how trying to change that would have been hard (given how sceptical towards changes and everything corporate-related the fediverse community can be), and so they opted for a new protocol since the goals of the two project were with different aims.
Still not 100% convinced tbh, but I can’t deny she has a point…
instance-centric approach
What did she mean by this? Could you be more specific about what she said? I don’t really want to listen to the podcast.
She was saying that on Mastodon (that was the main activitypub platform she was comparing to) the choice of the instance can heavily influence your experience. If I don’t remember wrong her main points were:
- There’s a local timeline and a federated timeline, and even in the federated timeline you see your instance posts and the posts of the instances yours have federated with, not all posts
- A global search is not always the easiest thing to do, and previous attempts of project that would have facilitated it didn’t received much appreciation from the community
- If your instance admin do choices you don’t agree with (for example blocking another instance) the only way to interact with that other instance is to move yourself
- Moving from an instance to another means loosing your posts and replies, that would stay on the original instance
She was not saying that this approach is wrong, in fact many people on Mastodon like this more community-focused and less-global approach, just that it isn’t what they wanted for Bluesky
Personally it basically sounds like decentralization (instance-focused) vs centralization (Blueskys approach).
The fact that individual instances are in control of their user’s experience is a feature of ActivityPub, not a bug. And it is exactly important for users to choose instances that align with their views - this makes the Fediverse democratic in a natural fashion. Or at least, it makes sure people get the experience they want, not the experience the global centralised entity wants the user to have.
I definitely prefer and trust decentralization a lot more. I don’t want a single entity in control.
Not sure what you’re arguing or who you’re arguing with. Different tools, different requirements.
I think it’s cool that there’s only one comic everyone uses when referencing fragmented standards 😂
There’s a relevant xkcd for almost everything. And an iconic xkcd for many, many things.
What do I think of bluesky? Same as I think about everything in this day and age:
eat billionaires.
As a normie replacement for Twitter, from what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t seem that bad, especially in comparison to Threads. I’m somewhat reserving judgement until it’s more clear what the platform’s long-term trajectory is. It definitely seems to have way less alt-right shit on it than Twitter these days, which is a big mark in its favor tbh.
But as a primary platform, it’s not for me. I’ve come to love lemmy and the extremely strong community-driven OSS aspect. I’ll be sticking around here for sure. I only interact peripherally with Bluesky.
Ah, this is why I don’t know what Bluesky is. I had no interest in Twitter, so shrugs whatever
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So far my take is: Yet another microblogging platform?
But I’d like to read/hear something about the details… How does the protocol compare to other existing solutions? Are there free server implementations? How do they handle federation, would I be able to just connect to them and do whatever I want? Or do they retain tight control over the network?
Exactly what I was wondering the entire time I was listening. None of these questions were asked during the episode. A lot of handwaving and buzzword double-speak. She didn’t go into any real technical detail.
Agree. The episode partially answers some of those questions (of course with a biased answer, since it’s given by their CEO), but I guess that for most of them we’ll just have to wait and see
At the beginning I wasn’t looking really into it because of their choice of using a new protocol instead of the existing ActivityPub
And yet, here we are with another conversation about something in the wrong place.
As for BlueSky and their illusion of federation, what’s to talk about? Anyone can host a server, but all posts need to be indexed by the server of which they’re in charge of otherwise they don’t appear in anyone’s timelines? It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. They wash their hands of moderation and the majority of hosting costs and you feel empowered, only for them to say, yeah, we’re, for example, inserting ads and you need to be okay with that.
Everyday, I read something here about why Facebook or BlueSky are better than what we have. I don’t even think the people that post this stuff work for either company. I just think they’ve been indoctrinated and they don’t realise that they’re attempting to push us all towards the very things so many of us consciously and determinedly walked away from.
I don’t want to be part of a centralised service. Even one that cosplays as federated. I don’t want Facebook to have my data nor do I want to interact with any of their services. I personally chose the Fediverse because I liked the values it exhibited and I enjoy the community. Everyday I get to laugh at things, learn things, share things and just be generally entertained. Can the fediverse improve? Sure; But neither Meta nor BlueSky are the solution. I genuinely wish both would piss off.
And yet, here we are with another conversation about something in the wrong place.
Well, this is is a place to talk about fediverse and ActivityPub, and mine wanted to be the starting point for a discussion about the two protocols and how they compare with each other, if it was actually worth it to create a new protocol or not etc.
I was not pretending that Bluesky is better than the Fediverse, it’s just different and I’m convinced that discussing about how others do stuff can benefit the Fediverse too.
BlueSky and their illusion of federation, what’s to talk about? Anyone can host a server, but all posts need to be indexed by the server of which they’re in charge of otherwise they don’t appear in anyone’s timelines?
As for this, it was my main perplexity after I listened the podcast since they didn’t really entered into the details of how the “multiple servers, one timeline” work. Do you by chance have any resource/link I could read to learn more about that and clarify my doubts?
You mean the same illusion of decentralisation that the fedi offers? Where AP is largely mastodon centric and identity is tethered to an instance? Where a user is at the whims of an admin? With the networks being so small those admins have more of an impact on everyday users than Musk. They’re not hand waving moderation. They have a Trust and Safety team, third party, custom feeds, all of the same user level controls any social platform has and goes above that with their labelling system. Especially, when it comes to illegal content they’re in better position to protect their teams and users than fedi, which directly exposes admins/mods to harm and has no resources to help their mental health. You called others indoctrinated but that’s how you come across and spewing fallacies
You mean the same illusion of decentralisation that the fedi offers?
🧐
Where AP is largely mastodon centric
Centric is not centralised though is it?
identity is tethered to an instance?
But not a central instance or indexer?
Where a user is at the whims of an admin?
Like they have a choice, because it’s not centralised
With the networks being so small those admins have more of an impact on everyday users than Musk.
So decentralisation then?
You called others indoctrinated but that’s how you come across and spewing fallacies
Have a good day
@shaked_coffee I made an account there and followed a bunch of people, but the federation aspect feels faux to me.
My profile there is basically just a redirect.
I cant do microblogging its not my cup of tea. Bsky seems like it’s full of the people who cared to much about a blue checkmark. If their fedi protocol is proprietary then the whole thing is trash imo.
What do you mean with proprietary? 'Cause atproto is foss, but yeah atm Bluesky kinda controls it (even if in the interview she said they would like to move it to a third party regulator in the future)
I do, and I think it’s just kinda “okay”. The main thing I like about Bluesky right now is the experimental “threaded mode” which makes following conversations a lot easier for me. I’ve always been more of a Reddit kinda guy than a Twitter user so nested/threaded comments are preferable.
Having said that, as far as microblogging platforms go, I find mastodon in conjunction with the smart lists feature on the Mammoth app for iOS to be a much better resource for following news and finding interesting accounts.
Meh. It’s basically just the twitter experience, with the same problems it had. Bigots everywhere, and you can’t get rid of them, only hide their content from yourself…
Bigots everywhere, and you can’t get rid of them, only hide their content from yourself…
I’ve not been on bluesky, and don’t doubt it’s worse there, but tbf we have a growing problem with bigots and trolls on kbin/lemmy too, and we can’t do much more than block here either…
It has some nice ideas, particularly for moderation. I like that they’re thinking hard about these things.
I think its moving too slowly and it’s lack of momentum at the time of the Twitter exodus was lost. Its too late for it to become an alternative to the likes of Twitter, Mastodon etc. and I think it will die.
I hope that once it’s gone it will leave a legacy of those good ideas I mentioned above which other platforms will take learnings from.
All my opinion.
Generally I agree on the loss of momentum. I’m in there and have said the same there.
That being said, comparing it to mastodon in terms of size at the moment doesn’t make sense. The current metric indicate the BlueSky user base is likely bigger than mastodon’s. Not by much and certainly, just like mastodon, no where close to competing with Twitter and threads (if that’s the goal).
But it seems to have a user base roughly on the same scale as the fediverse. Which is something given how slow and behind they are.
Big question is how viable a small user base is for their company behind it and whether the structure of their system is something a community organisation could keep afloat.
That being said, comparing it to mastodon in terms of size at the moment doesn’t make sense.
I wasn’t doing that. I was really talking about where the Twitter exodus went. I’ve said before, my opinion is that those that have left Twitter are gone and those that want to stay are not going anywhere. From what I’ve seen of Bluesky is that much of that exodus hasn’t gone there, or have stayed if they did. Bluesky feels very empty.
So what I was really saying is that they haven’t capitalised on that exodus and I think they are too slow and too late to be able to do that now.
Big question is how viable a small user base is for their company behind it and whether the structure of their system is something a community organisation could keep afloat.
I think they is a really good question. And it’s something that confuses me (but I don’t know much about their financial situation). They are moving slow which isn’t ‘normal’ for a company. We’re used to them moving quickly, gaining market share and a user base and monetising it. So, assuming they are not going this out of the goodness of their hearts, what’s the end game?
Right, that makes sense. From my impression they’ve garnered an off-Twitter crowd of some sort, but probably smaller than masto. Their active user count (which can underestimate total activity) is on track to be about the same or bigger than masto’s, so there’s that.
And yea, the company clearly has some aim of playing a long game, with a small team. So it’s a bit weird. It’s also a bit weird how their product is more of a platform than an app, which requires third party devs to build on it for it to be attractive. All of which, IMO, is interesting enough to be worthwhile.
But yea, as you say, alternative social media momentum has likely dried up. I’ve said the same else where. So it’s hard to imagine what happens to anything that struggles to keep the lights on.
Not a form of communication that resinates with me. Not the target audience.
What were the reasons? Is their protocol really better than ActivityPub? Couldn’t ActivityPub just adapt to have the same benefits?
From what she said, ActivityPub could have adapted to what they wanted, but probably don’t want to. On Bluesky you kinda loose the community feel of your instance that you have and that many people (me included) like.
I elaborated more on the “problems” she listed in another comment here if you want to read more without listening the episode
That doesn’t seem like a benefit at all. Just seems like Bluesky wants to be the central authority in their own little network.
Personally I don’t understand the appeal of microblogs outside of making dumb 1-liner jokes. Which you can do on other social media, too. 🤷🏻♂️
It’s a notification service for everything you care about.
I like that you can create and share custom feeds. I have an account because someone made one for gift article links (no paywall)
That would be nice for the Fediverse. I’d follow that.
As has already been discussed, there were attempts at bridges for the two protocols with pretty rough outcomes.
I dont really care if bluesky joins the fediverse but I‘m not going to change protocols because its too much work and gives too much control to them having a proprietary protocol and therefore reversing the good the fedi is doing.
They can join imo but thats it.
