I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.

[groupnebula563@mastodon.social]

@jef @mcc well, it's better to be optimistic. if you condemn yourself to never believing something will happen, then what's driving you to try anyways

[msh@coales.co]

@swetland that is pretty much the intention of the ATmosphere's design. The vision of this "composable moderation" is to allow independent "labeller" or filter services be able to process the firehose of relay traffic.

I do find the atmosphere approach interesting but its "service oriented" design seems to fight against the nature (or original intentions at least) of the host-centric internet we all try to navigate.

I think that, if reasonableness prevails, ATproto and ActivityPub will end up cross pollinating ideas and resembling each other more. Oddly enough they are both hobbled by the same problem to some degree...the dominance of a single entity hampering the true potential each has (Bluesky and Mastodon or at least Gargron's Big Instances).

One thing is pretty certain at least... The dominant platform within the fediverse driving certain communities away was a more significant factor in why Bluesky gained traction than any technical design decisions either network made.

@mcc @gbargoud

[alter_kaker@hachyderm.io]

@esoteric_programmer so this is all within my ability. But what about the rest of the stack? To my understanding, the PDS and view? As @mcc says things have to change in a social level but the first step is more nodes...

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@msh @swetland @gbargoud From what I see, some communities were driven away by community issues, others (im thinking indie gamedev Twitter and comics artists) just couldn't navigate the additional friction of Mastodon's model. It wasn't all one thing. And I doubt you can chalk up the community issues to just one server, or at least, if there were one server I don't think it would be mastodon dot social (I have an instance in mind but don't feel like naming names)

[contrasocial@mastodon.social]

@mcc

I'm mainly surprised that the facade fell so early with Bluesky. I expected atleast another few years before something happened to expose the reality.

[eblu@activitypub.space]

msh@coales.co Something that I also feel is important is that moderation services are all responsible for the entire network. They can limit scope by just focusing on Bluesky posts or zeroing in on a specific subject, but it seems like a very steep mountain to climb and the more likely situation is that they just leave space for someone else to come in. Considering that Bluesky's moderation service has been the only global one for years at this point, it's safe to assume that it's load-bearing which makes it that much harder to actually unsubscribe from the moderation service without being exposed to all sorts of harmful content. It's a sort of "decentralized, but the barrier of entry is so high that it's mostly effectively centralized" situation there—hopefully we'll see someone (probably Blacksky) overcome that hurdle.

[bhasic@mastodon.social]

@benroyce @swetland @mcc @aeva

[eblu@activitypub.space]

On the flipside however, the fediverse deals with its own moderation problems. Some "too big to defederate" instance is left untouched for long enough for someone to slip in and post CSAM and suddenly it's everyone else's problem because there isn't any way to coordinate cross-server moderation decisions, and don't get me started on the amount of times that entire communities have been cut off and split apart over an admin/moderator deciding that they don't like the actions of a few individuals. It's part of why I don't feel comfortable self hosting in all honesty

[fabrice@fosstodon.org]

@mcc Which PDS implementation are you self hosting with?

[mnordhoff@infosec.exchange]

@mcc There's also https://plc.directory/, the did:plc: database, also run by Bluesky.

("plc" stands for "placeholder", because they aspire to figure out something blockchain decentralized later.)

I think Bluesky can inconvenience people at best, or hijack their accounts at worst, especially if they were using a Bluesky PDS and Bluesky has all the keys. But I don't know/remember the exact implications.

[lrhodes@merveilles.town]

@esoteric_programmer @alter_kaker @mcc This is curious to me, because it looks like he's running a relay as an actual relay, just passing along data, which would explain why it's relatively low-cost. But the Relay described by the Bluesky white paper was more than just a relay— it was a replacement (or rebrand) for the earlier Big Data Server that was supposed to not only pass data, but also store and index it all for the network. And I can't tell if those other, more expensive functions got offloaded to other services, or if there are two types of relays in the infrastructure, or something else.

[ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social]

@mcc (if this is too off topic just ignore!)

I noticed that Blacksky asks for a birth date when you make a new account.

Bluesky didn't use to ask. No idea what they do now, but I would not have made an account with them if they required a birth date.

I'm sure people make up dates but I was still surprised. I'm guessing this is related to age verification laws? I don't know much about them.

Have any Fediverse servers started to ask for a birth date when a new account is created?

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@fabrice the official one. It seems fine.

Is there a reason to pick another?

[fabrice@fosstodon.org]

@mcc I don't know Maybe the Rust one from blacksky is less resource intensive?

[nullpotential@fedia.social]

@mcc "tried to adopt Fediverse first and basically got harassed off."

what does this mean, exactly? you don't have to interact with any other instance on the whole stack if you don't want to. what I'm guessing is this actually means people tried to signup for mastodon.social which is a shithole and then that got conflated with the whole fediverse

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@ahimsa_pdx I don't know. I didn't make an account, apparently.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@mnordhoff yes, the plc is another really frustrating thing

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@fabrice yeah, I dunno. I haven't noticed a load problem from the typescript implementation. I don't have a very data oriented operation over here tho

[mcc@mastodon.social]

As an update since posting the above thread I have received replies from two people, one saying I am underestimating the level of stack coverage Blacksky has, another saying I am overestimating it.

The stack is just so tall! There are *so many* layers in this protocol's model. And it seems like every single one of them is an opportunity to introduce censorship

[ozamidas@mastodon.social]

@mcc Look, Bluesky has some nice advantages over the fediverse, mainly that it's not confusing at all because it gets to the point of just being old Twitter.

Federation is not their strong point and will never be, whether we like it or not, if you want federation and multiple communities, Activitypub is by far the best option.