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What can you tell me about Bluesky? (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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I just received my invite code today and took a quick look around the app. Like Mastodon I do not prefer microblogging platforms. And that's all I know about Bluesky.

So, what can you tell me about this project?

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[–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A few podcasts I listen to have switched to calling their bluesky handles out instead of their twitter handles in their outros. I'll probably install it and delete ex/twitter when I get an invite.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Go with Mastodon. Bluesky is just Twitter but run by crypto fanatics. It's not decentralized or nonprofit or safeguarded against enshittification.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    They're not cryptocurrency fanatics. None of the project relies on cryptocurrency tech. Even Jack himself deleted his account and ran off to nostr.

    Bluesky uses a model with user identities based on cryptographic keypairs, posts held in a personal account repository (git-like), and posts use content addressing (hash ID of posts), and everything is portable so you can move your account between host servers without breaking any references.

    Federation is up in the sandbox environment with 3rd party implementations participating.

    It's more robust against enshittification than your average Mastodon server

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    First of all, "enshittification" refers to monopolistic business practices, not... account portability or whatever you're trying to say. It can't be engineered away. Mastodon (the company) is nonprofit, BlueSky is for-profit. Furthermore, unlike Mastodon, there is no functional difference between BS servers, so the "freedom" to change is a moot point when bluesky (the company) controls everything.

    Also the CEO cut her fintech teeth on cryptocurrency. Saying she's not a fan of crypto is just plain wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    A lot of words for "I didn't know you could use the network without using servers controlled by Bluesky"

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The network is the thing that's controlled by BS, a for-profit company who's CEO is a crypto fan.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I've already explained how they have designed it so they can't control it. Just use web-DID and your own domain handle on your own PDS, and then you can connect to a 3rd party relay (BGS, the CDN like cache) and whichever feeds and moderation tools and filter subscriptions you like. You don't need to touch the official servers at all.

    The network doesn't use any cryptocurrency technology. There's no blockchain, etc.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's more robust against enshittification than your average Mastodon server

    I’m very skeptical of that. What makes Mastodon so robust against enshittification is that it’s hard for a single or small set of players to have so much control that they can act as gatekeeper to extract money from the user base.

    Blue Sky is a for-profit corporation. How do they plan to make money? Who controls access to the network? These are genuine questions.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Blue Sky is a for-profit corporation. How do they plan to make money?

    🤷

    They use domain names for handles, they do have a partnership with one registrar for integration for users who want custom domains for handles (commission model). Other than that, to be seen.

    Who controls access to the network?

    Once full federation is live, nobody. Anybody could create a relay server (BGS, shared cache server like a CDN), and anybody can run a PDS (account hosting server).

    3rd parties already run feeds on their own servers and 3rd party clients exists, and the sandbox network for federation testing has 3rd party PDS servers too.

    For user account lookups, if you use the web-DID type then you're not dependent on bluesky servers at all.

    Account portability and the ability to mix and match services and switch quickly are the biggest enshittification protection mechanisms. You can't really lock in users in this model. You can't even prevent users from ditching your PDS account host if they kept a backup of their data and held their own keys.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Thank you for the response. Alas, the monetization question is key to enshittification. I'm left unassuaged.

    Let's take a concrete example. There are a bunch of neo-nazis inciting real violence on Blue Sky. People will die. Does anyone have the power to do anything about them? Or can the neo-nazis " mix and match services and switch quickly" to escape any consequences? It's a dilemma either way. On one fork, BS has no control, which means bad actors run free. On the other fork, BS does have control, which suggests they're not as enshittification resistant as it may seem.

    I know and am happy with how Activity Pub (Lemmy/Mastodon) deals with both forks, as imperfect as the system is. What about Blue Sky?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Yeah, with no strong central control the best you can do is to persuade PDS account servers and client developers to put in good moderation filters by default, so that the average user won't have to see that stuff assuming they land on a client/server which filter it. You can't stop it from existing in the network, but you can coordinate ways to inhibit reach. And users who need even better tools can deploy them without having to move.

    On the other hand, the work on private profiles haven't started yet, and you can't currently prevent yourself from getting visible to others.

    On Mastodon the options are essentially just finding a server with a good moderation team and importing block list files manually, as well as keyword filters. And that's pretty much it. The server features and moderation quality are part of the same bundle.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    @Natanael enshittification is about power, and ATproto is designed to look decentralized but enable secondary centralization where it matters for power dynamics in the network, in a way that the Fediverse very much doesn't:
    https://rys.io/en/167.html

    (shameless plug, I wrote that, but it dives somewhat deep into the "why" of what I said above)

    tl;dr it doesn't matter which PDS you use if everyone is still beholden to the same entity that controls the "reach" layer in BS.

    @SkepticalButOpenMinded

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    https://slrpnk.net/comment/3996311

    You're missing details

    The Mastodon fediverse have stronger network effects because big servers can enforce policies on other servers to stay federated. It's complicated for users to move servers.

    In Bluesky you have plenty more options, including using 3rd party moderation, using clients which can pull censored posts from other servers and cleanly render them into threads, and you can move servers much more easily even if the server operator don't want to let you.

    The "reach" layer is a mix of relay servers (BGS) and 3rd party feeds (which already are operated independently)

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Natanael

    > The Mastodon fediverse have stronger network effects because big servers can enforce policies on other servers to stay federated. It’s complicated for users to move servers.

    Well, I wrote about this as well, so I think I might not be missing these details:
    https://rys.io/en/168.html

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    In bluesky I think those effects mostly lie on the side of which client people use.

    The protocol is extensible and you can add new post types and formatting options by creating a new schema/lexicon, but these would only be readable by other clients which supports it. I hope they'll be able to add some general "category template" lexicons so a graceful degradation scheme can be implemented to support compatibility without hindering 3rd party development.

    To protect against a PDS server going bad the client could assist with automated account migration (the new PDS doesn't need to understand the lexicon of your posts to be able to migrate them intact), even if the old PDS won't cooperate (the client could maintain backups for you to make migration quick). But if you don't control your keys separately then a bad client update could make your account unrecoverable, similarly to a mastodon server going bad.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Natanael you seem to continue to focus on PDSes even though I explicitly said it doesn't matter which PDS you're on, the secondary centralization (and thus control) happens in the "reach" layer, outside of what PDSes do in ATproto.

    In other words, changing a PDS gives you way, way less agency in BS, compared to agency you get with changing an instance on Fedi.

    BS is designed to make that secondary centralization happen, and to be where the real power in the system is.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I don't see how that's a negative, all the choices attached to Mastodon hosts are distributed to multiple services in bluesky which optionally could be served by the same entity, but doesn't need to be. A PDS can run its own moderation services, or subscribe to another, or leave it to clients. A PDS can run their own feeds, or leave it to others. Clients can choose to use the services provided by the PDS, or to use others.

    I don't see where the centralizing forces are (other than economy of scale stuff). Having the most users doesn't mean much when it's trivial to substitute your service, regardless if that's a moderation labeler service, a collection of feeds, or whatever else. It's really just the most popular client apps which have disproportionate power, but that's true for every protocol.

    Edit: I also want to point out that the PDS by default controls a bunch of stuff for the client via the appview service, that's the service which the client talks to and it assembles your home feed and assemble post views (where it control sorting, etc) and it apply blocks and mutes and applies the PDS's own moderation, and it forwards moderation labels on posts (like NSFW tags) to the client.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    They’re not cryptocurrency fanatics.

    The CEO is a musk toe-sucker whose been cheering on all of his shittiest ideas.

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