Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
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Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
https://privacy.thenexus.today/decentralization-and-erasure-blacksky-bluesky-and-the-atmosphere-2/
There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere (the ecosystem using the AT protocol) are decentralized. Blacksky runs three feed generators, a moderation service, and a work-in-progress personal data store (PDS) as well as providing a starter pack. And the vision for Blacksky "extends beyond any single platform".
That sounds pretty decentralized to me!
But as far as I can tell, nobody else in the discussion is talking about Blacksky as an actually-existing example of decentralization. What's with that?
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Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
https://privacy.thenexus.today/decentralization-and-erasure-blacksky-bluesky-and-the-atmosphere-2/
There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere (the ecosystem using the AT protocol) are decentralized. Blacksky runs three feed generators, a moderation service, and a work-in-progress personal data store (PDS) as well as providing a starter pack. And the vision for Blacksky "extends beyond any single platform".
That sounds pretty decentralized to me!
But as far as I can tell, nobody else in the discussion is talking about Blacksky as an actually-existing example of decentralization. What's with that?
The Appendix of Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere is a roundup of various articles and posts on the question of whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere are decentralized and/or federated. There are lots of interesting perspectives here, including from @laurenshof on @fediversereport, @cyrus, @cwebber @bnewbold, @rysiek, @jonny, @possibledog, @oblomov, @rwg, and @Kye. Every single one of those posts was worth reading, and I really appreciate the time everybody's put into it.
That said, it's still very strange to me that as far as I can tell none of you mentioned what seems to me an actually-existing example of decentralization on Bluesky today.
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The Appendix of Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere is a roundup of various articles and posts on the question of whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere are decentralized and/or federated. There are lots of interesting perspectives here, including from @laurenshof on @fediversereport, @cyrus, @cwebber @bnewbold, @rysiek, @jonny, @possibledog, @oblomov, @rwg, and @Kye. Every single one of those posts was worth reading, and I really appreciate the time everybody's put into it.
That said, it's still very strange to me that as far as I can tell none of you mentioned what seems to me an actually-existing example of decentralization on Bluesky today.
Interesting to look back at this five months later ... here's what's currently happening today in terms of decentralization the ATmosphere.
@rudyfraser.com announced today that Blacksy feeds and moderation service are now powered by our own atproto relay -- and it's an independent implementation, not using Bluesky's reference code. It's really worth reading the thread, which has a great analogy for how a relay enables custom feeds.
@edavis.dev has configured deer.social (a third-party app) to to point to a self-hosted bsky appview which reads from a self-hosted relay which subscribes to a self-hosted PDS which is where this -- as he says, "Bluesky independent from Bluesky".
@bnewbold published A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month, updating his post from last summer. The network size has increased by close to an order of magnitude since his first post; the cost of a realy
#FreeOurFeeds is donating a $50K to the AT Community Fund to support the #IndieSky working group. The notes from last week's Ahoy IndieSky Europe give a sense of the energy here -- and also link to a bunch of other projects that sure look decentralized to me and discusses the prospects of Eurosky.
Of course, like I said in the article,
""Decentralization" means different things to different people. As the links in the Appendix highlight, people who are focusing on the (very real) concentration of power in the ATmosphere today, or the potentially-centralizing architecture of AT, find it more useful to describe Bluesky as centralized."
And the power concentration -- or "operational centralization" as Bluesky folks were calling it at the ATmosphere Conference -- is still very real. Bluesky still runs almost all of the infrastructure for the ATmosphere, and it's by far the most popular app, and most other apps (as well as Bluesky) use the Bluesky AppView, Relay, and labeler.
Then again, that's clearly in the process of changing, and it'll be interesting to see how it looks six months or a year from now.
@laurenshof @fediversereport @cyrus @cwebber @rysiek @jonny @possibledog @oblomov @rwg @Kye
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Interesting to look back at this five months later ... here's what's currently happening today in terms of decentralization the ATmosphere.
@rudyfraser.com announced today that Blacksy feeds and moderation service are now powered by our own atproto relay -- and it's an independent implementation, not using Bluesky's reference code. It's really worth reading the thread, which has a great analogy for how a relay enables custom feeds.
@edavis.dev has configured deer.social (a third-party app) to to point to a self-hosted bsky appview which reads from a self-hosted relay which subscribes to a self-hosted PDS which is where this -- as he says, "Bluesky independent from Bluesky".
@bnewbold published A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month, updating his post from last summer. The network size has increased by close to an order of magnitude since his first post; the cost of a realy
#FreeOurFeeds is donating a $50K to the AT Community Fund to support the #IndieSky working group. The notes from last week's Ahoy IndieSky Europe give a sense of the energy here -- and also link to a bunch of other projects that sure look decentralized to me and discusses the prospects of Eurosky.
Of course, like I said in the article,
""Decentralization" means different things to different people. As the links in the Appendix highlight, people who are focusing on the (very real) concentration of power in the ATmosphere today, or the potentially-centralizing architecture of AT, find it more useful to describe Bluesky as centralized."
And the power concentration -- or "operational centralization" as Bluesky folks were calling it at the ATmosphere Conference -- is still very real. Bluesky still runs almost all of the infrastructure for the ATmosphere, and it's by far the most popular app, and most other apps (as well as Bluesky) use the Bluesky AppView, Relay, and labeler.
Then again, that's clearly in the process of changing, and it'll be interesting to see how it looks six months or a year from now.
@laurenshof @fediversereport @cyrus @cwebber @rysiek @jonny @possibledog @oblomov @rwg @Kye
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T thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@thenexusofprivacy nice, fingers crossed this actually works.
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@rysiek why would it not work? If multiple devs have made multiple different relays?
@Dame_ for example, because it does not solve the issue of private messages, which to the best of my knowledge are still only possible within a single relay-appview silo.
It also, as far as I understand, does not solve the did:plc being the most widely used did, and fully controlled by bluesky-the-company.
there are probably a few other such issues, described in depth here:
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/and bluesky-the-company will have to start making money for its VC investors at some point…
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@Dame_ for example, because it does not solve the issue of private messages, which to the best of my knowledge are still only possible within a single relay-appview silo.
It also, as far as I understand, does not solve the did:plc being the most widely used did, and fully controlled by bluesky-the-company.
there are probably a few other such issues, described in depth here:
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/and bluesky-the-company will have to start making money for its VC investors at some point…
dld:plc's still a big issue. It's resolvable but that doesn't mean it's resolved yet!
There are a couple of approaches to non-public messages. Doing it within an AppvVew (the pathy Cypher is going) is the equivalent of local-only posts on a fedi instance. DMs are part of the Bluesky lexicon, but other AppViews can get them.
What people really want is the equivalent of private groups on FB. That said, these don't generally exist on fedi either (Friendica/Hubzilla have them but that's not useful for anybody else), although Bonfire is flexible enough that it could support them.
Fedi does have followers-only posts (although the reply semantics aren't great). Then again from a safety perspective an increidbly important feature on this front is the ability to take your account private when you're being attacked, and neither Bluesky nor fedi has that. Disappointing!
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dld:plc's still a big issue. It's resolvable but that doesn't mean it's resolved yet!
There are a couple of approaches to non-public messages. Doing it within an AppvVew (the pathy Cypher is going) is the equivalent of local-only posts on a fedi instance. DMs are part of the Bluesky lexicon, but other AppViews can get them.
What people really want is the equivalent of private groups on FB. That said, these don't generally exist on fedi either (Friendica/Hubzilla have them but that's not useful for anybody else), although Bonfire is flexible enough that it could support them.
Fedi does have followers-only posts (although the reply semantics aren't great). Then again from a safety perspective an increidbly important feature on this front is the ability to take your account private when you're being attacked, and neither Bluesky nor fedi has that. Disappointing!
@thenexusofprivacy @Dame_ I believe Lemmy introduced something like private groups? I'd need to check.
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@thenexusofprivacy @Dame_ I believe Lemmy introduced something like private groups? I'd need to check.
Right you are, I had missed that! https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/5076
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dld:plc's still a big issue. It's resolvable but that doesn't mean it's resolved yet!
There are a couple of approaches to non-public messages. Doing it within an AppvVew (the pathy Cypher is going) is the equivalent of local-only posts on a fedi instance. DMs are part of the Bluesky lexicon, but other AppViews can get them.
What people really want is the equivalent of private groups on FB. That said, these don't generally exist on fedi either (Friendica/Hubzilla have them but that's not useful for anybody else), although Bonfire is flexible enough that it could support them.
Fedi does have followers-only posts (although the reply semantics aren't great). Then again from a safety perspective an increidbly important feature on this front is the ability to take your account private when you're being attacked, and neither Bluesky nor fedi has that. Disappointing!
@The Nexus of PrivacyWhat people really want is the equivalent of private groups on FB. That said, these don't generally exist on fedi either (Friendica/Hubzilla have them but that's not useful for anybody else), although Bonfire is flexible enough that it could support them.
People who are not using Hubzilla or Friendica can still interact with private groups via ActivityPub. The issue is that it is not always obvious how to do so.
For example, you would have to follow the private group and the owner of the group would have to approve you before you see any private content. Replying to posts is the same, but to create a new post, you have to send a DM addressed to the private group, which then converts your DM into a top level post. It sounds strange to do it that way, but it was a method that made private groups compatible with Mastodon and other fediverse platforms. -
@The Nexus of Privacy
What people really want is the equivalent of private groups on FB. That said, these don't generally exist on fedi either (Friendica/Hubzilla have them but that's not useful for anybody else), although Bonfire is flexible enough that it could support them.
People who are not using Hubzilla or Friendica can still interact with private groups via ActivityPub. The issue is that it is not always obvious how to do so.
For example, you would have to follow the private group and the owner of the group would have to approve you before you see any private content. Replying to posts is the same, but to create a new post, you have to send a DM addressed to the private group, which then converts your DM into a top level post. It sounds strange to do it that way, but it was a method that made private groups compatible with Mastodon and other fediverse platforms.@scott thanks for the explanation, is it okay if I quote the second paragraph in a post where I mention Friendica's and Hubzilla's support for private groups?
