A good report as always, and agreed about the importance of @nodebb's release.

With @pixelfed , it's important to highlight that the moderation story is a disaster waiting to happen. @dansup himself has said that he still needs to implement key functionality like moderation roles and a dashboard, and that he doesn't have a moderation team in place. Others have pointed out multiple unfixed bugs related to reporting.

A high-profile Pixelfed fiasco (or worse, blatantly illegal content) could not only destroy the reputation of Pixelfed, but the sharpnel could have an impact on fedi as a whole -- especially at a time when regulators in the UK are clarifying enforcement of the Online Safety Act, and anti-LGBTQIA2S+ fascist oligarch who run social networks that compete with fedi are in power in the US.

It would be great if Dan changes his stance -- turning off open registration on pixelfed.social until he has the moderation situation under control would be an easy first step that could make a big difference.

And also, we really need to think about what we can collectively do to limit the damage to fedi as a whole.

@fediversereport @fediversenews

#fediverse #pixelfed

@thenexusofprivacy

thanks!

yeah totally agreed with you. Its quite disheartening to see fedi promote itself as a network with better governance and be completely uncritical about the governance on their own platforms

ill try to get a confirmation from dansup on mod team after growth, that is very concerning

@laurenshof disheartening indeed.

On a different subject, you mentioned Meta still isn't prioritizing account portability. Mosseri was actually quite candid about this back when Threads was announced -- perhaps more than he actually intended.

"“I think we might be a more compelling platform for creators, particularly for the newer creators who are more and more savvy, if we are a place where you don’t have to feel like you have to trust us forever.”

From their perspective, the important thing is a story so people don't feel like they have to trust Meta. Of course if you actually think about it, they don't have any incentive to make the portability real any time soon; for chat applications, when portability is legally mandated, they're engaging in malicious compliance. But hey it's a story. From @doctorow's latest

"One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind."

Wait a second. 99% of Threads users haven't turned on federation so you can't maintain your connections with them. Threads blocks domains unless they have public feeds so if you want to turn a privacy-friendly platform like GoToSocial you won't be able to maintain your connections with your friends on Meta. You can't even export your followers lists!

But hey, it's a good story, and it feels like people have options. Mission accomplished, I guess!

@thenexusofprivacy @doctorow

omg he actually posted that jesus

also you cut to the core very well, it is fundamentally about the story

*insert baudrillard picture here*

Hahaha from Cory's latest

"The reason Bluesky is so centralized is that it's really expensive to run an alternative Bluesky server that provides a home for users who have left the main server (a "relay" in Bluesky-ese)."

No that's not even remotely what a relay is and no relays aren't the expensive thing to run.

@laurenshof

@thenexusofprivacy

If anything, this is a call for @iftas .

#IFTAS

There are ways IFTAS can help (I sent Dan a private message with one suggestion) but policies on the instances Dan runs, and the priorities in the code base, are up to him.

@flberger @iftas

@thenexusofprivacy @laurenshof
Please do a longer post where you explain?

@negative12dollarbill https://fediversereport.com/a-conceptual-model-of-atproto-and-activitypub/ (by @laurenshof) is a good overview of the AT Proto architecture Bluesky is built on (and briefly mentions Relays in a footnote).

https://whtwnd.com/alexia.bsky.cyrneko.eu/3l727v7zlis2i is also good but the site seems to be down right now

@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @negative12dollarbill@techhub.social sadly alexia's PDS is now gone https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:usl4pnhyasr2moto7elbvhw6/post/3lgdq3ippf22r
WhiteWind doesn't have it cached by DID either https://whtwnd.com/did:plc:wxhgpnks4idihuckfbwby67b

@thenexusofprivacy @laurenshof
The word "Relay" only appears in that long technical document in the footnotes, so I'm confused.

What does Cory think a relay is, what is it such that he's wrong, and why isn't it expensive to maintain?

For bonus points, am I wrong or is there currently only one BlueSky 'server' which has all the content, images etc?

Has anyone created or attempted to create another? If not, why not?

The footnote in Laurens' article accurately describes Relays as "an optional part of the network" that "can best be seen as an extension of an AppView. "

Cory by contrast says "a home for users" is "(a "relay" in Bluesky-ese)." No, Relays only relay data that's stored elsewhere (in PDS'), and a user doesn't log into a Relay (you log into an AppView, and don't even know the relay exists) so there is no way in which it's a "home"

As to why the Bluesky relays aren't as expensive to run as the Bluesky AppView, relays just relay the data (although not the media files, which get retrieved directly from PDS's); AppViews do a lot more processing, and are responsible for providing moderation. Over the summer, when there were about 1 million active Bluesky users, they estimated that a network-wide Relay was $150 / month. Since then, things have grown significantly, but they're also introducing a "non-archival" Relay; a few weeks ago, when there were roughly 9 million active usrs, I saw somebody say that he was spending $30/month to run one.

For bonus points, am I wrong or is there currently only one BlueSky 'server' which has all the content, images etc?

Blulesky runs the PDSs which currently store all the content and images. The software's open-source, and some people host their own (which is apparently fairly easy to do). There are other implementations as well,; Blacksky's, written in rust, is interesting although still fairly early in the development process.

And Bluesky is by far the most popular AppView as well; there are a handful of others (frontpage.fyi for a reddit-like link aggregator, White Wind for blogging, a karaoke app whose name I forget) but they're tiny in comparison. So Bluesky certainly dominates the ATmosphere (the ecosystem of plaforms using the AT protocol) -- and it's not clear whether that'll change or not.

It's also true that most independent AppViews today use the Bluesky Relay, so it is a single point of failure for the whole ecosystem; providing another one, as the AI companies running Free our Feeds claim they'll do, is potentially useful. Diversity is good! Opinions differ on how much impact that will actually have on the concentration of power in the ATmosphere, but I can certainly see why they decided to focus on that in terms of fundraising - it doesn't exist yet, some people think it's really important, and "everybody knows it's expensive" (even though it isn't). But Cory's explanations are badly off the mark.

@negative12dollarbill @laurenshof

Thanks! fortunately archive.org has it -- https://web.archive.org/web/20241126072739/https://whtwnd.com/alexia.bsky.cyrneko.eu/3l727v7zlis2i

@emergencygg @negative12dollarbill