This is a pretty great, long form post about the structure of Bluesky, and how it’s largely kinda pretending to be decentralized at the moment. I’m not trying to make a dig at it. I’ve enjoyed the platform myself for a while, but it’s good to learn more about how it actually works.
This article was shared on Mastodon via its author here.
It’s not.
I’m not even sure it can, unless they want to pay server operators. Who would do that for free for a for-profit company? And if they’re ultimately supported by the top, they’re still centralized.
Not that it’s super expensive to run a server, but it ain’t free; at least in a place like the Fediverse, every transaction is voluntary all the way down to the financial support, because any part may choose to participate or leave as they see fit.
I don’t see how BlueSky can replicate that and still chase profit.
A bit of a counterpoint: https://whtwnd.com/alexia.bsky.cyrneko.eu/3l727v7zlis2i
Oh nice. I’ll take some time to read that today.
That’s a really interesting read (and worth much more attention than the pithy one-liners of people who just want to read the title).
On reflection, I think my take away is that Bluesky will always by necessity of its design be hosted and controlled by a single centralised company. But what their architectural model does allow is the possibility of a wholesale migration from one centralised provider to another. That is, it would be possible for a suitably resourced and motivated company to host its own mirror Relay and other components and have essentially a fully functional Bluesky clone. In the event that Bluesky ever “does a Twitter” and go into terminal decline, in theory this might mean that a successor/competitor could emerge and take on the network without loss of existing content.
I’m not sure that’ll ever actually happen, but it’s an interesting thought.
If you want a decentralize Twitter clone. Mastodon is the only pick.
Let’s be real, most instances suck. Can’t search, can’t see how many interactions a post had. It’s not the same experience
the shit doesn’t even work for me half the time. the app just spins. super great 👍
Presently? Hardly at all. It is interesting that a private Corp is even seriously playing with building a decentralized platform, I guess.
The files are out there to host your own server but from the short look I took it’s pretty involved. Most people with the knowledge and interest to host their own twitter-like server have probably already started a mastodon instance.
It reminds me of what Google tried to do initially with Google+. They copied Diaspora’s concept of aspects, calling them “circles”. Over time, though, using the circles became more and more janky until they removed them entirely. Then, of course, Google+ got shuttered completely over security issues.
Likewise, “federation” and “decentralization” are the new hotness in social networks, so here’s a big corporation looking to cash in on that. Of course, real decentralization would take too much power away from the corporation, so they have to half-ass it somehow.
“federation” and “decentralization” are the new hotness in social networks,
Are they? I think it only seems like that from inside the fediverse. As far as blue sky goes I think the new hotness is just getting the hell away from anything to do with elon
I saw a comment the other day about this saying you’d need like over 4terrabytes of storage to run a BlueSky instance of your own, and that it’s growing every day. That’s fucking insane.
That’s addressed in the blog post. She was saying it was currently 5TB and growing. So anyone wanting to set up a server would need to pay for that space, and that’s not cheap.
What’s funny is that the only shit people get from DeCeNtRaLiZaTioN is inconvenience and dying engagement.
Incorrect. That’s the only thing people notice. The benefit is not having one central authority in control. If Bluesky decides to, for some reason, not allow third-party apps or something, there’s no way to prevent it. If Lemmy.world, for example, does this then they don’t have the authority to enforce it.
The benefit of federation is in removing hierarchy that can harm the platform without the consent of its users. It’s invisible because it’s only preventing something. This does not mean it isn’t beneficial though.
“Removing hierarchy”. Lol what? The instance owner is boss of the instance. Are you suggesting it’s different just because here it is a totally reliable* leftist* dude in the Internet who decides what to do instead of… A random guy who owns a company?
What happens when the money runs out and you face the reality that running a platform is a business, not a hobby? As has been happening with many instances lately.
The instance owner owns the instance, but it’s limited to that. That is the minimum level possible. There has to be a server somewhere. On Lemmy you can always leave for another instance or start your own. On Reddit your options are to do what the company wants or leave the entire site. You can’t just log into a different server.
I’m staying on Lemmy and off Bluesky.
I seek and spread knowledge from/to helpful lemmings and not interested in another Twitter wannabe gossip app, hopping on the “decentralized” train to grain traction.
This gossip app is meant for artists and other internet celebrities that think they are cool making their opinions to be fact. Extreme left is insufferable right now as a moderate. They have tripled down in all the worst ways which makes it annoying and frustrating to ignore.
I always liked reddit better since people actually discussed real things. Since I jumped ship to lemmy I feel even less inclined to bother with anything else. However reddit was way better for certain stuff like artists or creators.
I always liked reddit better since people actually discussed real things.
People on Reddit do circlejerks about their feeling of “actually discussing real things”, except it’s only a feeling.
It’s a bit like with printed media in societies that saw rapid growth of literacy, people literate in the first generation would trust anything printed as if it were solid fact. And many people still trust anything printed and kinda official as if it were fact and think that being critical of that is backwards and worth irony. It’s really impossible to talk to such.
In this case - the Web has mostly moved to formats disadvantaging any exchange of normal texts, and things like Reddit (or Lemmy) seem, for people not used to that, automatically better for nuanced opinions. They are not.
Just like you can print any text, My Struggle and Elders of Sion and The Capital included, you can make any bullshit look appealing on Reddit with sufficiently eloquent or smart-looking text.
FFS, people actually reading books and writing something knew this since before Gutenberg. How did we even come to this miserable situation.
Reddit was hated and still is hated because people actually challenged eachothers views (mostly) constructively while also organizing and fighting for change when possible. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, and engaging all equally mattered. Until one day spez and all the reddit mods decided to let their platform eat shit.
There were places that circlejerked, no doubt about it, but what everyone fails to realize is that reddit was a place for pretty much everyone. So if you thought that subreddit was a circlejerk, feel free to join or make a different one. Like open source software getting forked.
All these different social medias want us to be trapped in some sort of bubble through the illusion of choice. The short character limit is also what causes these sites to always be inferior to places like reddit and lemmy whether they like it or not. No one has a chance to fully expand on what they actually think or cite sources instead of being blasted immediately after their first post by getting blocked, cancelled, or moderated to oblivion.
people actually challenged eachothers views (mostly) constructively
No, like I said, it’s an illusion among Redditors.
Upvoting, downvoting,
Both actively harmful due to the way human brains are wired. Putting pressure onto people actually having a spine, and provoking ape behavior from the rest.
Until one day spez and all the reddit mods decided to let their platform eat shit.
It wasn’t one day. Soft censorship in favor of China and Democratic party and what not became a thing much earlier.
There were places that circlejerked, no doubt about it, but what everyone fails to realize is that reddit was a place for pretty much everyone. So if you thought that subreddit was a circlejerk, feel free to join or make a different one. Like open source software getting forked.
They all very circlejerks of some kind. The paradigm works this way.
All these different social medias want us to be trapped in some sort of bubble through the illusion of choice. The short character limit is also what causes these sites to always be inferior to places like reddit and lemmy whether they like it or not. No one has a chance to fully expand on what they actually think or cite sources instead of being blasted immediately after their first post by getting blocked, cancelled, or moderated to oblivion.
Length of text and softness of moderation are good, but do not change the fact that any fool can write a long elaborate smart-looking text, that has nothing to do with honest discussion.
I take it you tried out bsky and had a bad experience…
Yes Ive been on bsky since early this year and really enjoyed it until everyone on the platform started kicking up dust over the election completely overreacting and spazzing out spewing the most idiotic things about identity politics, third party voters, trump being hitler, fascists it just lost all meaning. I used to be democrat and now consider myself moderate at this point and I just cant stomach following those kind of people anymore.
Not to mention childish adding labels on everyone and blocklists to decent people just completely power tripping cancel culture x10. Then all of a sudden I feel like its twitter all over again and I become incredibly annoyed at myself thinking it would ever change. Microblogging is so fucking stupid.
I always liked reddit better since people actually discussed real things.
😂
I was on there for 10 years and it has been nothing but a massive circlejerk for the majority of the subs with obvious bots and astrosurfing.
What? It’s just a clone of X that is anti-X. It’s not decentralized at all, it’s Twitter for the original blue check people only, and they’re already eating each other alive in there.
Not really.
Have you spent any time there?
Yeah, I created an account when it was first announced.
I’m probably not going to read the article. But there’s currently just one bluesky instance, so it’s 100% centralized, not decentralized at all.
Jack was talking about the “protocol” at one point… I don’t think that matters at all right now. It’s just another social media site!
Apparently the instances are connected to a central hub.
Instances plural? Are there other instances?
I assume so. There’s a download and setup instructions here.
