Comment by metalcrow
2 years ago
This seems very similar to the idea of Mastodon's server system, where you join the server whose policies match yours, except it's much easier to switch "servers". Which is a really good idea.
2 years ago
This seems very similar to the idea of Mastodon's server system, where you join the server whose policies match yours, except it's much easier to switch "servers". Which is a really good idea.
It's actually pretty substantially different in that mastodon's instances/servers are everything whereas here each part is separate and you can generally use multiple of each.
Bluesky has:
Identity via DIDs. With web DIDs this identity is tied to your domain name and there is no bluesky infrastructure associated with it. It's 100% in your hands (but you can't change names or domains easily). But alternatively you can use a plc DID which does use their centralised infrastructure (currently) while allowing you to easily change your name or domain. With these you get one DID per account.
PDS (personal data servers) or "data repositories" that hold your post content. You can self host this or use Bsky's central PDS. You can only use one of these per account.
Indexers that aggregate posts from all the PDS/data repos. These create what bluesky calls "the firehose".
Relays that route and cache traffic.
App views which give you your actual application like bluesky.
Feed services that give you your "algorithm" for what your page looks like. You can subscribe to as many of these as you like or host your own.
Then you finally get labellers like what is discussed here. Compared to with mastodon you can follow multiple labellers at the same time. Those labellers can provide automated content warnings, etc or manual moderation. But importantly at the end of the day no matter what the labellers do, you control how they act and whether they are just a warning/blur or if they actually hide the content.
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That all compares to mastodon where everything is tied up under one server/instance and your control over moderation boils down to "run your own instance and do all the mod work yourself" or "rely on some other instance with no oversight whatsoever".
This isn't to say that mastodon's approach didn't make sense at the time but like you said the bluesky approach makes quite a bit more sense and makes it way easier for the user to move around between their options.
The advantage of Mastodon is that you can actually run the whole thing on your own to not be forced under anyones moderation whereas with bluesky there are still central parts run by a US corporation that will censor you.
Not saying that the fediverse is a great design - tying identities to instances is inexcusable. But Bluesky's central corporate backing makes it a nonstarter.
With bluesky there are actually fairly few parts that are central.
Now that PDS are available for federation, you can host all your own data. Apparently relays are now also federated as part of the PDS as well but I haven't gotten a chance to look into that aspect yet.
You can choose your own custom feed services and labellers.
The app itself (web and mobile) is open source so you can build it yourself without the default bluesky labeller or feed if you wanted to.
Even identities can be done without using any central servers by using web DIDs instead of plc DIDs.
The only thing that you have to go through a centralised system for are the indexers which to my knowledge are part of BGS. BGS is open source, it's just still in the process of being federated.
So you can use bluesky with 90% of it not under any US authority and if you give it a year that should be 100%.
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In theory, but from what I understand Mastodon is rife with inter-server blocking, so your admin might just decide you're not allowed to even read posts from a condemned server (because aggregation is done server-side, unlike say RSS). And simply not blocking certain servers is enough to get your own blacklisted. Making it less of a network and more of a graph with several isolated networks that you have to exclusively choose between
The UX if you're on the side of a block is really bad on Mastodon too. You can be following a bunch of people, and they're following you, and suddenly they can't see your posts because you're on the wrong side of a one-way server block.
I think this is a decent analogy, but as the sibling says, the mechanics are quite different.
I think the best part is that users subscribe to services, not the server.