this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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So much for the claims I read that it would be a more open platform. I can’t see how this possibly benefits the users.
The product is ~~not open source and it~~ is mainly controlled by a company through its servers and proprietary components. They own it. Even if they use some open protocols. They are about as open as OpenAI — they are not.
This is technically incorrect (the best kind of incorrect?). Bluesky is open source, with the exception of the discover feed algorithm, which they claim must remain secret to prevent it being manipulated. There are open-source replacements for that feed available, so it's open enough that it is theoretically possible to spin up a Bluesky replacement, albeit impossibly expensive.
Coming at it from another angle though, the product in any commercial social media product is you, so in that sense you're right: the product is not open source. Either way, open source code is not some panacea that erases all risk of commodifying its users. Bluesky is a great example because while it is open source, that in absolutely no way prevents them from tracking their users.
Actually, you can host the App bit yourself, and piggyback off bluesky's relay until another one pops up.
Additionally, it looks like you can host your own instance too.
PDS Self-hosting
It's kind of complicated. Bluesky doesn't do anything the way the fediverse does, so a PDS isn't a full instance, it's just the way that your personal account interacts with the Bluesky service.
An analogy I used in another thread about Bluesky got way too complicated, but my starting point was that if Bluesky is a swimming pool, then hosting a PDS is bringing your own personal bucket of water from home. Ultimately, you're still feeding it all into the one big pool that Bluesky owns, at least until somebody else builds another swimming pool (puts up the money to host a fully-fledged Bluesky replacement service) and you take your bucket over there.
On its own, the PDS doesn't really do anything without the rest of the infrastructure behind it. You can't go swimming in a bucket.
Bluesky is a trailer park. A PDS is a trailer. You can take it somewhere else, but you need somewhere to park it at night, and right now the only option is Bluesky.
Yeah. Bluesky works way more like how people seem to imagine the fediverse does, with PDSes being glorified dumb terminals accessing a (functionally, if not forever technically) centealized pool of content. Hosting a PDS is just shouldering some of the cost of BS's last mile.
not even: a copy of everything on your pds has to be replicated by bluesky's relay.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, it removed the complexity behind instances and federation which is primarily the reason mastodon didn't see mass adoption.
It isn't federation, since not all nodes in the system have equal power (control). There is still a central authority that controls what the inferior nodes can do.
Contrast that with email servers where you can send a message from one server to another without a more authoritative node as a required middleman.
Claiming it's a central authority when anyone can run a relay is a little disingenuous.
Is there a list of all the relays and appview servers run by other people for the community to use? I looked for one, but could find no evidence that others have actually hosted instances of these components for real use.
Not sure if an absolute list, but https://atprotocol.dev/ is a good resource.
I think the problem is there isn't much incentive to run a relay in particular, as it all funnels into the same place, but if you're questioning the tech this guy did it a few days ago with the relay
https://whtwnd.com/futur.blue/3lkubavdilf2m
It looks like ^ he also has an appview up thats long form blogging here: https://github.com/whtwnd/whitewind-blog
Another guy also built a lightweight app view
https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3lkwg2djrfk23
And stream.place is another appview but it's not a microblog platform. Also very early stages I believe.
I think you may have missed the point:
I'm hoping to see hostnames or IP addresses of existing instances of these components that anyone could connect to, and that aren't controlled by Bluesky PBC.
There are no matches for the word 'relay' on that site's main page, or via the site search.
I disagree with this sentiment, especially since Bluesky "is designed to not be controlled by a single company" and have "many hosts, firehoses, and indexes, all operated by different entities and exchanging data with each other".
I wasn't able to find a hostnames or IP for his instance on that page.
That looks cool, but it appears to show different content than BlueSky.
I dug through that thread and didn't see the URL for where it is hosted. Also I now feel the need to volunteer that I don't use Mastodon and am definitely not some kind of diehard fan of that app.
Again, I'm hoping to see alternative server instances of all the Bluesky services available for utilization by the public (whether customized or just reposted), not other apps that use atproto.
I want to see distributed platforms succeed, but as Bluesky notes on their About page, the problem is with centralization of authority. If a necessary part of the system is exclusively managed by a single corporation, it is centralized - whether by intent or just de facto. If that is the case, it would indicate some problem(s) exist that need solutions pursued until the situation is remedied.
What purpose does it serve for a dev to recreate a brand new app view right now? Yes there's getting away from centralization but is that enough to encourage someone to build something from the ground up? Right now it's only devs tinkering.
If Bluesky introduced 5 ads per post tomorrow. You can bet your ass there's going to be a new app backfilled with historical data within a month. But right now there's zero incentive since they've already solved the major problems of Twitter and Mastodon.
The relay is probably a bit more important for decentralization, but it's not particularly hard to load up a relay within a days work as the guy in the above response has shown. The white wind app also pulls directly from PDS' avoiding the need to use a relay at all.
If you have the data and the code you are in the effectively decentralized since anyone can effectively recreate your platform in a few days. Regardless I'm sure BlueSky will make a decision at some point that will entice someone enough to publish a separate appview. Think about how long Lemmy has been around and it's barely starting to see separate platforms take off more like mbin and piefed. Yeah kbin was around 2 years ago and piefed was very early but it takes a long time for these platforms to grow and mature, we can't just expect them to exist overnight when BlueSky has been fully public for what barely a year?
A pds can do a lot more than people suggest, but its not very effective.
Essentially, atproto has three distinct parts:
The relay is the main "centralised" part of the network, but its possible to use the network without it. whtwnd, for example, crawls PDSs directly, without a relay.
There's more to it, but thats the basics.
There’s nothing to prevent someone from spinning up a lemmy or mastodon instance and tracking users either.
They'd get defederated quickly.
Most likely. That’s if people knew about. You could do it secretly.
Though I wonder if you were open about it, if people would accept it. Just say “hey, this instance doesn’t ask for donations, but we track and sell your info.” Maybe some users would be okay with that.
they can't sell your info (from remote instances) without you agreeing to a privacy policy. Now, that most likely wouldn't stop them, but it makes it harder legally.
Remote instances won’t have your IP or email, and other usage trend data. So that info could only be obtained by this hypothetical tracking instance. As for any remote content on other instances, that can just be scraped by anyone. You wouldn’t even need an account or instance to get that data.
I know, sure thats just what threads did.
you’re right that this is likely to be used for tracking crap, but i wouldn’t write off the concept as only for that
for example, home assistant has https://my.home-assistant.io/ where you can set your home assistant URL and doc links (etc) link there, and then that site in turn automatically redirects to the correct place on your local home assistant
this could be used similarly by the fediverse: imagine my.join-lemmy.org where lemmy instances you’re not logged into redirected you to, which then in turn redirects to your home instance… that way, links across the web to lemmy would automatically redirect to your home instance
perhaps it’s not something that’s worth the trade off - centralising in some ways - but in federated platforms on the web it’s far from a write-off
They don't need to redirect to click track. They could very easily do that on the front end and you wouldn't even know it was being done.
Or we could start using ap:// links https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md
There's no profit in an open platform. You only build these things to mine data.
Exactly.
It's a for-profit company.
They care about your privacy like McDonald's cares about your health: if you have any left then they're not squeezing cash from you hard enough.
Talk to friends on Signal, invite your favorite The Atlantic reporter, use self-hosted or federated social networks.
Expecting privacy on corporate owned social media is like expecting to become a royal because you went to Disney World.
Don't confuse the facade (social space for you and your friends/magical kingdom) with the reality (privacy stealing monetization factory/tourist juicer).
This is further supported by the fact that story that they made more money selling their "fuck zuck" shirts or whatever, than they did in their actual money making strategies of selling unique domains.
No VC investor is going to be okay with a merchandise company growth curve.