cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17686207
It’s a very long post, but a lot of it is a detailed discussion of terminology in the appendix – no need to read that unless you’re into definitional struggles.
I’m squarely in the AT protocol is not the Fediverse camp. Fine if people want to enjoy Bluesky, but the Fediverse is built on top of the W3C protocol ActivityPub. AT is incompatible. Cool that there’s a bridge, but a bridge between incompatible protocols will always be a bit of a hack in my book.
You’re not the only one who sees it that way. Historically the Fediverse was always multi-protocol but some people don’t think it shojld be today. I talked about this view some in https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/
“Anyhow, if Evan and Eugen and SWF and fediverse.party want to choose a definition of Fediverse where history stopped with Mastodon’s 2017 adoption of ActivityPub, erases earlier Fediverse history, and ties the Fediverse’s success to a protocol that has major issues … they can do that. “The Fediverse” means different things to different people. It’s still worth asking why they choose that definition.”
You seem to be incorrectly stating what is on Wikipedia, which leads:
The fediverse (commonly shortened to fedi)[1][2][3] is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol.
That last bit is absolutely key: a collection of services using a common protocol. Imagine if two different email servers didn’t both speak SMTP. Imagine if two different web services didn’t both speak HTTP. The Internet as a singular entity is only made possible because of protocol interop between all of its constituent parts.
To say “the fediverse” is comprised of multiple incompatible protocols goes against that grain, and to go back to pre-ActivityPub-as-W3C-specification days as an argument that it’s fine to label multiple incompatible protocols as all being components of “the fediverse” is a stretch.
To me, this isn’t a let’s-agree-to-disagree-issue, honestly. While the term “fediverse” is arguably colloquial and doesn’t necessarily imply any specific technical attributes, it ceases to be useful as a term if Fediverse Platform A cannot in any way communicate with Fediverse Platform B because the two platforms happen to be using 100% incompatible protocols. Aside from a third-party bridge, the AT protocol used by Bluesky is 100% incompatible with ActivityPub used by Mastodon, Threads, and others. Therefore, they cannot both be simultaneously services in the fediverse.
I think, possibly like many others, since BlueSky came from the creator of Twitter, I do not trust it. At the moment, I don’t even think there’s anything anybody can say about it that would make me want to even test it. It just feels tainted.
Also, what is BlueSky promising? A new Twitter? The fediverse is making so much more possible: new Twitter(s), new Youtube, new Instagram, new Reddit, and it’s even being put into Wordpress, maybe even Tumblr, and who knows what else. How does BlueSky fit into that puzzle?
Dorsey’s not involved in Bluesky any more but I agree that there are lots of reasons not to trust them (including Dorsey’s original involvement).
Bluesky’s currently a much better Twitter alternative than Mastodon but I totally agree, there’s a lot more to social networking than that. I talk about ways I see Bulesky as complementary to the ActivityPub section in the last section, “It’s the end of the Fediverse as we know it – and I feel fine”
Can I ask why you say Mastodon isn’t a good twitter alternative and maybe what it could do to improve? Sorry if I missed that part in the article
You didn’t miss it, I didn’t go into detail on it in the article … one big reason is that because of how ActivityPub works you only see a fragment of the overall conversation (instead of everything). If you’re on a big well-connected instance like mastodon.social you see more of it but still not all; if you’re on a smaller not-so-well-connected instance you miss most of it. This comes in conversations (the “missing replies” problem), with search, and with hashtags.
Another reason is that Twitter’s got a lot of journalists, activists and organizers, politicians, government agencies, athletes, etc … and Mastodon for the most part doesn’t. That’s not a technical issue, but for most people, following one or more of those groups is something they’re used to from Twitter, so Mastodon doesn’t fill the same role.
Again, there’s plenty of stuff Mastodon is good at! And Twitter clones replicate Twitter’s problems as well as what people like about it. But for people who are sick of Twitter and want a similar experience elsewhere (as opposed to trying something different), they’re more likely to get what they want on Bluesky (and in many cases even Threads, especially if they already have an Instagram account and don’t want to see political stuff) than Mastodon.
I don’t trust it because there’s no believable plan to make it commercially viable, so it’s just going to end up defunct or enshittified. Mastodon is up front, it’s a volunteer service that you can either pay for or roll the dice on the instance staying up. And there’s a built-in way to move on when one goes down.
BlueSky is a B-corp, which theoretically means they can say their mission takes priority if sued by an investor in court, but doesn’t in any way require them to make it the primary goal, and the reality of funding and money and investors means that’s almost certainly not going to happen.
bluesky is run by a single org, and you have to beg them to let their router include your ‘independent’ instance. it is a closed garden.
it is like federating with facebook (not threads) by begging facebook to include your server and content into their garden.
thats not open federation. even after they let you in, they could take their ball home and lock it down at any moment.
Agreed that Bluesky’s run by a single corporation so it’s different than today’s ActivityPub Fediverse, but the Fediverse’s historical approach to “open federation” isn’t the only approach. Even in the ActivityPub world we’re seeing more and more experimentation with allow-list federation.
allow lists run by individual instances…not a gatekeeping board of a single entity.
my points stand. if you want to join a true federating twitter clone youre not using the atprotocol.
For people who want to join a twitter clone there aren’t any good ActivityPub options – Mastodon’s good at other things, but isn’t a good Twitter alternative let along clone. And ActivityPub’s version of “true federation” isn’t the only kind of federation. That said, I agree that AT isn’t an option for people who want to join a federating-in-theActivityPub-sense-of-the-word Twitter clone,
In what way is mastodon a bad twitter alternative?
I love Mastodon, but I never actually used twitter much so I don’t have much of a sense for why Mastodon might not be comparable
Maybe competition will make the Fediverse better? With or without Bluesky in the loop, we could take inspiration from their unique features and what people like about their platform. I certainly didn’t know they take onboarding seriously and offer shared blocklists and useful stuff like that…
So, I find people talking about blue sky confusing; if I search for a bluesky user to follow via Mastodon, I don’t see them come up. Does that just mean my server isn’t federated with them? I’m on mastodon.online, which I think is one of the biggest instances.
It’d be cool if I could actually interact with blue sky but it’s really not clear to me how it works if I don’t have a blue sky account and am interacting externally
There isn’t direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started
Gotcha. I understand why they chose to do it that way, but I do kinda wish it was possible to just follow someone
Thank you very much for the link/explanation!
Yeah, it’s somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It’s great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren’t any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There’s certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta’ll happen.
Hello,
I skimmed through the article. Isn’t Bluesky one billionaire purchase away from becoming the new X (and in this case, I don’t mean Twitter)?
Yep. And that’s far from the only way it could work out badly. I talk about this a bit in the section on “Bluesky is a useful counterweight to Threads”
Bluesky is far from perfect. They’re venture-funded, so likely to end with an exploitative business model. They’ve got a surveillance-capitalism friendly all-public architecture. It’s great that Jack Dorsey’s no longer on the board but he was.
No. It’s already owned by multibillionaire Jack Dorsey.
This is straight up misinformation, Dorsey was on the Bluesky’s board, but left in May. As far as I’m aware, he’s never even invested in the company (but he has given money to the nostr devs).
It did originate from Twitter. Somehow Twitter at the time considered it wise to split it into a separate entity, and Dorsey was fine with not controlling it. And then Twitter was sold, and Dorsey and Bluesky grew apart from each other.
Correct. Dorsey’s early involvement is certainly grounds for concern – the way I think of it, he’s gone now but his stench lingers on – but he’s not influential there going forward.
BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization https://rys.io/en/167.html
There is this thread too: https://feddit.org/post/2656676
Blueksy’s approach to decentralization is very different from ActivityPub but it’s definitely decentralized. (Also that article’s over a year old, and some things have changed since then.). But, like I say in the article, not everybody is so welcoming!
They’re still cosplaying decentralisation. Google hosts images on a separate domain to the one where they serve documents, are they decentralised? When we see more indexers, by all means let’s consider BlueSky decentralised, but until then, they’re just offloading traffic.
@thenexusofprivacy we can’t tell bluesky is fediverse even though it’s decentralized imo
You’re not the only one who thinks that way – opinions differ!
@thenexusofprivacy to me, as long as bluesky can’t properly communicate and federate with any social network (activitypub apps included) we can’t define it as fediversed but I’m curious to have your opinion
Personally I think that the connectivity via Bridgy Fed and Friendica are strong enough that it makes sense to consider Bluesky an instance on the ActivityPub Fediverse. Threads currently has less connectivity, and people in general consider it part of the Fediverse. For what it’s worth, in a discussion on Social Hub, Evan Prodromou also said he saw Bluesky as an instance in the ActivityPub Fediverse.
I also think that the ATmosphere is fediverse (descentralized social network) in its own right. So is Bluesky, as well as being part of the AcivityPub Fediverse and the ATmosphere.
But others define the Fediverse differently, https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/ goes into a lot of detail on the different views.
@thenexusofprivacy so if I follow your pattern, we can also consider twitter as an instance of the activitypub fediverse as some accounts are crossposting/mirroring their twitter acccount on mastodon (as such as @_formula1_) ?
I personally wouldn’t say so – crossposting isn’t the same as two-way communications – but others might.
Not sure about Bluesky, but welcome Brazilians!
They’re going to federate with ActivityPub?
Bridgy Fed and Friendica already connect Bluesky to the ActivityPub Fediverse.
To bridge your fediverse account into Bluesky and interact with people there, search for and follow @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy. That account will then follow you back. Accept its follow to make sure your fediverse posts get sent the bridge and make it into Bluesky.
https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started
I mean, I guess, but that’s pretty convoluted and opt-in, not so much a direct compatible connection from Bluesky to the Fediverse. And you’d have to trust them regarding privacy.
Agreed that Bridgy Fed is opt-in … I see consent as a good thing, but not everybody agrees.
And yeah, Bluesky’s just ike any other instance, you have to trust them with privacy. I think the argument that Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, and Wordress.com-hosted blogs shouldn’t be considered part of the Fediverse is intellectually consistent, I just don’t see a lot of people making that argument. But, “the Fedivese” means different things to different people, the followup post Is Bluesky part of today’s Fediverse? goes into a huge amount of detail on that …
I was referring to Bridgy, not Bluesky, regarding privacy. It acts like a middleman between whatever you’re using and Bluesky. And it isn’t really opt-in in that sense, because the majority of users would not even be aware of this even existing. An opt-in feature would be directly implemented into a platform, like a toggle you could switch within your account settings. Whether that is opt-in or opt-out is personal preference I guess, but with that logic it should be ideally the same for all native instances as well.
Just a small Portuguese correction: “Bem vendos aos fediverses” should be “Bem-vindos aos fediversos!”.
Thanks very much, fixed now!
Getting the BTS fanbase to switch platforms is huge and can essentially get you millions of users in an instant. I wish Mastodon was in the picture though.
