Submitted 3 weeks ago by hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/
Not at all. The issue with Bluesky’s “federation” is, you can’t really set it up at home, you need thousands of dollars and it’s not really accessible.
Search up “Mastodon instances” and then “Bluesky instances” you see like thousands for Mastodon and only the official one for Bluesky. It’s marketing gimmick for the mainstream normies who want to pretend they have freedom but in reality they’re just jumping on the train with the billionaire who runs it.
IMO, setting it up at home is not the bar for decentralization. I don’t think it’s even practical to run your own self-hosted fediverse server.
I think we can get just about all the same benefits of decentralization at the scale of the city.
IMO, setting it up at home is not the bar for decentralization.
That’s exactly where I set the bar.
What makes it impractical? The model’s been working here for years.
you need thousands of dollars
Search up “Mastodon instances” and then “Bluesky instances”
Bluesky has a different architecture, there are no “instances”, it’s PDSs, relays and AppViews, all of which can be and are already being self-hosted.
they’re just jumping on the train with the billionaire who runs it
If you mean Dorsey, he has had nothing to do with Bluesky for well over a year now because he resented them implementing moderation tools
Thats a super cool visualization! This might make a really cool post for !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world! Maybe a screenshot with a seperate link to the site
Thanks for posting this! 😊
bluesky is twitter without the nazification by musk.
Give it time…
It’s Dorsey era twitter. Full of crazies.
Those sevens are weird, what a weird font
So as I understand it the big "advantage" of ATProtocol is the account portability via DID, however this is at the sacrifice of actually hosting an ATProtocol being extremely data heavy.
This has made me very curious about self-hosting ActivityPub, it would seem like focusing development on a client that makes it as close to as easy to self-host an instance as it is to join one would solve the issue of accountability portability, as you literally own all the data and rights when you self host. The Major challenge I see there is security, where experienced admins for larger instances should have some level of cybersecuroty expertise while the average use may have little to none. But then focusing group effort on auto-updating the client and the default settings of the client to maximize security would solve that issue it would seem?
So what am I missing? Other than hosting costs, what else is deferring a self-hosted-first development approach for the Fediverse?
Is it actually that AP development fundamentally believe moderation should be handled at the admin/instance level, and self-hosting makes moderation more difficult and less directly authority based?
Publicly shared blacklists and whitelists would seem the natural fit for a self-hosted-first network, akin to adblock and horizontal.
[Edit: I see the problem, even with a self-hosted instance of 1, when you comment on posts in other instances that data is no longer held on your server, so you don’t own it and can’t control it directly, is that right?]
Not quite. It’s more like Bluesky works, but also not quite.
First, a note on the idea of “your” data. The law gives people rights over certain data. For example, copyright gives people rights over certain content, which translates to rights over data encoding that content. You may think of a movie as being yours because you have the file on your device. The copyright holder still considers it their data and will therefore demand control over your device through DRM.
Rights over data always means rights over what other people do with their computers and devices. Unfortunately, Fediverse users are not very tech-savvy. They demand more rights and regulations and then condemn Big Tech for the predictable consequences. They pull on one end of the string and blame dark powers when the other end moves.
The European GDPR also creates rights over certain data. You have GDPR rights over all data that is directly or indirectly related to you. For example, if I write about the current French President, then Emmanuel Macron has GDPR rights over that data, even if I don’t mention him by name. Of course, his rights will be limited by freedom of information. Also, these rights are rarely recognized outside of Europe.
What legal rights you have over data depends on your location. Copyright is internationally recognized, but its precise reach depends on location; eg the US has Fair Use. Even at a specific location, those rights depend on context, with a lot of gray area. This cannot be implemented technically.
With Lemmy it’s like this: When a user on an instance subscribes to a community, all (recent-ish) posts and comments in that community are downloaded to that instance. Users on that instance are served from their own instance.
Generally, a Fediverse instance keeps a copy of whatever data its local users might need. If your instance was the only source for some data, then every user in the whole world needing it would have to access your server every time they want it. Every user whether registered or unregistered would hit your server every time they reload. If a server buckles under the strain, you just get missing data. It just wouldn’t scale.
Bluesky has Personal Data Servers (PDSs) for that role. Those are the definitive store of some user’s data. This can be self-hosted easily. The data from all users is aggregated by a “relay”, If a PDS is like a personal web server, then a relay is like a search engine. That’s the one that you can’t self-host; takes big time capital expenditure.
I don’t think the Fediverse has a solution for this. Imagine Mastodon or Lemmy with 100M+ users. How do you find stuff? Well, making a crawler and search engine for the Fediverse would be simple. But that would also take major capital expenditure.
The Bluesky relay combines all activity into the “firehose”. Anyone can write apps that get data from the firehose and present them to users. When Bluesky blocked Mississippi, that meant that the official Bluesky App did that. Other Apps still work in that state.
Final bit: When you self-host, you need to be your own legal department. When you use a service, you are shielded to some degree. Eg when you infringe copyright, a social media service will usually just take it down. If you infringe copyright on your web server, or even via torrent, you may get a pretty hefty bill.
Fedi-users cheer when Meta gets sued or settled with a huge fine. Well, good luck running your own Facebook server. Fedi-users mostly aren’t very tech-savvy but when it gets to law, they are positively delusional.
Edit: I see the problem, even with a self-hosted instance of 1, when you comment on posts in other instances that data is no longer held on your server, so you don’t own it and can’t control it directly, is that right?
The “problem” is also going the other way around. If a large instance is sharing data with your single user instance, they ultimately cannot control what you do with it.
The same is true if you just scrape the website.
Isn’t that a non-problem? I mean, afaik, you cannot control any data after it’s sent. If I send you an email with an attachment, I cannot stop you from forwarding it to everyone you know, nor can I stop you from editing it before forwarding. I guess it becomes a problem of reliability, then, which is only a problem if the original source is unavailable - which is not that uncommon in the fediverse.
Auth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Everytime I see bluesky PBC I have to resist the urge to rant. There is no such thing as a public benefit corporation. Its just marketing BS.
Coopr8@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
Actually there is a legal definition, a Public Benefit Corporation has statutes in its articles of incorporation which legally commit the company to pursue a set purpose which supersedes the fiduciary responsibility of the corporation to shareholders. This is important because it provides some degree of legal protection from activist shareholders suing the company for making spending or policy decisions which don't directly maximize shareholder value. The body of law around this issue is still relatively murky, but some defense is better than none at all.
For example, shareholders could attempt to sue BlueSky into increasing advertising placement or data sales functionality intothe core platform to increase company revenues, but if that is at odds with their stated public benefit purpose the legal team for BluSky would have grounds to attempt to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the shareholders purchase the shares under the explicit understanding that these functions would be subordinated to the public benefit goals of the platform.
Auth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No almost all of that is misconception. Shareholders can sue normal companies and “PBC” for not maximizing shareholder value. PBC are still legally required to cater to shareholders interests. Legal scholars say that PBCs do not provide any protection against shareholders suing and data shows it does not stop profit maximizing behavior. Its pure marketing.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Be strong now. Mastodon is a gGmbH. That’s the German version and translates to public benefit limited liability corporation.
Auth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes but we like mastodon because they’re open and if they fuck up we can move away at any time. Bluesky is completely closed except the protocol and the network is fully centralized. They’re just waiting until they have enough marketshare to enshitify.