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A Step Towards Full Bluesky Federation? | Self Host a Bluesky Atproto Network (github.com)

submitted 1 day ago by ericjmorey@discuss.online to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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This is the first time I'm seeing a way to host a full Bluesky network, I think. It seems like a big step towards full federation beyond appviews and personal data servers.

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[-] sith@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

People here need to realize that 90% of the microbloggers don't give a fuck about decentralization or FOSS. They want something that works and doesn't force them into a ketamine fuled nazi oligarchy delirium. Mastodon doesn't work for normal people. It kind of works if you're a FOSS nerd or some kind of fediverse idealist. (It works for me, because it doesn't drag me into endless flame wars and I'm almost only following FOSS accounts).

My experience with Lemmy is that it is much more functional as in "Reddit replacement". There are of course super few users, but it feels active and engaging (for better or worse). So in theory, maybe it could be a replacement.

But Mastodon has never been a "Twitter replacement". It feels more like a fancy RSS client. Search, feeds and interactions just doesn't work very well.

[-] admin@lemmyusa.com 1 points 1 hour ago

I've heard from numerous people here that Mastodon is the "worst" of microblogging platforms on the Fediverse. Mainly due to its lack of features.

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

There are several reasons why Mastodon doesn't work for normal people, but the biggest one is, honestly, Mastodon users. People have shown themselves to be rather inventive in the face of technical limitations, or they're willing to put up with toxic people for the sake of a great user experience, but you need the people who show up in the space to not experience both negatives.

A lot of Mastodon's UX is really frustrating, in large part because Mastodon tries to disguise the fact that everyone's using different websites. People would be a lot more forgiving of the jankiness of federation if they truly understood that what they're doing is the equivalent of talking to Facebook users from Twitter. But the UI of Mastodon, the language of Mastodon, the layout of Mastodon, the features of Mastodon, and even the 'marketing' of Mastodon all try to make it look like the @website.com at the end of everyone's name is just some frilly flair.

Lemmy has some similar issues, frankly, though not nearly as bad. And Lemmy is a space where I think we will see the idea of talking to people across different websites will really be treated as more core to the culture of the space, because Lemmy isn't really going out of its way to hide the nature of the space as much as Mastodon is.

Still, I wish the hosting websites were treated as first-class citizens by Lemmy itself, rather than as just the url the 'communities' are taking up space on.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 27 points 20 hours ago

There is already a fediverse twitalike called mastodon. I don't understand why anyone here cares about bluesky.

[-] VintageGenious@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 hours ago

Because the protocol allows to decentralize each part, unlike fediverse

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 8 hours ago

Is there any non-Bluesky server people can register to?

[-] Docus@lemmy.world 21 points 16 hours ago

Because mastodon is the Linux of social media. One day it will be ready for the average user…

[-] lemmymarud@lemmy.marud.fr 9 points 14 hours ago

2025 is the year of ~~Linux Desktop~~ Mastodon

[-] rammer@sopuli.xyz 34 points 20 hours ago

Because it has the users Mastodon lacks.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 23 points 20 hours ago

By that logic we should also connect up with facebook and 4chan, not to mention twitter itself. bsky is just another one of those platforms from what I can tell. It is fairly new so not yet blatantly evil, but give it time. We here are supposed to know better.

[-] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 5 points 15 hours ago

bluesky is foss and open to federation, why not bluesky? Also a mastodon bluesky bridge is possible because of this as well

[-] admin@lemmyusa.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Investors offer money, federation goes bye-bye and you end up with another twitter.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

It's not about the code, it's about control of the servers and feeds. Decentralization doesn't just mean multiple servers. It means no single entity has special authority over the user community. That isn't the case with bluesky from what I can tell.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 points 9 hours ago

You are correct, if you take a step back and consider bluesky wholistically, it is DEFINITELY not decentralized.

[-] rammer@sopuli.xyz 11 points 18 hours ago

By that logic we should be happy gazing at our own navels, shouting to the void, looking at empty pages.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 9 points 18 hours ago

Navels, but federated!

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 2 points 13 hours ago

That's how I see nostr

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago

Because it doesn't have search (at least my instance doesn't), doesn't show engagement so the whole thing feels empty like people are posting into the void

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

If the problem is fixable technical shortcomings, why not fix them instead of throwing up our hands and surrendering?

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 6 points 14 hours ago

As a Linux user since 2007 I feel a little dirty uttering this phrase, but:

Because not everyone is a developer.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

You don't have to be a developer to use Lemmy, yet it has similar features to reddit including search. Maybe there are sociological issues in growing its userbase, but not serious technical ones, as Usenet showed 40 years ago.

It sounds like mastodon still has technical issues . If Lemmy's were solvable, mastodon's are too. Otherwise, how did mastodon get built in the first place?

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 5 points 14 hours ago

Just clarifying because I feel we're talking past each other:

You asked the folks in this discussion:

If the problem is fixable technical shortcomings, why not fix them instead of throwing up our hands and surrendering?

to which I said

Because not everyone is a developer.

to which you said

You don’t have to be a developer to use Lemmy

True. But that's not what where we're at in the discussion.

It sounds like mastodon still has technical issues . If Lemmy’s were solvable, mastodon’s are too. Otherwise, how did mastodon get built in the first place?

I'm quite sure they are solvable, but likely not by the folks complaining about the technical issues and choosing to use other services like bluesky. Because not everyone is a developer.

So in other words, I think your musing out loud about why don't we solve the issues instead of giving up and using something else is being directed to the wrong people.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 30 points 23 hours ago

this seems like a way to setup another centralized install. it still doesnt allow for federation between installations.

[-] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 9 points 20 hours ago

I asked the devs about this and they said that bluesky is designed to be a) modular b) trustless as much as possible. federation is supposed to happen on the trustless hosting and relay layers - you can ask your posts to be crawled by any indexer/appview.

But once you get to the indexing/querying layer, there are no more merkle proofs to keep everyone honest, so there is no point in federating because any indexer can modify/censor the content they send to another indexer instance. So you could still build an api to interact laterally between servers, but it wouldn't be atproto anymore.

[-] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 6 points 14 hours ago

Could you maybe explain that in dumb people words in case some dumb people read your explanation and didn't understand it? 👉👈

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 8 points 14 hours ago

the short is, bluesky is only designed to 'federate' with itself and will never be truely decentralized as it will never interact with 'foreign' servers.

all they really built is a twitter where a user can control their own node of information (pds) but it will never interact with another bluesky instance.

in the real fediverse, servers interact as they come on-line and are subscribed to each other by users. this causes some security issues, and portability issues but at least its actual federation creating webs of content by fully independent peeps.

[-] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

The entire point is that your pds can interact with multiple "instances" of bluesky or whatever other apps people build on the protocol.

For example there is a reddit/hn clone that people can post on (keeping their same identity) when the official bluesky service goes down. The reddit clone is fully independent from the twitter clone, but they use the same protocol and (unlike AP) the same hosting and authentication infrastructure.

Whereas on Lemmy and mastodon, my accounts are totally separate. And unlike AP, your data lives on your own pds and is never hostage to the owner of the instance that actually runs the load bearing interactivity. If they become compromised or shut down you can switch to another. No cooperation from the old owner required (unlike activitypub).

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago

Yeah but unlike activity pub, atproto/bluesky demands each self hosted relay process a massive amount of data to participate, it is incredibly impractical and costly to envision scaling up, bluesky's self hosting is essentially made to be a curiousity rich developers with access to powerful hardware try out as a hobbiest project and write a blog post about, not a serious general use case for everyone.

The idea of course is make it so nerds can technically do it, but the bulk of users can't and won't.

The strategy is convince the nerds you are giving them access to the future and that average people aren't ready for it, and than never actually provide that future since nerds stop advocating for it because a corporation handed them a tiny scrap and that was enough to write a good techy diy blog post about.

Bluesky is the past desperately trying to convince you it is the future, don't fall for it.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 5 points 13 hours ago

in other words, if bluesky goes titsup you can take your pds, and set it to another relay. but then when the original bluesky comes back up you are dark on that instance. thats not decentralization. thats islands of twitter that you can switch between.

you will not be able to interact with multiple bluesky instances simultaneously.

[-] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 3 points 13 hours ago

Thank you very much.

[-] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 16 points 22 hours ago

Why do the work for a for profit corp instead of just making a Mastodon server? I also wish we had a different term for these for-profit leeches that want to vacuum up free fediverse content for profit. I may be in the minority, but they are not Fediverse in my eyes. And we should not be working on ways to incorporate them, but on ways to block them off completely, and quarantine them to their own little islands in cyberspace.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 11 points 22 hours ago

Seems like a lot of people prefer bluesky for whatever reason. I wouldn’t know since I’ve no interest in either.

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 11 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I think it's just discoverability of content, and probably some UX. Mastodon isn't really a great show of what ActivityPub can do. They intentionally don't have an "algorithm" or any kind of content discoverability. Also the federation is limited to following users, on Lemmy you can follow topics and that causes all their posts and comments to federate.

Just today I heard Bluesky is making a Reddit alternative. I'm a bit worried they overtake Lemmy.

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 3 points 14 hours ago

I think it’s just discoverability of content, and probably some UX. Mastodon isn’t really a great show of what ActivityPub can do.

I'm kind of surprised I don't see Calckey or similar mentioned more. Personally I think it has solved a lot of Mastodon's problems, but it seems niche even within the niche that is the fediverse.

https://calckey.world/

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 4 points 10 hours ago

Unfortunately I feel like people have stopped looking for a Twitter alternative already

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Yeah discoverability is a huge issue. I feel like tech people often get stuck on the fact that most regular people don’t want to do a ton of work to browse the web, they just want content to come to them. I know people in the fediverse have negative feelings about algorithms (and most that exist today are harmful) but does a transparent, community-managed algorithm have to be a bad thing?

[-] EldritchFeminity 6 points 18 hours ago

I feel like tech people often get stuck on the fact that most regular people don’t want to do a ton of work to browse the web, they just want content to come to them.

I think this is also true for why people gravitate towards places like Bluesky in more general terms as well. Without even getting into the details of whether or not a platform has an algorithm or whatever other features, whether or not a platform is federated means nothing to the average person and the benefits of the decentralized servers are a disadvantage to onboarding people. When the Reddit exodus happened, I was describing Lemmy to a friend, and when I told him that anybody could spin up their own instance, his response was "why the hell would anybody want to do that." And this is a guy who ran his own TeamSpeak server for like 20 years.

People don't want an alternative to Twitter - they want Twitter without the rightwing extremism. Bluesky offers exactly this with an easy and straightforward onboarding process and a familiar UI. There's even browser extensions to search the people you follow on Twitter and find their Bluesky handles to make the swap easier.

I've also seen people praising Bluesky's algorithm being entirely optional as well as a plus for discoverability. People really like the chronological timeline that doesn't bury posts - especially artists. I haven't used Mastodon, and I only used Twitter because all the artists jumped ship after Tumblr banned the porn, but I can say that I have enjoyed how Bluesky works similar to Tumblr in that regard. I've never liked algorithmic based feeds, so a chronological feed of the people I follow and the stuff they reblog from other people who I can then go check out as well is exactly the kind of experience I want out of a platform.

[-] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 2 points 14 hours ago

tech people hate algorithms

Language is so silly sometimes

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 8 points 20 hours ago

Yea the Mastodon devs are seriously underestimating how lazy the average person is lol

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 5 points 19 hours ago

It’s not BlueSky making the Reddit alternative, it’s third party devs. There are a few alternative apps being built on BlueSky architecture and ATProto right now.

And yea, it definitely could overtake and harm lemmy, if there are people here into the BlueSky approach (which likely suits Reddit-like apps, I think I’ve seen some say BlueSky has a Reddit flavour to it).

Honestly, given the dominance Mastodon has in AP and the shitty interop it has with lemmy, migrating to ATProto wouldn’t be the most insane idea for Lemmy IMO. Relying on BlurSky’s relay wouldn’t be for everyone. But some sort of multi-relay set up seems plausible and might be cool to see.

[-] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 points 14 hours ago

Drag agrees. Drag has fiddled with Lemmy's API, and there's so much redundant and unnecessary information on every post. No wonder it's such a resource hog. If that redundancy is part of ActivityPub, then drag would be happy to dumb AP for a lighter protocol.