The interesting dynamic is that it seems like they’re making things that could lay lots of foundations for a lot of independent decentralised stuff, but people and devs need to actually pick that up and make it happen, and many users just want something that works.

So somewhat like lemmy-world and mastodon-social, they get stuck holding a centralised service whose success is holding hostage the decentralised system/protocol they actually care about.

For me, the thing I’ve noticed and that bothers me is that much of the focus and excitement and interest from the independent devs working in the space don’t seem too interested in the purely decentralised and fail-safe-rebuilding aspects of the system. Instead, they’re quite happy to build on top of a centralised service.

Which is fine but ignores what to me is the greatest promise of their system: to combine centralised and decentralised components into a single network. EG, AFAICT, running ActivityPub or similar within ATProto is plausible. But the independent devs don’t seem to be on that wavelength.

Yea, it would seem the embrace from those “who should maybe know better” is based on it being the appropriate compromise to make progress in this field.

BlueSky is not just another centralised platform. It’s open source (or mostly), based on an open protocol and an architecture that’s hybrid-decentralised. The “billionaire” security, AFAICT, is that we can rebuild it with our own data should it go to shit.

This thread from Andre Staltz is indicative I think: https://bsky.app/profile/staltz.com/post/3lawesmv6ik2d

He worked on scuttlebut/manyverse for a long while before moving on a year or so ago. Along with Paul Frazee, a core dev with bsky who’d previously done decentralisation, I think there’s a hunger to just make it work for people and not fail on idealistic grounds.

Just to add to the many responses here with a simple quip on this issue (which I’m taking from one else)

The fediverse presumes people care more about independence than socialising. For most it’s the other way around.

IE: it’s about the socialising “stupid”.

Even for us techy types happy with the system here … it means we get to socialise with like minded people. The independence we have here is often secondary, I’d wager, to what we all get out of this.

I mean, I hear you (we’re both here after all), but honestly, I think this is a bad take and approach (if getting more users is a goal.

It’s not the 90s anymore. And even email services are given to you by your employer or selected from the closest big brand provider (Google etc).

All of which is a far cry from “nerdygardeners.io” administered by some rando anonymous account you’ve never heard of before.

For mainstream success, the instances thing was dead on arrival. Just was and is. Which is fine, the Fedi can be and arguably should be something else.

IMO the success of BlueSky is good for the Fedi. It can take the “let’s be the next mainstream thing” monkey off of its back and just be itself.

First, no need to apologise.

Second, no I don’t think you summarised the video, IIRC, it mostly gets into the theory of the techniques used and what can be done to do a better job.

Possibly, but when scientific knowledge and problems were smaller, one person could actually make a mark alone IMO. And if they happened upon a new discovery or insight then they’d appear to be geniuses, all alone.

At some point, when the work to make a discovery requires more than one person and the amount of theory involved in understanding its significance is too much for one person to be authoritative on all of it, then it’s a team sport.

Yep. There’s a whole world of people happy to work very hard on research for the rest of their lives … and instead we have them writing emails wrangling spreadsheets for … ??

Sometimes “shitty” work needs to be done, obviously … but I think it’s far less obvious that the pool of things that need to be done lies entirely in the random inefficient shit the business world just accepts. Instead, that’s just where the money flows.

Absolutely. It’s a shit show.

And interestingly, making the general public more aware of this is likely quite important. Because 1, they have very idealistic views of what research is like, and 2, just about everyone is entering research blind to the realities. It’s a situation that needs some sunlight and rethinking.

IMO, a root cause is that the heroic genius researcher ideal at the base of the system’s design basically doesn’t really exist any more. Things are just too big and complex now for a single person to be that important. Dismantle that ideal and redesign from scratch.

There was an article by Google about the security of their code base, and one of their core findings was that old code is good, as it gets refined and more free of bugs over time. And of course conversely, new code is worse.

https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html

Generally it seems like capitalism’s obsession with growth is at odds with complex software. It’s basis in property also.

It’s not too hard. There are a bunch of different platforms one might experiment with as well as instances. Some will use multiple accounts for different needs or interests. On lemmy, multi accounts are useful for have different feeds, for example. I probably have 7-10. I’ve probably forgotten about a few of them. If you’re curious, it happens.

Yea. Even nicer if it could be adjusted on a post-by-post basis (however viable that is).

By the same token Evan seems a bit self centred and egotistical about his projects. Of you look at his comments about BlueSky it seems he’s pretty bitter that someone dared to make an alternative protocol that so far has a decent amount of users, when a acceptance of multiple systems experimenting and borrowing from each other for the good of the open web is right there as a natural position.

It’s definitely an interesting and relevant idea I think! A major flaw here is the lack of ability for communities to establish themselves as discrete spaces desperate from the doomscrolling crowd.

A problem with the fediverse on the whole IMO, as community building is IMO what it should be focusing on.

Generally decentralisation makes things like this difficult, AFAIU. Lemmy has things like private and local only communities in the works that will get you there. But then discovery becomes a problem which probably requires some additional features too.

it’s the sort of tool that is really just fundamental now and should be ubiquitous and promoted and taught and talked about every where there is knowledge work. Even more so as there’s a great open source version of the tool.

The catch is that the whole system is effectively centralised on BlueSky backend services (basically the relay). So while the protocol may be standardised and open, and interpreted with decentralised components, they’ll control the core service. Which means they can unilaterally decide to introduce profitable things like ads and charging for features.

The promise of the system though is that it provides for various levels of independence that can all connect to each other, so people with different needs and capabilities can all find their spot in the ecosystem. Whether that happens is a big question. Generally I’d say I’m optimistic about the ideas and architecture, but unsure about whether the community around it will get it to what I think it should be.

Suspicion is totally fair re BlueSky IMO. The system they’ve design seems to me (and others AFAICT) to have the potential to include interconnected components or sections with various degrees of independence.

The elephant in the room, which I point out on BlueSky whenever I can, is that no one seems to really be trying to build the hard parts of that out. Which is a shame because it could be interesting.

EG, there’s a chance that a hybridised system running both BlueSky’s protocol and the fediverse’s could be viable and quite useful. Add to that the integration with some E2EE, and it finally feels like an actual attempt at building something new for the modern internet.

Fortunately there is some noise around these ideas, so hopefully their system can outlast their finances. But yea, a rug pull is definitely not out of the question.

If there is a platform that does it better, I bet people will start to notice.

Yea … I suspect it’s a protocol problem more than any one platform, because there’s just too much flexibility in the protocol and so any inter-platform transfer is necessarily noisy. Multiplied by the number of platforms, and you get quite a bit of noise.

To your point though, a new platform that kinda does it all on its own could likely take off quite well and then set a new de facto standard around how to do things. Bonfire seemed to be that, and may still be. AFAIU, they’re trying to solve performance issues right now before properly opening up.

Definitely interesting idea (I hadn’t really quite seen it formalised like this)! I’ve kinda had vague similar-ish thoughts along these lines too.

Any chance you’d be willing to go into any more detail, or point to specifics? I’m not familiar with what’s going on over on bestiver or programming.dev in the way of service-type things.

Just feels like every attempt at alternative social media is dying as the internet shrinks to a few corporate websites that control everything.

Yea … it’s sort of a lens for me as I view/critique the actions and decisions of people building alt-social … this stuff is hard and fragile but also important … so not fucking around with it kinda matters (to me at least).

The hate toward BlueSky from mastodon/AP people, for example, is misguided I think. The, IMO, general lack of concern for inter-platform interop across the fediverse bothers me too, where I ask whether a platform is being a good “fediverse citizen”. And some of the “cultural purity through vigilance” culture out of the mastodon/microblogging crowd is, IMO, short sighted.

A common thread being a readiness for negative behaviour and effects rather than building and supporting.

As in a new one would be necessary to do the sorts of things I’m suggesting … or the current moment requires a sort of rebranding and pivot that is best served by a new platform?