Been reading up on the #BlueSky hype train. I am really confused.
They claim BlueSky is supposed to be "#open" and "#federated" but then why didn't they just join #Mastodon or contribute to #ActivityPub? Making a new app I can 100% understand but also making a brand new protocol? WHY?
I'm not sure how "open" BlueSky really is (their recent plans to monetize features are very #sus) but either way, BlueSky and its protocol feel like a gigantic Not Invented Here syndrome. 🙄
@Wuzzy there are extremely good answers to your question.
#BlueSky operates in a way that is fundamentally different from #ActivityPub, in ways that address many of the criticisms that users and developers have when they are using platforms like #Mastodon.
These differences are so fundamental that it's not like BlueSky developers could have just taken AP and offered some patches to improve it.
They made a brand new protocol because their approach differed so markedly from the AP approach.
People do debate over which approach is better, and people can have strong feelings about one approach being much better than the other, but the strength of those feelings just emphasizes how fundamentally different they are.
It's akin to gas versus electric cars. EV car makers couldn't just make small tweaks to existing gas engines; rather they had to go a completely different direction with the electric motor instead.
@volkris @Wuzzy but what ARE those fundamental differences and we're the "issues" actually issues? Like, they didn't think "it can't do ads, better make something new that can" and thought it was a good idea that people would adore, did they?🤷♂️it seems like AP, but shittier because it just uses your domain name and nothing else unless I am mistaken. They use your domain name, throw it on your profile, call it "defederated" and call it a day?
Well one easy example of an issue that BlueSky can handle better is account migration.
People using Fediverse rightly point out that moving between instances is clumsy, and that's because the underlying system is all built around instances, not users, so moving between instances is an afterthought that's clumsily tacked on.
BlueSky made different design choices that made users, not instances, the core piece. One implication of this is that the user has much more control of their posts, where they reside, and how they're addressed.
The two design approaches are upside down from each other, so whether you want an instance-oriented system or a user-oriented system determines which system is more in line with your needs.
@BeAware their system gives users much MORE control, not less, since users are at the center.
Users get more control over their content, more control over how it's distributed, and where they get content from, and how it's presented to them from different aggregation sources.
It sounds like you're really focused on domain names and user handles, but a huge part of the BlueSky approach is to not make such things so important in the first place.
In ActivityPub a user is defined by the instance, so that stuff matters a whole lot.
In BlueSky they specifically didn't want to do that sort of thing, making users more independent of instances in the first place
@volkris @Wuzzy no, what I WAS focusing on is the complete ability to see what you want to see and moderate that experience.
On mastodon as a user, you're limited to "blocking" specific users. Unless your admin defederates, there's no real way to block an entire instance. The "Block this domain" option is literally just a mute and the instance can still interact with the post, the user that blocked them just won't see it.
I was under the impression (wrongly) that if BlueSky is ONLY pointing pointing my domain to their servers, I wouldn't have the same level of control over OTHER USERS' content as I currently do on Mastodon. This seems to not be the case as I researched further, but I'm not 100% sure on the exact options I'd have because I haven't done it (yet).
That was my concern, sorry I didn't make it very clear before.
Ah, well then you might find this two second statement of their goals interesting. It's one of the things I'm really interested in since like you I find Mastodon a bit underdeveloped for shaping experience.
> As with Web search engines, users are free to select their aggregators. Feeds, App Views, and search indices can be provided by independent third parties, with requests routed by the PDS based on user configuration.
I know that's just the elevator pitch without details, but I remembered coming across it and figured I'd share the link.
@volkris @Wuzzy well that's pretty neat. Might have to look into it. I'm always down to reach more people if I can, and this seems like an interesting way to achieve that. Thanks for the link