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.
@volkris @Wuzzy after more research, it seems they do allow "instances" to host on their own server...
https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds?tab=readme-ov-file
I wonder if I can use my main domain to test this with my mastodon instance staying on the subdomain🤔might be something to look into.
@BeAware @volkris Seems like federation exists on paper for now ("We do not currently support PDS federation on the production network").
I guess I just wait until this thing actually takes into effect. But I predict the network will be dominated by one large "official" server. Federation won't be enough. They would also need to actively advertise other servers to give them a fair chance. The idea of federation goes out of the window if >90% of all users are on one large instance.
We'll see …
@BeAware Well again, their approach is different from ActivityPub in that they don't emphasize the role of admins, making it about users first over and above instances.
Anyway, in theory they have released all of their software open source on git, if I recall correctly, so anybody is welcome to start their own system.
Of course, practicality is a different matter...
@volkris @Wuzzy just because they let users control things more than AP, doesn't mean that there aren't admins. I did read into that GitHub page cause I was thinking about doing it myself eventually🤷♂️there ARE "instance admins" they just don't have control like AP does.