You might be having a bad day, but at least you didnt spend like a decade developing a social media protocol that was structurally incapable of DMs so you needed to make a whole second E2EE protocol
I have a question about BlueSky :blobfoxthinkgoogly:
So the point of BlueSky is to try to simulate a centralized social media platform with decentralized hardware, right? So, like, what's the incentive to hosting your own BlueSky servers? I can see having a single-user repository for your own data, but there's no reason to host anyone else's personal data, right? :confused_dog:
With Mastodon, the incentive to host a server comes from the fact that servers are smaller, tighter-knit communities, so hosting your server comes with building a community. What's the incentive on BlueSky?
Kann ich die vielen bsky-Posts aus meiner Timeline herausfiltern+eliminieren und sie stattdessen irgendwo in die Seitenleiste packen?
Ein eigener Channel geht, löst aber die Aufgabe nicht.
If anyone is interested in having a #Bluesky (#bsky) account, but doesn't want their data or their identities managed, or stored on the Bluesky corporate server, you can instead join a private server, a PDS (Personal Data Server). This is part of their "federated" architecture, similar to ActivityPub that Mastodon uses.
I run a #PDS, https://blue-ocean.social. PDS servers have no web interface, so if you use this URL it won't see anything exciting other than it telling you it's a PDS.
My Bluesky handle is jerry.blue-ocean.social. Most people have a handle like person.bsky.social
It's in beta, which means that any PDS cannot have more than 10 users, there is a limit of 15,000 events/day, and 1,500 events/hour. This is a lot of events, actually.
I cannot see other people's data or access their identity data on the server. The only moderation is that I can delete or lock an account, but I cannot block anyone or any servers. It's not like Mastodon and other Fediverse apps.
If you would like a Bluesky account that is stored away from Bluesky corporate, please let me know, and I will send you an invitation code (it's the only way to register onto a PDS).
The server is automatically backed up daily by Digital Ocean (warm backup). I take the server down for 3 minutes/week for a cold back up and to apply Linux updates. Otherwise, it's rock solid. The Bluesky software updates itself, so there's no downtime for those updates.
I can give out 8 more invite codes and can send instructions for how to get started.
Please let me know if you'd like an invitation code.
The latest drama is that Automattic is about to sign a deal with OpenAI to train AI on WordPress.com and Tumblr content.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that OpenAI probably already had crawled most if not all of WP and Tumbler.
Automattic also allows users to opt out and that fueled the Opt Out/Consent discussion that started a bit earlier. I’ll get to it later.
Just the day before (or it feels like it) Google signed a deal with Reddit to get all the data to train their AI.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that Google of all corps probably already had crawled most if not all of Reddit. The $60M Google paid is a convenience fee to get a nice db bump instead of having to scrap and clean up all that text.
Reddit doesn't let user to Opt Out.
Last week (or it feels like it) one guy wanted to bridge public toots from Mastodon to bluesky.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that people could read those toots just using a different client or a browser. All the bridge did was bring toots to a different audience and allowed them to engage with those toots.
The bride also allows people to opt out and that rekindled the Opt Out/Consent discussion that started a bit earlier. I’ll get to it later.
Some time last year a guy built a Fediverse search engine because discovery between instances is terrible.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that most toots are indexed by big search engines anyway but because they rank low they just rarely surface in the results.
The search engine also allowed people to opt out and that kinda started the Opt Out/Consent discussion. I’ll get to it in a bit.
Some time later a completely unrelated thing happened. Discord decided that they won’t let people hotlink images uploaded to Discord.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. But also this time people didn’t forget to mention that you shouldn’t use discord for anything you don’t want to lose. Thing like lore, documentation and basically anything that can be useful 5 minutes after it was said better be somewhere else. The reason is Discord servers are private in the sense that you have to use a specific piece of software with an account to access it. Anything posted there is not accessible outside, including through a search engine.
While all this was going on quite a few people in seemingly unrelated fashion were expressing dissatisfaction with interactions they were having on Mastodon. Specifically they were angry about certain types of replies they were getting. The replies were not threatening or insulting but they were not welcome in a way that I’m having trouble articulating. The most common case I saw is someone would post something open-ended or state a problem they have and they would get a bunch of suggestions how to possibly solve it or people sharing their experience either affirming the problem or otherwise.
Some people got very angry about this. They also conveniently forgot to even notice that this is a non-standard arrangement and they want to Opt Out of the more common case provided by the platform.
So finally we’re at the Opt Out. There’s a lot of different takes but the main thrust is that things should be Opt In instead of the other way around. And I agree. Where I don’t agree is that you all Opt In when you post stuff publicly on the internet. Once you do you set your thing free into the world. You resign control over it. You do not expect to opt in to every single read on your blog. If you want to control who access what you write you don’t post it on the internet in public, you send it in private. Consequently you do not retroactively revoke access. You all know that internet never forgets. You can’t unpublished things on the internet. It was already copied, screenshotted, and archived. And you didn’t know what happens to it unless you’re told.
Florida's HB 1, which passed with bipartisan support, sets forth regulations that pose a considerable challenge for our operations: it prohibits social media accounts for users under age 16, offering no exceptions even with parental consent.
Mastodon is built without mechanisms to verify users' ages, which directly conflicts with the stipulations of this new law, introducing significant compliance hurdles for us.
Demande d'ajout de mon PDS #bsky faite. On va voir combien de temps il faut.
L'étape d'après, ce serait un firehose communautaire, mais pouvoir réellement héberger ses données est un premier pas. J'avoue que j'étais pas confiant sur l'arrivée de cette étape. #federation#bluesky @aeris@fenarinarsa vous avez tenté déjà ?
As someone who did her PhD on consent I just want to flag a few things in the bsky bridge discussion. One: medical style disclosure based consent (terms and conditions, EULAs etc.) is totally inappropriate for this sort of situation and has been for decades. But it serves the needs of slow-moving legal requirements and companies that like people to forget they signed up to stuff (or were coerced into doing so for social or other reasons). See https://liedra.net/thesis for more details. (1/n)
Finally: So discussions about the technical capabilities (all posts are public), reasonableness of expectations (people are paranoid) and all of these other objections are moot if you are a responsible person developing tech that interacts with that community. Engage with the community, respect that community, and don't get mad if that community rejects your tech if you didn't do the legwork to discover the normative expectations of behaviour within that community. #bsky#bluesky
I don't hate #bsky, but they are in Stage 1 of #enshittification. They just got loads of venture capital & they are spending it like crazy to attract enough people for stage 2.
The VCs will always, always demand their money back. So, once they get people established on the platform, they will be monetized and milked for profit. Eventually, there will be Nazis and ads there.
We will be ad-free, and continue to banish our Nazis to purgatory away from polite discourse.
It's yet to get bad, because they are flush with venture capital money right now. Eventually they will need to monetize that. VCs always demand their money.
Bluesky-ians will be shocked, shocked to discover their platform has ads and Nazis.
We can wait. We'll still be here, with no ads, and nazis being shut down and ejected from civil discourse.