Bluesky Now Open To Federation 26
Longtime Slashdot reader Rei writes: In a blog post today, Bluesky, the social media network founded by Jay Graber, announced that they have finally opened to federation. Users can now operate their own PDS (backend) servers. How to do so is discussed on the developers' blog and a new Discord channel for PDS administrators.
As the blog notes, there are key differences between the AT Protocol/Bluesky federation and ActivityPub/Mastodon federation, including: global conversation (rather than local-server based with remote content only brought in from follows); a decentralized user account not bound to a specific host; user-composable moderation lists not inherently tied to a specific server, offsetting the need for defederation; user-composable feeds/algorithms, not tied to servers; and full account portability, without the need to be initiated by your server, protecting users from rogue admins or servers that disappear.
Despite the difference, a number of projects, such as Bridgy-Fed, plan to bridge Bluesky and Mastodon together, with all of Bluesky appearing as a single Mastodon server on ActivityPub, and Mastodon users being translated to a decentralized identifier (DID) for AT Protocol (atproto) calls.
As the blog notes, there are key differences between the AT Protocol/Bluesky federation and ActivityPub/Mastodon federation, including: global conversation (rather than local-server based with remote content only brought in from follows); a decentralized user account not bound to a specific host; user-composable moderation lists not inherently tied to a specific server, offsetting the need for defederation; user-composable feeds/algorithms, not tied to servers; and full account portability, without the need to be initiated by your server, protecting users from rogue admins or servers that disappear.
Despite the difference, a number of projects, such as Bridgy-Fed, plan to bridge Bluesky and Mastodon together, with all of Bluesky appearing as a single Mastodon server on ActivityPub, and Mastodon users being translated to a decentralized identifier (DID) for AT Protocol (atproto) calls.
Good news everyone (Score:2)
Re: Good news everyone (Score:2)
Except this is still a walled garden, just at the server level. Unlike the initial promises, actual federation is still guarded by BlueSky and a centralized server, except that your (meta)data is now automatically distributed to anyone âoetheyâ trust.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll take "Things That Don't Even Remotely Describe ATProto" for $1000, Alex.
Re: Will this make it bulletproof? (Score:1)
No, this will just centralize those things. There is literally nothing decentralized about either your content or account other than they may host the code on GitHub.
Re: Will this make it bulletproof? (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile in the real world I just downloaded a CAR [ipld.io] of everything I ever posted on Bluesky along with all of the metadata associated with my DID (Distributed ID), which can be reuploaded to any PLD [bsky.app], but you keep telling yourself whatever you need to to justify your hate.
Seriously, ATProto is open. Actually look at the protocol at some point. The entire thing is designed start to finish around decentralization.
Re: Will this make it bulletproof? (Score:1)
So is TCP/IP which they also use to federate:
weâ(TM)ll open up federation to people looking to run larger servers with many users
your PDSâ(TM)s data will get routed to other services in the network (like feed generators and the Bluesky Appview) through our Relay, the firehose provider
Relays will never be totally unconstrained in terms of what data theyâ(TM)re willing to crawl and rebroadcast
It is basically the same as Mastodon (independent servers that can peer), except peering must happen th
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that relays are also designed to be federated, right?
No, no, I got it: they designed it to be federated, but secretly plan to never actually do so.
The exact same thing you people said about PDSs. And before that, feeds.
Re: (Score:2)
That statement is nonsensical. Relays don't interact with each other. A PDS can subscribe to as many relays as it wants. The relays *themselves* don't interact.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, again, you are telling me what I already know, the relays don't talk to each other, the PDS can subscribe to many relays. just because I can connect my Mastodon client to many servers doesn't mean it is a federated social media system.
You are correct, but it is not the definition of what we would declare federated social media. If Bluesky doesn't want me or my content, they can block me and if they host the PDS, they can delete it and if I go to another PDS with a copy of my data, then Bluesky can stil
Re: (Score:2)
Then why did you talk about relays talking to each other, when that has nothing to do with the design?
There's no such thing as "a mastodon client". Do you mean a web browser / app? In which case, you're comparing to the appview, not the PDS.
Please stop being so vague. Are you talking about appview, PDS or relay?
Appview or PDS: Just host your own.
Relay: The relay'
Re: (Score:2)
** Just host your own, or use someone else's third party one.
Re: (Score:1)
Again, that's all fine, I'm not disagreeing you don't have the ability to do that, just like you can host independent Mastodon serveres, but don't pretend that it will still be federated at the user level.
Federated means I can talk to someone on BlueSky regardless of what the server thinks of me or the other party, or BlueSky or my relay, or my PDS or your PDS. This is not the case, ergo it is not federated.
But not ActivityPub native (Score:2)
Kind of stupid to shun an open protocol designed expressly for this purpose.
Re:But not ActivityPub native (Score:5, Insightful)
It was literally designed to fix the problems of ActivityPub. As discussed in the announcement link of TFA [bsky.social].
You can't fix ActivityPub's weaknesses without serious changes to the protocol. This became clear early on in the Matrix Room, where ActivityPub was extensively discussed.
Re: (Score:3)
The design of ActivityPub makes Mastodon a very different place to twitter and Blue Sky. It's not necessarily better or worse, just different. More of a village than a vibrant city.
It will be interesting to see how it changes, if it does. It would be nice if Blue Sky continued to grow and replaced Twitter too.
Re: (Score:2)
Every company could make the excuse that they're "fixing" an open standard by implementing a closed / proprietary / half-assed one. If there are issues with ActivityPub, as I'm sure there are, then the correct approach would be submit draft proposals to W3C to rectify those issues that everyone could avail of.
Re:But not ActivityPub native (Score:4, Informative)
It's literally on Github [github.com] and has been for years, while the original design was done in the Matrix Room, which was open to all, wherein hundreds of people took part, with a core of about 50 people. It's design process was VASTLY more open than that of ActivityPub.
For God's sake people, stop just making up shit about Bluesky and actually learn the first thing about it before commenting.
The federation? (Score:2)
Can the Romulans still join?
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, there's some very strict policies about accurate reporting of light counts.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be the Cardassians.
Re: (Score:3)
*(Trods forward to the desk with a downcast expression and hands in her nerd card)*
Sooo... (Score:2)
So that means Bluesky and Mastodon interoperate, right? Right? That would be federation.