'Federation Is the Future of Social Media' (theverge.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge, written by Nilay Patel: Today, I'm talking to Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky Social, which is a decentralized competitor to Twitter, er, X. Bluesky actually started inside of what was then known as Twitter — it was a project from then-CEO Jack Dorsey, who spent his days wandering the earth and saying things like Twitter should be a protocol and not a company. Bluesky was supposed to be that protocol, but Jack spun it out of Twitter in 2021, just before Elon Musk bought the company and renamed it X. Bluesky is now an independent company with a few dozen employees, and it finds itself in the middle of one of the most chaotic moments in the history of social media. There are a lot of companies and ideas competing for space on the post-Twitter internet, and Jay makes a convincing argument that decentralization -- the idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wish -- is the future. It's a powerful concept that's been kicking around for a long time, but now it feels closer to reality than ever before. You've heard us talk about it a lot on Decoder: the core idea is that no single company -- or individual billionaire -- can amass too much power and control over our social networks and the conversations that happen on them.
Bluesky's approach to this is something called the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky's own platform but which is also a technology that anyone can use right now to host their own servers and, eventually, interoperate with a bunch of other networks. You'll hear Jay explain how building Bluesky the product alongside AT Protocol the protocol has created a cooperate-compete dynamic that runs throughout the entire company and that also informs how it's building products and features -- not only for its own service but also for developers to build on top of. Jay and I also talked about the growth of the Bluesky app, which now has more than 5 million users, and how so many of the company's early decisions around product design and moderation have shaped the type of organic culture that's taken hold there. Content moderation is, of course, one of the biggest challenges any platform faces, and Bluesky, in particular, has had its fair share of controversies. But the idea behind AT Protocol and Bluesky is devolving control, so Bluesky users can pick their own moderation systems and recommendation algorithms -- a grand experiment that I wanted to know much more about.
Finally, Jay and I had the opportunity to get technical and go deeper on standards and protocols, which are the beating heart of the decentralization movement. Bluesky's AT Protocol is far from the only protocol in the mix -- there's also ActivityPub, which is what powers Mastodon and, soon, Meta's Threads. There's been some real animosity between these camps, and I asked Jay about the differences between the two, the benefits of Bluesky's approach, and how she sees the two coexisting in the future.
Here's what Jay had to say when asked about the differences between ActivityPub and the AT Protocol: "So, ActivityPub was around when we got started. I did an ecosystem review of all the centralized protocols that existed in 2019, including ActivityPub. And we looked at it and decided that we needed to build something different because there were some critical pieces that we thought were missing. So, one of them was around the composability and the interfaces for composability we've designed. Like the way that we do custom feeds and all these moderation labelers, that's really not possible with the way that things are very server-centric in ActivityPub right now. Your server is very much your community where all of this happens, and we have split things up into these microservices on the backend, mirroring a bit more of how a large-scale social network works with the global feed.
Bluesky's approach to this is something called the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky's own platform but which is also a technology that anyone can use right now to host their own servers and, eventually, interoperate with a bunch of other networks. You'll hear Jay explain how building Bluesky the product alongside AT Protocol the protocol has created a cooperate-compete dynamic that runs throughout the entire company and that also informs how it's building products and features -- not only for its own service but also for developers to build on top of. Jay and I also talked about the growth of the Bluesky app, which now has more than 5 million users, and how so many of the company's early decisions around product design and moderation have shaped the type of organic culture that's taken hold there. Content moderation is, of course, one of the biggest challenges any platform faces, and Bluesky, in particular, has had its fair share of controversies. But the idea behind AT Protocol and Bluesky is devolving control, so Bluesky users can pick their own moderation systems and recommendation algorithms -- a grand experiment that I wanted to know much more about.
Finally, Jay and I had the opportunity to get technical and go deeper on standards and protocols, which are the beating heart of the decentralization movement. Bluesky's AT Protocol is far from the only protocol in the mix -- there's also ActivityPub, which is what powers Mastodon and, soon, Meta's Threads. There's been some real animosity between these camps, and I asked Jay about the differences between the two, the benefits of Bluesky's approach, and how she sees the two coexisting in the future.
The other thing was the global feed, like having global search and discovery be a first-class thing that we were building for. And also, having all of our users at the start know that this is public data and it will be remixed in all sorts of ways by global feeds is something that, both technically and culturally, we had to design for. Because ActivityPub has clustered more around servers that they federate and they talk to each other, but there isn't a service that scrapes all of it and gives you this big fire hose, and even if it's technically possible to build, there's been community resistance to people doing that. Even someone in the community who was building a bridge between AT Protocol and ActivityPub recently got a lot of pushback from the ActivityPub community on not wanting that bridge. So, that's just sort of both cultural and technical.
Then another thing was we really wanted to get account portability. So, this ability to leave with your identity and your data and have fallbacks with the way that we've designed your repo, you can even back up all your posts on your phone or back it up on your server that you control, and then you don't have to have any sort of friction when you want to move. So, you can move between services in ActivityPub. But if⦠for example, Queer.af recently, their .af domain was seized by Afghanistan, and then people were stuck because there was no warning, and then they have to rely on their old server to help forward their stuff over to a new place. So, we wanted to get around that problem and make sure people always had the ability to move.
Then, we wanted to have good UX. There were just a lot of complaints with users around the UX of Mastodon, and we wanted to provide something that was more just tailored for the mainstream user who was used to Twitter, who could come on and not have to worry about, 'Oh, what server do I pick when I sign up? What does it mean? Is this going to shape my experience forever?' On Mastodon, you have to know that right when you sign up because it's going to shape your experience. Here, you can sign up on our server, which is the default lobby or gateway into the ecosystem, and then you can move to another server and shift to your own. So, when we opened up federation, several of our team members moved their main accounts off onto their own server, and it was pretty seamless. Nobody notices that people are running on their own servers, and it's still just all one experience in the app."
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And can anonymously post CP, too. And use it to safely conduct criminal activity of all sorts. But that stuff is ok as long as we can use it to commit crimes such as doxxing people who aren't ultra leftists like us who we will blindly label white supremacists.
Yay, go freedom!
But, oh if they do the same to us we will cry for the FBI to spare no expense to hunt them down and destroy them after we swat them a few times each.
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Yes, you did miss it.
But thanks for participating today.
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and resist court orders for identification and take downs, and everybody can be accessible despite possible "controversy" of their content, then this is a definite good thing
Which of course doesn't exist. Even your savior 'ol Musky censors people and tries to prohibit their free speech. In fact, his case against a group which only pointed out how much hate speech has blossomed since he took over was thrown out today [businessinsider.com] because he was trying to punish them for their free speech.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
Re: If it can prevent censorship (Score:1, Troll)
Oh you mean the Nazi incel Hans Kristian Graebener also known as Stonetoss?
No one owns HTML (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No one owns HTML (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's all very well to support ActivityPub on ideological grounds, but if it can't reach the levels of popularity needed to displace other social media then it's an academic argument anyway.
Dorsey is unfortunately right. ActivityPub was designed around smaller communities that the user can be part of, but what most people actually want is more like Twitter - global, but with the ability to form ad-hoc communities around hashtags and follows.
Future of social media SHOULD be death (Score:3, Insightful)
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And yet, millions waste their days doomscrolling on apps designed to drain their time and spirit. There is no mystery why it exists, people simply want to fill their lives with something, and with enough time, that desire becomes a compulsion. An addiction that they cannot fight.
An interesting discussion would be this: If social media's value is a net negative, should it be outlawed? After all, we do outlaw drugs and harmful substances. What about mentally harmful products that, like drug addicts, users can
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I think casinos are a more apt comparison. The reason casinos aren't completely outlawed is because they just pop back up, under the radar and funded by organized crime. We've learned that it's better to allow them to exist, but with strict controls, and the public gets a cut of the revenue.
Social media kind of has the opposite problem. It can't just pop back up. If it's outlawed, it's effectively useless because it relies on a certain percentage of the population using it openly for it to be viable. I say
Re: Future of social media SHOULD be death (Score:3)
You act like slashdot is any different
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In its current form, social media offers no value to the user..
Except for one of the most primal instincts in humanity: the ability to connect with others. Never underestimate primal urges. They will win every time.
Re:Future of social media SHOULD be death (Score:5, Insightful)
In its current form, social media offers no value to the user.
I guess I've just been imagining all the keeping up with the goings on of various friends and family. Have you ever considered that perhaps you're the one who is using social media wrong?
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You don't need public social media like Twitter to keep up with friends and family. We did that just fine before the internet and formed stronger connections doing it.
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In its current form, social media offers no value to the user.
Seriously? People go on social media for a reason. Clearly, it has value to them. Depending on the forum, it may be entertainment, it may be a specific hobby, it may be sharing family news, whatever.
Sure Facebook, Twitter, and the rest profit by taking advantage of their users. "If it's free, you're the product." That doesn't change the fact that people find value in online social interactions.
So: what form do you think social media needs to take? Usenet was great, in its day, because there were no commer
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No no, Bishop Berkeley says social media has no value. That is a pronouncement from on high. You know how reliable those are. Now repent, sinner.
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You're spending time posting on it.*
*Note, that doesn't increase its value for me.
Re: Future of social media SHOULD be death (Score:2)
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um.. why (Score:5, Interesting)
Bluesky users can pick their own moderation systems and recommendation algorithms
How exactly am I supposed to get enough information to make this choice? I can think of a million better ways to spend my time than researching recommendation algorithms. If I wanted to pick and choose what goes into my "feed" I'd sign up for email lists, which are already a distributed protocol, and have like 40 years worth of development on the client side ux.
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Maybe the algorithms can give brief presentations on why they are the best and, if elected, what they plan to do with their term as Recommendations Algorithm. The user may then make his selection, but is stuck regretting his decision for 4 years thereafter.
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[Bluesky users can pick their own moderation systems and recommendation algorithms] How exactly am I supposed to get enough information to make this choice?
First off, I'd love to pick the algorithm "show only stuff from my friends, in chronological order". I'd hope they'd offer a simplistic no-brainer like this, and it'd be easy to understand.
Second, I'd rely on journalists or academic researchers to study the moderation+recommendation algorithms and I'd go via trusted sources. I'd wait until a review article comes up in Ars Technica and pick there. I think non-technical users would only pick if the question becomes significant enough to filter through to gene
Moderation options (Score:4, Interesting)
What would be interesting is if there were "moderation companies" and users could apply the moderation from the company they want.
For example, if you wanted to live your liberal gated community, choose LiberalsAreUs as your moderator, and never have to see any other viewpoints.
If you just don't want to see Nazi and anti-Jew stuff but anything else goes, Choose SwastikaFreeForMe as your moderator.
If you just don't want to see anything sex related, chose PrudesOnly as your moderator.
People could use the moderator they trust, probably for a fee, and leave the hosting company out of it entirely. The ultimate of giving people want they want, no matter what it is they want.
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Well, then fuck them!
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What would be interesting is if there were "moderation companies" and users could apply the moderation from the company they want.
That's exactly what AT protocol from Bluesky is about! It allows distributed moderation.
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See? I told you it would be awesome!
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People could use the moderator they trust, probably for a fee, and leave the hosting company out of it entirely. The ultimate of giving people want they want, no matter what it is they want.
Let people read what they want? But ... but ... "misinformation"!!!
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That is not what Federation is. (Score:2)
âoethe idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wishâ. No offense to the author of this article, but moving your username and following to different servers is not the purpose (or even a feature) of federation.
Also, Mastodon.
skeptical (Score:2)
I wish this to be true but I am highly skeptical. Nothing on the Internet today seems to go that way, it looks like everything concentrates under the control of a few big players. Especially on social, where network effect is so big, you have to go where everybody else is.
"summary" ? (Score:2)
Isn't there a 1000 word limit for a Slashdot summary?
Not this again (Score:2)
Federation is exactly the criticism against all the web 2.0 platforms (Facebook etc.) when they first came out nearly 20 years ago, and nobody heeded the warning and everyone jumped in and signed up. The only truly federated communication platforms left are email and shared-hosting blogs.
The reason blogs won't be popular again is because you have to pay a web hosting fee and learn a little bit, and those are two huge barriers to entry.
Email is still viable because businesses use it and there's enough netwo
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It's older than that. Federation worked great for e-mail and the web, because there wasn't much choice. It didn't really work at all for instant messaging, even when a plucky open protocol was made explicitly to support it. And the social media came along and killed the personal web with a non-federated model.
But it's totally going to be different this time.
The future of social media (Score:2)
The future of social media is that it won't exist. Its an experiment with bad result and sometimes even worse than that. It takes a while to stop and die out, but it is going to happen.
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Platforms that grow too big will suffer the fate of a hot nightclub that makes a splash (and a ton of money) but can't sustain the excitement and goes out of business. Eventually the forma
Perfect quote for this story (Score:2)
"Hey, all I see is you, and a couple of your boys. I don't see no FEDERATION!"
Reminds me of an old candy commercial ... (Score:1)
No, YOU got social media in my blockchain.
SocialChain! Two great tastes that taste great together!
(or, should it be BlockMedia?)
usenet anyone? (Score:1)
Forgive me for being very old school, if there is such a thing in the techie era. The structure of this "federation" sounds a lot like the structure of Usenet, where you can have any number of servers and channels.
Why doesn't some Gen X entrepreneur create a business out of that? It would be very easy.