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Except for the fact that it requires a centralized directory server that you can be banned from at any time, with no recourse. And for users, being independent

Except for the fact that it requires a centralized directory server that you can be banned from at any time, with no recourse. And for users, being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly—a big step backwards from Mastodon where a group of users can come together and live on a server run by an admin they trust without needing their own DNS names. It replaces social trust that's more accessible for a lot of non-technical users with a more complicated kind of technical trust that requires a high level of technical sophistication (Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of twitter users all signing up for a registrar and buying their own domain names?)

cma 3y ago
It doesn't work with subdomains?
BryantD 3y ago
Well, or a group of users can come together and attach their identity to a DNS server run by an admin they trust. If I register pinksky.com, it is fairly cheap for me to hand out subdomains to Bluesky users -- certainly easier than running a Mastodon instance. I think the questions about indexers and firehose servers are more relevant to the question of centralizations. Identity is much easier to solve.
nightpool 3y ago
The other issue is that I fundamentally don't think the problems of moderation and hosting are "separable" as the paper claims—the moderation of your content is intrinsic to the question of "who wants to be responsible for hosting and paying for this content?". And people are going to want to use moderation systems that make moderation decisions they agree with and support—they're not going to want to be paying for a hosting provider that hosts content they disagree with. That's why I see the fediverse "plurality of networks" federated model winning out in the end, because it can be funded and operated by small groups of people interoperating with each other rather then requiring large centralized directory resources that nobody wants to pay for.
- detourdog 3y ago
  Moderation is only an issue at "commercial" scale. Any small community can easily solve moderation. One critique I have about most modern business plans is that they are looking for large scale and little responsibility.
  - rrix2 3y ago
    Nightpool has been an admin of AcitvityPub servers of all sizes for years now and is versed in the moderation challenges therein, I'm not sure they'd agree :) I'm not sure I agree that it's a solvable issue at community scale.
    - nightpool 3y ago
      Yeah, I don't think moderation is "solved" at all on the community scale, but my point is that ActivityPub servers are just way more likely to be at that "community" scale, and Bluesky—as a more flat protocol with a lot of discovery and indexing features—is not. So I think they have a lot better chance of having communities that can reach a local moderation equilibrium.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      I guess I'm looking at it from the Lens of the community. If a community can't solve its moderation issue through social standards the community degrades. Once the community degrades to having no social standards there is no point in moderation.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    I helped run a moderate a small forum community in the early aughts. We only had maybe 800-1000 active users at our peak. Moderation was fucking terrible, and not 'solved'. We had several users we elevated into moderator positions and still.. I think we were running about 1.5 moderators per 100 active users on average.
    - detourdog 3y ago
steveklabnik 3y ago
> And for users, being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly This is not really true. DNS allows you to set your name to a domain, but ultimately all of your posts are tied to your DID. If you wanted to move from steveklabnik.bsky.app to steveklabnik.whatever.app, you could do that still, no DNS required. You won't lose anything. The DNS stuff is effectively vanity.
- supermatt 3y ago
  At present all the DIDs issued through bluesky use plc for resolution, which is a centralised directory managed by bluesky
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Yes, I agree this is a weak point. It's also one that the team is aware of and seemingly has the right amount of discomfort with. I see temporary compromises like this as an example of the pragmatic decision making needed to ship, and trust that they will do the right things here, but I also understand some skepticism.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      It's not a 'weak point' it's a fatal flaw.
      - steveklabnik 3y ago
        Given that it is a non-essential part of how the protocol works, I disagree, but I understand that reasonable people may differ.
        pfraze 3y ago
        PLC uses signed logs similar to certificate transparency. We have a lot of options for where to take it. There may be a distributed/decentralized hosting system if we can settle on a consensus model we're comfortable with. Otherwise it will be some kind of org management model. The other direction we've got is did:web, which is already used in some cases, and has some tradeoffs but is a strong option.
apitman 3y ago
You've identified a real problem but blamed the wrong target. We don't need to avoid using domain names, we need to make them an order of magnitude easier for laypeople to buy and use. 99% of people who could benefit from owning a domain should never have to know what a DNS record or TLS cert is. This should all be managed by apps through a simple delegation system built on OAuth2. You log on to bsky.app, they say, "want to connect a domain?". You say yes and get redirected to your domain registrar, where you grant access to for bsky.app to have control over bsky.example.com until you revoke access. DomainConnect[0] should solve this but in practice it's turned out to be very gatekeepy in my opinion. [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/
- nightpool 3y ago
  This is an interesting take! I don't necessarily disagree with it—we could definitely make the DNS system more accessible than it is today—but I don't think it's the panacea either, there are still a lot of costs and paperwork involved with owning a domain name that aren't related to the actual technical knowledge required. How is my 12 year old cousin whose parents don't understand technology supposed to buy a domain name just to be able to comment on a youtube video?
  - apitman 3y ago
    Certainly I think there are regulatory and social issues as well. The current system was built in a time where it made far less sense for that 12 yo to have their own domain name. But they also didn't have their own phone numbers back then, but the phone system evolved so they could. DNS needs to evolve too.
- theedwood 3y ago
  You're only addressing half the issue here. By delegating control of your domain to bsky.app, you're still beholden to a centralized ban list and retain no control over your own instance.
  - apitman 3y ago
jahsome 3y ago
Users. Don't. Care.
viksit 3y ago
actually you can use any kind of identity system that uses a did. it’s not dependent on dns alone. (we run the largest instance of atproto outside of bluesky)
- nightpool 3y ago
  My understanding is that bluesky will only support interoperating with their own centralized PLC system (which other developers currently can't access) or the did:web: protocol. Is that not true?
teddyh 3y ago
> being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly—a big step backwards from Mastodon where a group of users can come together and live on a server run by an admin they trust In the DNS, that’s called a subdomain. I.e. a group of users can come together and buy a domain name and all use different subdomains, completely without any additional cost per user.
Angostura 3y ago
> and for users, being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly I don't think so. Anyone can set up a server with a DNS entry and then hand out subdomains to users. It's only sekf-hosted folk who need to pay for a domain name

cma 3y ago

It doesn't work with subdomains?

BryantD 3y ago

Well, or a group of users can come together and attach their identity to a DNS server run by an admin they trust. If I register pinksky.com, it is fairly cheap for me to hand out subdomains to Bluesky users -- certainly easier than running a Mastodon instance. I think the questions about indexers and firehose servers are more relevant to the question of centralizations. Identity is much easier to solve.

nightpool 3y ago

The other issue is that I fundamentally don't think the problems of moderation and hosting are "separable" as the paper claims—the moderation of your content is intrinsic to the question of "who wants to be responsible for hosting and paying for this content?". And people are going to want to use moderation systems that make moderation decisions they agree with and support—they're not going to want to be paying for a hosting provider that hosts content they disagree with. That's why I see the fediverse "plurality of networks" federated model winning out in the end, because it can be funded and operated by small groups of people interoperating with each other rather then requiring large centralized directory resources that nobody wants to pay for.

detourdog 3y ago
Moderation is only an issue at "commercial" scale. Any small community can easily solve moderation. One critique I have about most modern business plans is that they are looking for large scale and little responsibility.
- rrix2 3y ago
  Nightpool has been an admin of AcitvityPub servers of all sizes for years now and is versed in the moderation challenges therein, I'm not sure they'd agree :) I'm not sure I agree that it's a solvable issue at community scale.
  - nightpool 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't think moderation is "solved" at all on the community scale, but my point is that ActivityPub servers are just way more likely to be at that "community" scale, and Bluesky—as a more flat protocol with a lot of discovery and indexing features—is not. So I think they have a lot better chance of having communities that can reach a local moderation equilibrium.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I guess I'm looking at it from the Lens of the community. If a community can't solve its moderation issue through social standards the community degrades. Once the community degrades to having no social standards there is no point in moderation.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  I helped run a moderate a small forum community in the early aughts. We only had maybe 800-1000 active users at our peak. Moderation was fucking terrible, and not 'solved'. We had several users we elevated into moderator positions and still.. I think we were running about 1.5 moderators per 100 active users on average.
  - detourdog 3y ago

steveklabnik 3y ago

> And for users, being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly This is not really true. DNS allows you to set your name to a domain, but ultimately all of your posts are tied to your DID. If you wanted to move from steveklabnik.bsky.app to steveklabnik.whatever.app, you could do that still, no DNS required. You won't lose anything. The DNS stuff is effectively vanity.

supermatt 3y ago
At present all the DIDs issued through bluesky use plc for resolution, which is a centralised directory managed by bluesky
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Yes, I agree this is a weak point. It's also one that the team is aware of and seemingly has the right amount of discomfort with. I see temporary compromises like this as an example of the pragmatic decision making needed to ship, and trust that they will do the right things here, but I also understand some skepticism.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    It's not a 'weak point' it's a fatal flaw.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      Given that it is a non-essential part of how the protocol works, I disagree, but I understand that reasonable people may differ.
      - pfraze 3y ago
        PLC uses signed logs similar to certificate transparency. We have a lot of options for where to take it. There may be a distributed/decentralized hosting system if we can settle on a consensus model we're comfortable with. Otherwise it will be some kind of org management model. The other direction we've got is did:web, which is already used in some cases, and has some tradeoffs but is a strong option.

apitman 3y ago

You've identified a real problem but blamed the wrong target. We don't need to avoid using domain names, we need to make them an order of magnitude easier for laypeople to buy and use. 99% of people who could benefit from owning a domain should never have to know what a DNS record or TLS cert is. This should all be managed by apps through a simple delegation system built on OAuth2. You log on to bsky.app, they say, "want to connect a domain?". You say yes and get redirected to your domain registrar, where you grant access to for bsky.app to have control over bsky.example.com until you revoke access. DomainConnect[0] should solve this but in practice it's turned out to be very gatekeepy in my opinion. [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/

nightpool 3y ago
This is an interesting take! I don't necessarily disagree with it—we could definitely make the DNS system more accessible than it is today—but I don't think it's the panacea either, there are still a lot of costs and paperwork involved with owning a domain name that aren't related to the actual technical knowledge required. How is my 12 year old cousin whose parents don't understand technology supposed to buy a domain name just to be able to comment on a youtube video?
- apitman 3y ago
  Certainly I think there are regulatory and social issues as well. The current system was built in a time where it made far less sense for that 12 yo to have their own domain name. But they also didn't have their own phone numbers back then, but the phone system evolved so they could. DNS needs to evolve too.
theedwood 3y ago
You're only addressing half the issue here. By delegating control of your domain to bsky.app, you're still beholden to a centralized ban list and retain no control over your own instance.
- apitman 3y ago

jahsome 3y ago

Users. Don't. Care.

viksit 3y ago

actually you can use any kind of identity system that uses a did. it’s not dependent on dns alone. (we run the largest instance of atproto outside of bluesky)

nightpool 3y ago
My understanding is that bluesky will only support interoperating with their own centralized PLC system (which other developers currently can't access) or the did:web: protocol. Is that not true?

teddyh 3y ago

> being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly—a big step backwards from Mastodon where a group of users can come together and live on a server run by an admin they trust In the DNS, that’s called a subdomain. I.e. a group of users can come together and buy a domain name and all use different subdomains, completely without any additional cost per user.

Angostura 3y ago

> and for users, being independent from Bluesky requires owning a DNS name and paying for it yearly I don't think so. Anyone can set up a server with a DNS entry and then hand out subdomains to users. It's only sekf-hosted folk who need to pay for a domain name