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I hope someone comes up with a multi-protocol social server. Bridges are a bad architecture for decentralized systems, because they introduce single points of f

by r14c 3y ago

I hope someone comes up with a multi-protocol social server. Bridges are a bad architecture for decentralized systems, because they introduce single points of failure. I can understand using a read-only bridge to mirror content from external resources, but if the other side speaks a federation protocol you should find a way to communicate directly so you don't have to worry about intermediary failures.

steveklabnik 3y ago
Someone has been working on a bridge between BlueSky and Mastodon, and uh, it has generated a TREMENDOUS amount of controversy on the Mastodon side. I have my own biases so I don't want to describe it further than that, nor link to it directly so as not to cause even more disagreement, but the controversy does not seem to faze the developer, so I believe you will have your wish.
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  I know not the details, but all power to that developer.
- r14c 3y ago
  A global bridge isn't a multi-protocol social server. The guy is free to do as he likes, but I'm saying I don't think public bridges like that are a good architectural decision for decentralized networks. The individual nodes should implement multi-protocol support instead.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Some probably will, but I think a fairly substantial part of the Fediverse will ignore Bluesky other than via global bridges unless/until it has a lot of traction. I have two Mastodon instances, and I don't know if I'll bother. If I were to it'd be mostly because I feel that ideologically I think it'd benefit the Fediverse to embrace Bluesky real tight, take their best ideas, extend them, and ensure it feels like Bluesky is just another corner of the Fediverse with some pointless differences.
    - r14c 3y ago
      Just in practical terms, global bridges will see extremely high traffic if they become popular. I've watched people struggle to maintain operational bridges for single high-traffic channels. Not to mention the hosting cost of being a single point of failure for inter-network translation. I think the future of decentralized social media is bright. I'm critically supportive of all the work being done and I'll be happy as long as we don't repeat the mistakes of email and xmpp.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Assuming they operate the same way Mastodon itself handles federation and only relay the content people follow, there's no reason you can't fairly straightforwardly scale it by just running more of them. But frankly I'm not convinced Bluesky has much of a future. It needs to 1) offer something significant over the wider Fediverse - which is far more than "just" a Twitter-like and they only have a partial answer to the Twitter-like part - and 2) prevent being embraced and extended. E.g. nothing but inertia prevents the same level of indirection to provide smooth migration as Bluesky offers, and so if users care it will come to other services over ActivityPub too. The good parts of Bluesky will be copied. Then what? Especially if you're on the Bluesky side of a bunch of bridges where people on a lot of the instance on the other side look at you with suspicion and lock you out from their communities. The limitations on filtering on Bluesky and the culture of filtering on Mastodon where this ability is seen as a community good means that if you want a 'global' view of the combined network, you're going to need to be on the Fediverse side of those bridges. That's not a good position to be in for Bluesky.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  Can you at a high level explain why people are mad about this? Is there a difference in the sort of people on Bluesky vs Mastodon, or is it a technical disagreement?
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Again, please keep in mind that this is my perception of others' arguments, and so may have some bias. I am going to try and counteract that with my wording here, but maybe someone who holds this position can drop by and give their own summary. I have seen two main complaints: * This is opt-out not opt-in, and I don't like that. * BlueSky is bad because it is run by a company (sometimes with a suggestion that Jack Dorsey owns and runs the place), and I think the fediverse should be free from corporate influence, and so I object to the idea of a bridge.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      In my experience, the former was the majority of the complaints. The common sentiment I saw boiled down to "if I wanted my posts to be on Bluesky, I'd have posted them there." I agree with that completely. It wasn't so much that it was Bluesky in particular, as that someone made an opt-out system that would re-publish all their content elsewhere.
      - consumer451 3y ago
        It is worth noting that being indexed by Google is also opt-out on Mastodon.
    - crossroadsguy 3y ago
      Anything run by someone like Jack Dorsey should be away from something like fediverse. He literally killed third party ecosystem on Twitter after multiple times begging developers to come and revive the platform. Without those third party apps Twitter would not have been anywhere close to the size it reached. Yes, he, Dorsey, did it. I don’t should discount that one bit! Should we give him or people like him another chance? Fuck no. History is filled with examples of embrace and extinguish. Let’s wish him luck for AT Proto (actually BSKY; he is not interested in AT; AT is the bait, the lure, because he knows well people will just flock the first and the biggest).
rakoo 3y ago
That's Friendica. Bluesky apparently will be available in next release
- r14c 3y ago
  Friendica is always doing the good work.
Hamuko 3y ago
Every time Bluesky comes up as a topic on Mastodon, the discussion becomes a total shitshow. I think most people are just going to be happier if the two stay separate. This post immediately comes to mind: https://bsky.app/profile/caseynewton.bsky.social/post/3kktr32krbf24 https://bsky.app/profile/caseynewton.bsky.social/post/3kktr3...
dotnet00 3y ago
In general, most of mastodon is too cliquey and over-dramatic to tolerate any sort of bridging. I see so many reports on block trackers of various kinds of bridging daily. Back when Threads had just been announced and merely mentioned eventually bridging with ActivityPub, the tracker was flooded with preemptive blocks of the domain.
- vidarh 3y ago
  And yet you can be on Mastodon and just never bother to pay attention to any of that drama and your life will barely be affected by it. The cliques are mostly important to those who choose to make it important for themselves.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Yeah, that's what I do, was just pointing out that the loudest mastodon users are like.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      The beauty of Mastodon is that if you pick your instance carefully, most of that noise doesn't necessarily even make it to your instance, much less your feed ...
jamietanna 3y ago
Yup, https://fed.brid.gy https://fed.brid.gy is one such project, and as another commenter mentions there's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of weeks. Some very good discussion, some interesting points, and a bit of unfair venting, but looks like it's moving in a good direction
- r14c 3y ago
  Global bridges like this are single points of failure that defeat the purpose of decentralization. I'm saying that individual nodes should be full participants on all of the networks they want to communicate with. I don't have an issue with whatever they're trying to accomplish, but I've seen how hard it is to maintain stable high-traffic bridges.

by r14c 3y ago

steveklabnik 3y ago

Someone has been working on a bridge between BlueSky and Mastodon, and uh, it has generated a TREMENDOUS amount of controversy on the Mastodon side. I have my own biases so I don't want to describe it further than that, nor link to it directly so as not to cause even more disagreement, but the controversy does not seem to faze the developer, so I believe you will have your wish.

Ericson2314 3y ago
I know not the details, but all power to that developer.
r14c 3y ago
A global bridge isn't a multi-protocol social server. The guy is free to do as he likes, but I'm saying I don't think public bridges like that are a good architectural decision for decentralized networks. The individual nodes should implement multi-protocol support instead.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Some probably will, but I think a fairly substantial part of the Fediverse will ignore Bluesky other than via global bridges unless/until it has a lot of traction. I have two Mastodon instances, and I don't know if I'll bother. If I were to it'd be mostly because I feel that ideologically I think it'd benefit the Fediverse to embrace Bluesky real tight, take their best ideas, extend them, and ensure it feels like Bluesky is just another corner of the Fediverse with some pointless differences.
  - r14c 3y ago
    Just in practical terms, global bridges will see extremely high traffic if they become popular. I've watched people struggle to maintain operational bridges for single high-traffic channels. Not to mention the hosting cost of being a single point of failure for inter-network translation. I think the future of decentralized social media is bright. I'm critically supportive of all the work being done and I'll be happy as long as we don't repeat the mistakes of email and xmpp.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Assuming they operate the same way Mastodon itself handles federation and only relay the content people follow, there's no reason you can't fairly straightforwardly scale it by just running more of them. But frankly I'm not convinced Bluesky has much of a future. It needs to 1) offer something significant over the wider Fediverse - which is far more than "just" a Twitter-like and they only have a partial answer to the Twitter-like part - and 2) prevent being embraced and extended. E.g. nothing but inertia prevents the same level of indirection to provide smooth migration as Bluesky offers, and so if users care it will come to other services over ActivityPub too. The good parts of Bluesky will be copied. Then what? Especially if you're on the Bluesky side of a bunch of bridges where people on a lot of the instance on the other side look at you with suspicion and lock you out from their communities. The limitations on filtering on Bluesky and the culture of filtering on Mastodon where this ability is seen as a community good means that if you want a 'global' view of the combined network, you're going to need to be on the Fediverse side of those bridges. That's not a good position to be in for Bluesky.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
Can you at a high level explain why people are mad about this? Is there a difference in the sort of people on Bluesky vs Mastodon, or is it a technical disagreement?
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Again, please keep in mind that this is my perception of others' arguments, and so may have some bias. I am going to try and counteract that with my wording here, but maybe someone who holds this position can drop by and give their own summary. I have seen two main complaints: * This is opt-out not opt-in, and I don't like that. * BlueSky is bad because it is run by a company (sometimes with a suggestion that Jack Dorsey owns and runs the place), and I think the fediverse should be free from corporate influence, and so I object to the idea of a bridge.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    In my experience, the former was the majority of the complaints. The common sentiment I saw boiled down to "if I wanted my posts to be on Bluesky, I'd have posted them there." I agree with that completely. It wasn't so much that it was Bluesky in particular, as that someone made an opt-out system that would re-publish all their content elsewhere.
    - consumer451 3y ago
      It is worth noting that being indexed by Google is also opt-out on Mastodon.
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    Anything run by someone like Jack Dorsey should be away from something like fediverse. He literally killed third party ecosystem on Twitter after multiple times begging developers to come and revive the platform. Without those third party apps Twitter would not have been anywhere close to the size it reached. Yes, he, Dorsey, did it. I don’t should discount that one bit! Should we give him or people like him another chance? Fuck no. History is filled with examples of embrace and extinguish. Let’s wish him luck for AT Proto (actually BSKY; he is not interested in AT; AT is the bait, the lure, because he knows well people will just flock the first and the biggest).

rakoo 3y ago

That's Friendica. Bluesky apparently will be available in next release

r14c 3y ago
Friendica is always doing the good work.

Hamuko 3y ago

Every time Bluesky comes up as a topic on Mastodon, the discussion becomes a total shitshow. I think most people are just going to be happier if the two stay separate. This post immediately comes to mind: https://bsky.app/profile/caseynewton.bsky.social/post/3kktr32krbf24 https://bsky.app/profile/caseynewton.bsky.social/post/3kktr3...

dotnet00 3y ago

In general, most of mastodon is too cliquey and over-dramatic to tolerate any sort of bridging. I see so many reports on block trackers of various kinds of bridging daily. Back when Threads had just been announced and merely mentioned eventually bridging with ActivityPub, the tracker was flooded with preemptive blocks of the domain.

vidarh 3y ago
And yet you can be on Mastodon and just never bother to pay attention to any of that drama and your life will barely be affected by it. The cliques are mostly important to those who choose to make it important for themselves.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Yeah, that's what I do, was just pointing out that the loudest mastodon users are like.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    The beauty of Mastodon is that if you pick your instance carefully, most of that noise doesn't necessarily even make it to your instance, much less your feed ...

jamietanna 3y ago

Yup, https://fed.brid.gy https://fed.brid.gy is one such project, and as another commenter mentions there's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of weeks. Some very good discussion, some interesting points, and a bit of unfair venting, but looks like it's moving in a good direction

r14c 3y ago
Global bridges like this are single points of failure that defeat the purpose of decentralization. I'm saying that individual nodes should be full participants on all of the networks they want to communicate with. I don't have an issue with whatever they're trying to accomplish, but I've seen how hard it is to maintain stable high-traffic bridges.