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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 archit

by 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.

by r14c 3y ago

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.