5 ms·

If you're curious why every username is a domain, it's because users are sites

81 points by consumer451 2y ago

consumer451 2y ago
Original post/thread: > If you're curious why everybody's username is a domain, it's because every user is essentially a website > A common thought by devs is "couldn't you make a social network using RSS" and we basically went... yeah let's try that premise with some tweaks > Apps like Bluesky are aggregators. They crawl around the atmosphere like a search engine would the crawl the web, but instead of making a search app it makes a social app > When you post something, like something, make a reply, you're just publishing json on your site, and then that gets synced out in an event stream too > It's pretty weird that you can do it that way -- but you can! > The post I'm replying to now has a URL under my site. It's: > at://pfrazee.com/app.bsky.feed.post/3l6xwohhgax2x > This is how Bluesky is decentralized. In the same way that you can switch search engines and see the same web, you can switch social apps and see the same atmosphere. > It's because everybody's got their own site The thread continues ... Channeling dang: hey all, please try to keep this about the technology.
remram 2y ago
If users are not trying to be sites, then it's not a feature.
- consumer451 2y ago
  I am generally on the side of product/usability. Nobody cares about the underlying protocol. However, the more I learn about what Jay, Paul, and team are doing, the more I realize that the protocol is actually important. Them being federated protocol nerds, while also having to focus on supporting millions of users is super interesting to watch unfold. This could be really cool because they really thought about the underlying factors, from go. There are many user issues like "when I block someone, they should no longer follow me" which seem so simple from a user POV, but are actually complex from the federated protocol POV. I am learning a lot by watching what happens here.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  It's not a feature yet for most users. As possibilities expand, the "ATmostphere" can be improved. Maybe in two years everyone wants to go to a new Personal Data-Store that offers new features X or Y, or Bluesky is sucking because of Z... This architecture of making users sovereign is what's really at stake with the 'user = site' idea; the meaning of that is powerful & clear to techies for what it ongoingly unlocks & enables, but most users arent expected to share that technical fervor. It insures the ATmosphere doesn't get trapped or corralled into some local maxima, can't be enshittified since there isn't the same switching cost as all other networks. And it enables growth & extension of the ATmosphere, by allowing innovation at the edge. More generally, I'd argue that users don't have to be familiar with and attracted to features for them to be features. No one knows every function in their spreadsheet software and there's some they probably will never use, but the spreadsheet is known & respected because it has such a broad library of functions to enable so so much calculating, in so many different ways. Users can grow & change where they are in the adoption curve over time. Features evolve on healthy & fetile platforms. Giving users sovereignty & mobility enables new platform to be created off-Bluesky/main: it is a meta-feature to allow new features.
- oddevan 2y ago
  Some sites are personal sites. Some sites are for organizations or companies or events. If that doesn't work, just substitute "account" for "user". "Every bluesky account is a site."
- paulgb 2y ago
  Every podcast is an RSS feed. Most podcast listeners don’t care about that aspect, but they still get the advantage of every podcast app having essentially the same set of content (compared to, say, YouTube for video or Audible for audiobooks, each of which have the lion’s share of content).
  - remram 2y ago
    That's right. And if users want push notifications or search and you say "that's not possible, because every podcast is an RSS feed"... You have not explained anything, you have not satisfied them with an explanation, and you are ultimately wrong about it being impossible. It's an implementation detail not a feature, and if it started getting in the way of what users need podcasts to do, we would change it not hide behind it. Just like there's no reason for one account per domain other than "that's what we went with for now".
arghandugh 2y ago
It’s been almost two years of Bluesky being a comprehensively better microblogging experience with stronger integrity guarantees than Twitter, and it’s still struggling to sustain 2 million DAU. The unfortunate lesson learned is that nowadays only a very small percentage of social media users will switch to an equivalent platform for ideological, ethical, or practical reasons. Disruption of the incumbent is required.
- consumer451 2y ago
  > Disruption of the incumbent is required. In this case, the incumbent is disrupting themself. The X/Twitter block feature change appears to be an even bigger event than being banned in Brazil, according to usage stats. [0] It's like the great Digg migration, but just 1-5% of the user base, over time. Each time, the network effects affect. [0] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
  - arghandugh 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - consumer451 2y ago
      > rebuilding a social graph is a huge ask. It is. I felt like the Bsky team was too focused on protocol in the beginning, and they missed MANY opportunities for user growth. I recall a comment here that said ~"you guys missed the chance of a generation by staying invite only." I had agreed with that at them time. However, X/Twitter keeps making decisions which make the small, underfunded, yet smartest team in the land look pretty darn cool. (they were cool af the whole time) I highly recommend listening to an interview with the CEO, Jay Graber. I became a huge fan of her vision after doing so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aDDKv4nPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aDDKv4nPM https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-graber-federation-social-media-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-grab...
      - 2y ago
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Why are we still watching bluesky build features slowly in public? Every time they post something it's like, ok, a familiar topic/discussion from 15 years ago, being thought out on some also-ran network no one will really care about without actual mass adoption, a possibility that continues to feel like is years out. Mastodon was around for years with no attn and only got handed this miraculous situation and mass migration opportunity but it just got lucky basically. And it's not even it. Despite a bunch of Brazilians or whatever headed to bluesky briefly, it still isn't happening for it anytime soon.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- consumer451 2y ago
  > Why are we still watching bluesky build features slowly in public? Every time they post something it's like, ok, a familiar topic/discussion from 15 years ago, being thought out on some also-ran network no one will really care about without actual mass adoption, a possibility that continues to feel like is years out. "They" did not post this, I did. I am pretty sure that "they" hate me because I was out way of line in their GitHub issues after a few beers, more than once. (I wish I could fix this) > Mastodon was around for years with no attn and only got handed this miraculous situation and mass migration opportunity but it just got lucky basically. And it's not even it. Despite a bunch of Brazilians or whatever headed to bluesky briefly, it still isn't happening for it anytime soon. Why people should care is because this is a group of the smartest people around, who really give af about our future, and have not yet been spoiled by the inevitable mind effes that occur when you have to write an eight-figure tax check. These people saw it happen many times before, and created a protocol that prevented themselves from turning into the people whom we all tend to despise on Internet forums. They have also created a user experience which according to many comments, "feels like old school Twitter." All that, while on an extremely well thought out federated protocol. This is a huge accomplishment.
  - pfraze 2y ago
    Heh, what's your github username? I'm sure there's no harm done.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
I guess that explains why that page won't load, I guess the user is down.
- consumer451 2y ago
  OK, so this is an interesting thing. If I understand Paul (Bsky) correctly, one of the major reasons that they didn't adopt AP was that it could not scale well. As in, if Mastodon got say 2 million new users in a few days, then each instance would have to sync the entire DB. Most instances could not handle that. In AT's case, that is handled more efficiently. That is correct, isn't isn't it?
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    Not really, no. A Mastodon server mostly only sees posts from users being followed by someone on their server, or mentioning someone on their server. Every post definitely does not get shipped to every server. However, there's definitely some wild inefficiencies in federation: If thousands of servers do follow a given user, and that user posts a video file, all of those thousands of servers will download and store a copy. The fediverse is largely analogous to email in that posts are addressed to destinations. Servers have inboxes and store what's sent to them.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      Thank you for the reply. So aside from videos, let's say that millions of new users came to the fediverse, and 10's of thousands on each instance followed each other. Would that be handled well by most instances? Do they scale horizontally? I am not a protocol partisan, just trying to understand what Paul meant in the interviews that I have seen.
      - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
        It's going to depend a lot. Some of the big servers like mastodon.social likely can scale up very quickly, but some smaller niche-r servers might get hit harder. I doubt the activity of actually registering and following would cause a lot of problems, but I'd definitely expect media usage, moderation/spam management, etc. to pressure smaller servers. You definitely have a range of servers from Kubernetes-orchestrated platforms to "it runs on a box in my basement" hosts, but also the latter servers tend to be invite-only, and grow slower even during large waves of interest. The biggest difference is that I'm not convinced Bluesky/Atproto has ever actually shown it can improve on these issues. Bear in mind, Bluesky isn't effectively federated at this point, everyone pretty much uses their services exclusively, so none of those inefficiencies exist... yet. And... three days ago... Bluesky had an outage because it, a single service, couldn't handle the load: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bluesky-x-twitter-elon-musk-block-b2630894.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bluesky-x-twitter-elon-mu... While some ActivityPub servers might face issues with a big wave, it's very unlikely it would take down all of them. When mastodon.social suffered a big outage, I just went over and browsed from a different server, most of the rest of the fediverse just continued as normal.
jes5199 2y ago
it’s weird tho, none of my feed is actually hosted at my domain. I forget what I had to do to claim my url on bluesky but I understood it as proving that I controlled the domain, not actually using it to point to content. Does any part of reading the bluesky feed actually make DNS requests??
- mozzius 2y ago
  yeah, there’s a little bit of indirection in that domain handles are separate from the actual data hosting. domain handles resolve to a DID, and the DID document points to where your data host is (allowing you to change both your handle and your data host seamlessly). you can then host your own Personal Data Server if you want to

81 points by consumer451 2y ago

Original post/thread: > If you're curious why everybody's username is a domain, it's because every user is essentially a website > A common thought by devs is "couldn't you make a social network using RSS" and we basically went... yeah let's try that premise with some tweaks > Apps like Bluesky are aggregators. They crawl around the atmosphere like a search engine would the crawl the web, but instead of making a search app it makes a social app > When you post something, like something, make a reply, you're just publishing json on your site, and then that gets synced out in an event stream too > It's pretty weird that you can do it that way -- but you can! > The post I'm replying to now has a URL under my site. It's: > at://pfrazee.com/app.bsky.feed.post/3l6xwohhgax2x > This is how Bluesky is decentralized. In the same way that you can switch search engines and see the same web, you can switch social apps and see the same atmosphere. > It's because everybody's got their own site The thread continues ... Channeling dang: hey all, please try to keep this about the technology.

remram 2y ago

If users are not trying to be sites, then it's not a feature.

consumer451 2y ago
I am generally on the side of product/usability. Nobody cares about the underlying protocol. However, the more I learn about what Jay, Paul, and team are doing, the more I realize that the protocol is actually important. Them being federated protocol nerds, while also having to focus on supporting millions of users is super interesting to watch unfold. This could be really cool because they really thought about the underlying factors, from go. There are many user issues like "when I block someone, they should no longer follow me" which seem so simple from a user POV, but are actually complex from the federated protocol POV. I am learning a lot by watching what happens here.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
It's not a feature yet for most users. As possibilities expand, the "ATmostphere" can be improved. Maybe in two years everyone wants to go to a new Personal Data-Store that offers new features X or Y, or Bluesky is sucking because of Z... This architecture of making users sovereign is what's really at stake with the 'user = site' idea; the meaning of that is powerful & clear to techies for what it ongoingly unlocks & enables, but most users arent expected to share that technical fervor. It insures the ATmosphere doesn't get trapped or corralled into some local maxima, can't be enshittified since there isn't the same switching cost as all other networks. And it enables growth & extension of the ATmosphere, by allowing innovation at the edge. More generally, I'd argue that users don't have to be familiar with and attracted to features for them to be features. No one knows every function in their spreadsheet software and there's some they probably will never use, but the spreadsheet is known & respected because it has such a broad library of functions to enable so so much calculating, in so many different ways. Users can grow & change where they are in the adoption curve over time. Features evolve on healthy & fetile platforms. Giving users sovereignty & mobility enables new platform to be created off-Bluesky/main: it is a meta-feature to allow new features.
oddevan 2y ago
Some sites are personal sites. Some sites are for organizations or companies or events. If that doesn't work, just substitute "account" for "user". "Every bluesky account is a site."
paulgb 2y ago
Every podcast is an RSS feed. Most podcast listeners don’t care about that aspect, but they still get the advantage of every podcast app having essentially the same set of content (compared to, say, YouTube for video or Audible for audiobooks, each of which have the lion’s share of content).
- remram 2y ago
  That's right. And if users want push notifications or search and you say "that's not possible, because every podcast is an RSS feed"... You have not explained anything, you have not satisfied them with an explanation, and you are ultimately wrong about it being impossible. It's an implementation detail not a feature, and if it started getting in the way of what users need podcasts to do, we would change it not hide behind it. Just like there's no reason for one account per domain other than "that's what we went with for now".

arghandugh 2y ago

It’s been almost two years of Bluesky being a comprehensively better microblogging experience with stronger integrity guarantees than Twitter, and it’s still struggling to sustain 2 million DAU. The unfortunate lesson learned is that nowadays only a very small percentage of social media users will switch to an equivalent platform for ideological, ethical, or practical reasons. Disruption of the incumbent is required.

consumer451 2y ago
> Disruption of the incumbent is required. In this case, the incumbent is disrupting themself. The X/Twitter block feature change appears to be an even bigger event than being banned in Brazil, according to usage stats. [0] It's like the great Digg migration, but just 1-5% of the user base, over time. Each time, the network effects affect. [0] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
- arghandugh 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - consumer451 2y ago
    > rebuilding a social graph is a huge ask. It is. I felt like the Bsky team was too focused on protocol in the beginning, and they missed MANY opportunities for user growth. I recall a comment here that said ~"you guys missed the chance of a generation by staying invite only." I had agreed with that at them time. However, X/Twitter keeps making decisions which make the small, underfunded, yet smartest team in the land look pretty darn cool. (they were cool af the whole time) I highly recommend listening to an interview with the CEO, Jay Graber. I became a huge fan of her vision after doing so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aDDKv4nPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aDDKv4nPM https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-graber-federation-social-media-decoder-interview https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-grab...
    - 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Why are we still watching bluesky build features slowly in public? Every time they post something it's like, ok, a familiar topic/discussion from 15 years ago, being thought out on some also-ran network no one will really care about without actual mass adoption, a possibility that continues to feel like is years out. Mastodon was around for years with no attn and only got handed this miraculous situation and mass migration opportunity but it just got lucky basically. And it's not even it. Despite a bunch of Brazilians or whatever headed to bluesky briefly, it still isn't happening for it anytime soon.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
consumer451 2y ago
> Why are we still watching bluesky build features slowly in public? Every time they post something it's like, ok, a familiar topic/discussion from 15 years ago, being thought out on some also-ran network no one will really care about without actual mass adoption, a possibility that continues to feel like is years out. "They" did not post this, I did. I am pretty sure that "they" hate me because I was out way of line in their GitHub issues after a few beers, more than once. (I wish I could fix this) > Mastodon was around for years with no attn and only got handed this miraculous situation and mass migration opportunity but it just got lucky basically. And it's not even it. Despite a bunch of Brazilians or whatever headed to bluesky briefly, it still isn't happening for it anytime soon. Why people should care is because this is a group of the smartest people around, who really give af about our future, and have not yet been spoiled by the inevitable mind effes that occur when you have to write an eight-figure tax check. These people saw it happen many times before, and created a protocol that prevented themselves from turning into the people whom we all tend to despise on Internet forums. They have also created a user experience which according to many comments, "feels like old school Twitter." All that, while on an extremely well thought out federated protocol. This is a huge accomplishment.
- pfraze 2y ago
  Heh, what's your github username? I'm sure there's no harm done.

LeoPanthera 2y ago

I guess that explains why that page won't load, I guess the user is down.

consumer451 2y ago
OK, so this is an interesting thing. If I understand Paul (Bsky) correctly, one of the major reasons that they didn't adopt AP was that it could not scale well. As in, if Mastodon got say 2 million new users in a few days, then each instance would have to sync the entire DB. Most instances could not handle that. In AT's case, that is handled more efficiently. That is correct, isn't isn't it?
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  Not really, no. A Mastodon server mostly only sees posts from users being followed by someone on their server, or mentioning someone on their server. Every post definitely does not get shipped to every server. However, there's definitely some wild inefficiencies in federation: If thousands of servers do follow a given user, and that user posts a video file, all of those thousands of servers will download and store a copy. The fediverse is largely analogous to email in that posts are addressed to destinations. Servers have inboxes and store what's sent to them.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    Thank you for the reply. So aside from videos, let's say that millions of new users came to the fediverse, and 10's of thousands on each instance followed each other. Would that be handled well by most instances? Do they scale horizontally? I am not a protocol partisan, just trying to understand what Paul meant in the interviews that I have seen.
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      It's going to depend a lot. Some of the big servers like mastodon.social likely can scale up very quickly, but some smaller niche-r servers might get hit harder. I doubt the activity of actually registering and following would cause a lot of problems, but I'd definitely expect media usage, moderation/spam management, etc. to pressure smaller servers. You definitely have a range of servers from Kubernetes-orchestrated platforms to "it runs on a box in my basement" hosts, but also the latter servers tend to be invite-only, and grow slower even during large waves of interest. The biggest difference is that I'm not convinced Bluesky/Atproto has ever actually shown it can improve on these issues. Bear in mind, Bluesky isn't effectively federated at this point, everyone pretty much uses their services exclusively, so none of those inefficiencies exist... yet. And... three days ago... Bluesky had an outage because it, a single service, couldn't handle the load: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bluesky-x-twitter-elon-musk-block-b2630894.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bluesky-x-twitter-elon-mu... While some ActivityPub servers might face issues with a big wave, it's very unlikely it would take down all of them. When mastodon.social suffered a big outage, I just went over and browsed from a different server, most of the rest of the fediverse just continued as normal.

jes5199 2y ago

it’s weird tho, none of my feed is actually hosted at my domain. I forget what I had to do to claim my url on bluesky but I understood it as proving that I controlled the domain, not actually using it to point to content. Does any part of reading the bluesky feed actually make DNS requests??

mozzius 2y ago
yeah, there’s a little bit of indirection in that domain handles are separate from the actual data hosting. domain handles resolve to a DID, and the DID document points to where your data host is (allowing you to change both your handle and your data host seamlessly). you can then host your own Personal Data Server if you want to