14 ms·

We need to protect the protocol that runs Bluesky

262 points by srameshc 2y ago

npvrite 2y ago
[dead]
- dorsal 2y ago
  You sound unwell.
- quotemstr 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
IAmGraydon 2y ago
Being able to share block lists sounds like a perfect formula for an even more extreme version of the social media echo chamber effect we've seen on other platforms. Now, not only can you subscribe to those with like opinions, but the collective can reject dissenting opinions en masse. What could go wrong?
- NewJazz 2y ago
  You call it "social media echo chamber" I call it "not exposing myself, family, or friends to gore or lewd content".
- numpad0 2y ago
  Doubt it, Twitter had that feature years ago and there wasn't a major problem that linked to it. Crazy people can't follow protocols, and most realizes they're in the wrong before blocking million accounts. References to useful contents from blocked accounts will occasionally leak through channels, and that should validate/invalidate choices. It's probably a pain for spammers and an extra processing cost for serving platform, though. edit: if you consider it must to block massive amount of real users(i.e. not script bots and/or third world hired guns trying to destroy a platform) to use a platform normally, that's just not sane.
- anon-3988 2y ago
  This is solved by blocking everyone by default and invites via some temporary UUID that you can use to add someone.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    I'm sure that blocking everyone by default will really help them attract users...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Educated people will remain educated. Ignorant people will remain ignorant. Angry people will remain angry. Block lists aren’t going to make a material difference in winning hearts and minds. The average reading level in the United States is between 7th and 8th grade, for example. Users will pick what they want to read, and they should be able to.
  - adolph 2y ago
    I wonder what’s the max lexile score for 144 characters
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Seems to be the wrong measure for the angry dopamine machine. I should’ve mentioned critical thinking and emotional intelligence as well in my first comment. Citations below. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71263-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71263-z https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430608-trending-science-social-media-making-us-angrier-study-reveals https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430608-trending-science-... https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/mit-sloan-study-finds-thinking-style-impacts-how-people-use-social-media https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/mit-sloan-study-finds-thinkin... https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07779 https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07779
- pixl97 2y ago
  The internet is filled with shit. Bots, influencers, spammers, the clinically insane, outright enemies. Why should I listen to the endless amount of slop flat earthers shat upon the internet at large? The early internet was a pretty decent place to talk, debate, and see opinions you didn't agree with. But those days are long gone. He'll, these days the other side of the conversation could just be a bot that will never change its mind, and waste your time you could be talking to an actual human.
  - nbittich 2y ago
    The internet of the 2000s was good because it didn't have these "discover" and "for you" algorithms. If you were interested in a subject, you actually had to search and filter results to find what you wanted; no AI choosing for you. If you're not interested in politics, you shouldn't see political content, unless you specifically search for it.
  - ianburrell 2y ago
    Usenet had kill files. It was invented before the Internet was widespread. There was even a term, plonk, for adding someone usually as parting message. Kill files were required for reading Usenet. There were less bad posters, but since saw everything in newsgroup, it helped to filter the problems.
  - computerthings 2y ago
    > The internet is filled with shit. Bots, influencers, spammers, the clinically insane, outright enemies. And also with people who just add people they consider enemies for whatever reason to all sorts of lists, and others who just subscribe to those lists blindly, without ever checking any. Why would they want to, it's supposedly unsavory. Blocking things as they actually become a problem for you has a way higher chance of success than outsourcing it. Just because it says "list of X" doesn't mean it's a list of X, it just means anyone can title things however they like.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      depends on the trustworthiness of the source. at some point we have to trust something; could be our own selection process, but it can very well be the opinion of someone who you follow that seem genuine over X amount of time. The false positives are probably a necessary evil, humans will make mistakes, miss sarcasm, etc.
- kiba 2y ago
  Hacker News is heavily curated. Do you think there's an echo chamber effect? I frequently encountered opinions that differ from mine, sometime completely on the opposite end.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    As much as I like and enjoy HN most of the time, it's very much an echo chamber. Even if we ignore politics and politics-adjacent threads and focus on tech stuff, there are some popular perceptions/opinions that have not earned their popularity, and god help you should you suggest you're not on that bandwagon. The blanket ban on outright politics here may blunt the echo chamber effect a bit, but it exists because echo chamber susceptibility is part of the human condition. We cannot get away from it.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      While there's a ban on overt politics, a lot of social discourse is ultimately political. It's impossible to discuss health care approaches for example. Americans believe in for profit Healthcare, while (most everyone else) tend to favor universal health care (despite its many imperfections. ) And that's before we discuss other tricky topics like the military etc. There are plenty of folk ready to downvote based on opinion rather than discussion. So yes, there's plenty of echo chamber here - but equally plenty of alternate thinkers, not to mention nutters. This is ultimately how human societies work.
      - thrwwawayyay 2y ago
        Yes try making a comment in favor of bulk data collection by the intelligence agencies, or stating that Snowden's actions caused significant harm and really only helped adversaries - to give two examples. Even if you write a well argued and decently sourced comment, it's very likely to get flagged by people with ideological disagreements to this. And there are a lot of them on HN, so your comment will likely disappear pretty quickly.
        2y ago
- heavyset_go 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't want to see spam and inane posts, it isn't some moral imperative that everyone gets exposed to every thought someone shits out.
- burgerrito 2y ago
  I noticed that those blocklist on Bluesky tends to have false positives too! I've seen an instance where an innocent user added to a blocklist that blocks Nazi ideology or something like that. Honestly if that happened to me, I'd quit Bluesky instantly
  - verdverm 2y ago
    The comments on that post (I saw the same or similar on Reddit) point out that there are very aggressive lists and more discerning lists. Some lists filter out based on links in a profile or certain emojis or if you follow certain accounts. These are 3rd party lists and a user has to opt into them to leverage their blocking choices. If a list blocks 1M accounts but only has 100 followers, it's not such a big deal. When you subscribe to a well built list, you are given options for how like mute vs block, your choice, or label | warn | hide, per label, a subchoice within an opt in labeller. What ATProto gives us as users is choice and competition. Bad lists will not gain subscribers and will be marginalized by the market effect. High quality lists will be shared and gain network effect. We shouldn't expect or want a one-size fits all solution to moderation. Our social graphs in real life and online are not a giant blob where everyone has to listen to everyone. We naturally break down into subgraphs or communities. Online communities or groups should be able to exclude people for any reason they wish. They should be seen similar to a private group in real life. You shouldn't expect to be allowed into or to participate in a group if your going against the group's rules or customs in real life. Online should be no different.
  - Kosovid 2y ago
    There are lots of lists like that. Like I stumbled across this one the other day titled "Pedophiles of Bluesky" at https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zufzme6bw4kqvd7uwff3qfpc/lists/3lewg3m7htw2j https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zufzme6bw4kqvd7uwff3qfpc/li... Now I had a good look and I'm pretty sure the people added to this list haven't posted anything to warrant this accusation. Yet if you go to their profiles on Clearsky or whatever it will show them in this pedophile list, like https://clearsky.app/messyjhesse.bsky.social/lists https://clearsky.app/messyjhesse.bsky.social/lists That's not right, and the worst thing is you can't see on the app if you've been wrongly labeled that way, you have to use a third-party website to find out.
- mrshadowgoose 2y ago
  From my admittedly subjective perspective, it's the lesser of two evils. The alternative of having centralized control of "truth" is a far more awful option.
- baobun 2y ago
  Sounds better than everyone outsourcing the same to Musk, Zuck, spez, or similar.
- Starlevel004 2y ago
  > Being able to share block lists sounds like a perfect formula for an even more extreme version of the social media echo chamber effect we've seen on other platforms. I like my echo chamber. I like talking to my friends online. I don't want things I don't want to see.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I get this, and I use bsky. What I don't understand is why some of my more liberal friends have a meltdown when I tell them I successfully use Twitter for what I want to get out of: instant news and commentary, some memes, some Instagram like feeds, and a couple of other things. I don't use the firehouse feed, I just pay attention to those I follow and have almost zero issues.
    - CartyBoston 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
        This is it anywhere near good faith. Also, aren’t you tired of “everyone I don’t like is a fascist”?
        metabagel 2y ago
        Elon Musk is everyone?
      - likeabatterycar 2y ago
        Because caring about a stranger's political opinions that much, simply to play pretend activist, is mentally and physically exhausting.
- nastoy 2y ago
  Agreed. Bluesky is useless for this reason and the way that blocking works individually as well. Imagine if HN had a "block" option you could select against a user, that when you click it, it wipes out every comment that this user ever made on a post that you both commented in, past and future - but not just for you, for every other HN user as well. And there's no "showdead" option to see them either, for anyone. Like if I or anyone who replied to you blocked you now, with this hypothetical Bluesky-like feature on HN, no-one at all would be able to see your comment. Except maybe dang if he went poking around in the database. That's basically how Bluesky blocks work. It's absurd.
  - verdverm 2y ago
    Musk Social provides some options for you to control who can reply to your posts (like followers only), at least it did before I nuked all my accounts. Bluesky provides a richer set of options. I should be able to choose who interacts with my posts. If that's not your style, fine, there are other options out there. Bluesky users like this feature. It reduces the toxicity and makes it a more enjoyable platform. The culture around "don't engage, just block" the trolls helps keep the discourse more civil. With a fresh start, we can stay ahead of the trolls and bots. It's a group effort
    - nastoy 2y ago
      You have misunderstood. The way Bluesky blocking works is not just about controlling who else can interact with your posts, it affects the posts of others too, and applies to every other user whether they like it or not. See https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/7021 https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/7021 for more detail. A relevant comment from that issue: > As it stands, if 20 people are involved in a discussion, and ONE single person decides to block someone, then all of a sudden, the 19 other people in the discussion (+ any other viewers) are now inconvenienced simply because one person had an issue with someone else. > Bluesky does have a bit of a block culture, and as such, this issue is only going to get worse and worse, and threads are going to get harder and harder to read and follow as more and more people get blocked. > Just the other day I got a notification, and I clicked on it, and once again, the post they were replying to was "blocked", not because of me, but because the person who made the post blocked the person they were responding to. I was trying to make sense of their post, but now I couldn't as I had no idea what the hell they were replying to... then I think I found the post they replied to; it showed "1 reply", but when I clicked on it, no replies were shown. > Now, this functionality was probably done with good intentions - but you know what they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Another comment explaining the problem: > This is working as intended but I agree it should be reassessed. For example: > 1. In a popular thread, User A posts some nonsense > 2. User B replies to that reply explaining why it's nonsense > 3. User A blocks User B > 4. Now User A has successfully hidden the rebuttal to his comment from everyone. The only defense against this is if the thread OP happens to block User A. > This is a pretty serious downside of the "nuclear block" system imo. It creates an escalation ladder of blocking where the first user to hit "block" is advantaged. On the other hand it causes me personally to avoid blocking where I otherwise would, because I want the conversation to still be visible for others. > There should at least be a "show reply" button on posts that are hidden for this reason IMO. Otherwise you've given every user the unilateral power to hide a reply, for everyone, permanently. If I hide a reply the normal way, it's not deleted for everyone! There is a "show hidden reply" button! The effect of hiding someone else's reply should be consistent across these two ways to do it.
- yfw 2y ago
  Echo chamber or filtering out noise?
- frontalier 2y ago
  the "collective" has been able to block out toxic shit for a while https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spamhaus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spamhaus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing https://web.archive.org/web/20250107144929/https://blocktogether.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250107144929/https://blocktoge... https://web.archive.org/web/20241230160146/https://gardenfence.github.io/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241230160146/https://gardenfen... folks just get riled up when their diatribes don't get traction
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Shared blocklists are older than social media; in particular see USENET killfiles, which were often shared. More recently, you had user-made shared blocklists on Twitter until Musk broke the API. There’s nothing particularly new about them, though having them as a convenient first-class feature is somewhat new. They help make Bluesky usable; for instance I subscribe to one which nukes transphobes, because, really, I do not have the patience to listen to their One Joke anymore, thanks. And another which warns on people with AI-generated profile pics (these are virtually always some form of scammer, or, worse, AI evangelists). The blocklists are not mandatory.
  - likeabatterycar 2y ago
    Interesting how the concept of blacklisting was so horrifying to people that they immediately changed their vocabulary, code, and even broke APIs (despite the origins predating unrelated current events by hundreds of years) only to immediately turn around and justify the newly christened "blocklist" as a great thing we should all embrace.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      [flagged]
- continue-100 2y ago
  https://sites.google.com/view/sources-why-we-hate-each-other/ https://sites.google.com/view/sources-why-we-hate-each-other... § The Myth of the Filter Bubble
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  Everyone in life has a blocklist, and they are shared. You have a list of public people that piss you off and avoid, when you are asked about them you say "ugh I don't like x because". Now, you might get someone say "dont be mean about x, they had y, which is why they did z" and you might accept or reject the point they made. However that person is unlikely to blast you with content or facts to do with said public figure, unless they want to drive you away. It is part of human nature, infact its the basis of society. The only way we can function is by having effective way to have some shared core "principles" (formally around religion, feudal chiefs, now around semi cult leaders) This means rejecting other ideas as heretical. (see civil rights marches, universal suffrage, silver/gold standard the fracturing of protestantism)
- AndyNemmity 2y ago
  Twitter had shared block lists for a long time before they were removed. Twitter was better then. We don't have to guess how that works, it existed.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    Better for you? Better for discourse? Better for protecting your echo chamber from things that might challenge you?
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      See, the thing is, I do not wish to hear from idiots. Life is too bloody short. This is how normal in-person social interaction works too, by the way. If you’re in a pub and someone comes up and starts ranting at you about how the pizza restaurant basements are turning the frogs gay, you’re probably not going to engage them. And if they keep at it, they’ll probably get kicked out. The internet is full of people who (a) insane, and (b) insane in a very boring, same-y way. Filtering these people out is _fine_. There is no moral obligation to listen to every ranting idiot who comes along.
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah this is the thing. I see the same here in Holland since the extreme-right won the elections. People are constantly dragging up topics like transsexuality in completely unrelated discussions. I completely disagree with their opinion and I like challenging them on it (for example, what is it to them what other people do with their bodies?). They've never been able to give me a good answer to that so far. But they're constantly derailing topics about completely different things. They seem so obsessed with this topic. It's also getting so tediously repetitive. Always the same slurs without any kind of actual discussion. The thing is, here in the Netherlands we used to have 'echo chambering' as the foundation for the country. We used to call it 'verzuiling' (literally translated "pillarification"). After the war the country was made up of several groups that didn't get along so well so each had their own newspapers, social circles, TV and radio broadcasters etc. There were the Catholics, the super-strict Calvinists, the Labour/progressive atheist crowd etc. They basically lived alongside without really interacting. And really, lately I'm starting to think this was not such a bad idea at all.
crznp 2y ago
I largely agree, but it is odd to write that column and not mention Mastodon/ActivityPub. On one hand, it is another alternative if Bluesky falls, but on the other hand I feel like the algorithm makes it a different sort of community.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  > I largely agree, but it is odd to write that column and not mention Mastodon/ActivityPub. Is that an omission, or is that because Mastodon is already in the process of "establishing a new legal home for Mastodon and transferring ownership and stewardship"¹, and because ActivityPub was published as a W3C Recommendation back in 2018? ¹ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-...
- verdverm 2y ago
  Mastadon is too complicated for your average, non-technical user. There is also the issue that your account is tied to a specific server and migration means you lose your followers. Discovery and server DDoS on a viral post are also challenges for the way ActivityPub was architected. ATProto is still young, even compared to ActivityPub. It will continue to evolve and improve. It certainly has the momentum compared to ActivityPub
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > Mastadon is too complicated for your average, non-technical user. The only headache is picking the server. If I pick one for them it's pretty smooth sailing from there. If someone can't handle the basic interface, there's a really really high chance he doesn't have much of value to say. The problem isn't that it's "complicated". It's that they have no incentive to sign up. As much as the HN crowd hates it, ads and marketing work. People went to Bluesky not because it's easier but because several famous people talked about it loudly and everyone knows the people behind the original Twitter are behind it. Marketing.
    - verdverm 2y ago
ThalesX 2y ago
[flagged]
- jagger27 2y ago
  [flagged]
lazzlazzlazz 2y ago
Interesting how the online left now is beginning to care about decentralizing social media again after years of deriding the topic and espousing (obviously politicized) "content moderation" efforts. Unfortunately, this is also strike in favor of the blockchain people (like Farcaster) — the best of which have been working to find ways to keep systems permanently decentralized (and not just temporarily decentralized, like Bluesky/Nostr/Mastodon/SMTP/etc.).
llvm-dev 2y ago
[dead]
adolph 2y ago
wants to create a nonprofit foundation to govern and protect the AT Protocol, outside of Bluesky the company Bluesky and Graber recognize the importance of this effort and have signaled their approval. But the point is, it can’t rely on them. What’s the point of this article? The repo is dual MIT/Apache [0]. Nothing seems to prevent the author from forking and hacking away. Just do it. 0. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto
neilv 2y ago
I can't tell why the writers feel that Bluesky's AT protocol is somehow the technologically best, or most politically strategic foundation, for a viable open mechanism for this kind of communication. This article does seem to have the effect of being an endorsement of Bluesky, though. (What I mean by endorsement: "Why would this progressive political operator be saying that we need to focus on freedom safeguards for this Bluesky platform, if it wasn't obviously the place for progressives to be. And no mention of anything else, like W3C standard ActivityPub, so that's right out. Clearly we must once again get behind a platform that someone owns. And then work from a position of weakness, like activists. Since that went so well for the co-author's former MoveOn.org, as evidenced by the incoming administration. And we can keep telling people they are under attack, and keep raising donations from them, to continue the fight.")
- DeepPhilosopher 2y ago
  Agreed. I don't understand why so many are choosing to rally around Bluesky and its AT Protocol, which is promising federation but has yet to deliver. Not to mention it is backed by a for-profit company that has all the incentive to enshittify much like Facebook and Twitter have. Compare this to Mastodon (which unlike Bluesky) is just one service in a sea of many others using ActivityPub (Pixelfed, PeerTube, etc) which overall makes for a much more vibrant and promising platform. And unlike Bluesky, Mastodon has put federation into action; as an anecdote, even for posts with lots of replies, I've rarely seen more than two people from the same server comment on a given post. The diversity is astounding. Mastodon is already everything everyone wants from Bluesky in this regard. To me, it just looks like everyone is getting set up again to shoot themselves in the foot much like what happened with Twitter, and I don't understand why? Is it because choosing a server is to hard or stressful?
  - sumeno 2y ago
    It's because people don't care about federated services, they care about services that are easy to use and have people on them and that's bluesky right now
    - 2y ago
pornel 2y ago
They're right that they need to actually shift the power away from Bluesky and have users use other servers. The AT protocol may promise decentralisation and an insurance policy, but that is meaningless if Bluesky the company can stop using the AT protocol and survive it. As long as the majority of users use the official app and log in to the primary server with their username/password, not the protocol's private key, Bluesky isn't forced to continue using the AT protocol. They still have power to push the enshittify button, block federation, and keep users captive on the official app/website like Musk's X does.
zeckalpha 2y ago
No mention of their benefit corporation status
idlewords 2y ago
Bluesky is two completely separate things: 1) A Twitter clone without the political baggage and chaos of the current Twitter ownership. 2) A vastly overengineered distributed software system with a strong ideological commitment to federated design. There's no inherent relationship between the two, but a lot of the people who run 1 are heavily committed to 2, and so end up sowing a lot of confusion about it. I would wager that most Bluesky users don't care about it being decentralized, and in fact want a lot of features (soft block, private blocklists) that the federated design makes impossible.
- enos_feedler 2y ago
  I agree and don't believe 1) is the killer app for 2) but it definitely helps make 2) viable because at least there is a production social app running on it.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I got the impression from Christine Webber that the Blue sky protocol could not practically be federated, there's a bottleneck (relays iirc) that can only be properly implemented with huge resources, and which scales quadratically https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Bluesky is designed for the appearance of federation.
    - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
      Also the appearance of no political baggage, but that’s not actually true either.
  - dang 2y ago
    Discussed a bit here: How decentralized is Bluesky really? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42215410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42215410 - Nov 2024 (16 comments)
EGreg 2y ago
I have been saying the same things for over a decade, and writing about it. But more importantly - I built the alternative, we’ve tested it with lots of local communities and will be going to market Nov 5th this year https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
mitchbob 2y ago
https://archive.ph/VDPuq https://archive.ph/VDPuq
tasuki 2y ago
> In terms of content moderation, posts related to child sexual abuse or terrorism are best handled by professionals trained to help keep millions or billions safe. Does that mean bluesky will somehow centrally moderate posts "related to terrorism"?
chad1n 2y ago
Who's this "we"? Is there anything that runs on the Bluesky protocol outside of the Bluesky itself which has its own extensions which can't be federated. Also, when I opened this site, all the posts were from a certain political ideology. The algorithm is probably more or less the same as Twitter in pushing contents loved by their creators.
- threeseed 2y ago
  > The algorithm is probably more or less the same as Twitter in pushing contents loved by their creators Do you some evidence that BlueSky owners are manipulating the feed like we know Elon has been doing with X. Because I would argue it's more just that the communities have fragmented.
- hb-robo 2y ago
  Considering everyone NOT in a specific ideological umbrella has been fleeing X en masse, yeah it's obviously sensible that alternative ideologies would be more present by default.
derelicta 2y ago
[flagged]
azangru 2y ago
> The internet doesn’t need to be like this. As luck would have it, a new way is emerging just in time. If you’ve heard of Bluesky... Why do they write as if activitypub and mastodon do not exist?
- mxmilkiib 2y ago
  don't forget SOLID from W3C! https://solidproject.org https://solidproject.org https://github.com/solid https://github.com/solid
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Perhaps because, in terms of numbers, they don't?
  - archagon 2y ago
    Deceptive. Half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter now post exclusively on Mastodon.
    - jghn 2y ago
      Deceptive. While half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter moved to Mastodon, three quarters of them have either shifted to bsky or post to both via mirroring.
      - azakai 2y ago
        Aside from tech, though: practically none of the non-tech people I followed on Twitter moved to Mastodon. Almost all of them went to Bluesky. I follow a mix of people, so I ended up mostly on Bluesky. I would have been happy on Mastodon too, and I don't know why it didn't catch on with non-tech people, but it just hasn't. So Bluesky is our main opportunity for an open social web, at this time.
        ajmurmann 2y ago
        It sounds stupid but I think the bit where you pick your host was too much for normies or led to pushing off the decision and just not joining. Even when you have an account you know have to pick a client.
softwaredoug 2y ago
With it seeming like even fewer powerful people will control how social media is moderated, as they say depending on the “policy environment” there’s never been a more important time to work towards distributed social media.
browningstreet 2y ago
I lost interest in Bluesky when I got an “account required” blocker after I clicked on a Bluesky post link. UPDATE: OK, didn't realize it was a configurable setting. I guess I ran into it a few times and assumed it was a default block. Thanks for the clarification.
- excerionsforte 2y ago
  Interesting given I can access this[1] without an account. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lfdzltlsik2i https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lfdz...
- Starlevel004 2y ago
  This is a per-account flag that's only honoured by the official web app and some third party ones
  - dymk 2y ago
    I don't know if "only" is the right adverb to use when it's how the first-party apps and website works. I don't know what usage looks like for third-party sites, but I would imagine it's incredibly small compared to bsky.app, and it's nearly everyone's first impression of Bluesky.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  What's wrong with requiring an account to view some content? Does everything need to be 100% public? What if I want to post somewhat private thoughts or images and restrict the content in some manner?
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    AT proto is a cleartext protocol, hiding content is a matter of clients respecting a flag, a false sense of privacy. If you want to restrict the audience of a post, you should post it encrypted and send keys to intended recipients
mystified5016 2y ago
Framing bluesky as a "competitor" to mastodon makes about as much sense as framing a quarterback making the winning run as "beating" the kid drawing clouds in the bleachers. They're in the same general space, but only one is playing the game.
RobotToaster 2y ago
Why would we want to protect a protocol that isn't federated in any meaningful way?
deyom78042 2y ago
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mindcrash 2y ago
The protocol is protected. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/ "Dual MIT/Apache-2.0 License Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Bluesky PBC, and Contributors Except as otherwise noted in individual files, this software is licensed under the MIT license (<http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>), or the Apache License, Version 2.0 (<http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>). Downstream projects and end users may chose either license individually, or both together, at their discretion. The motivation for this dual-licensing is the additional software patent assurance provided by Apache 2.0." Even when Bluesky decides to fuck around with the licenses, everybody is free to fork the current version crediting Bluesky PBC due to the MIT and Apache 2.0 license allowing this. And besides that, the community could also decide not to support AT at all but put their full weight behind Nostr (https://nostr.com/ https://nostr.com/) UPDATE: And the protocol spec is licensed under Creative Commons: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/ "Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Bluesky PBC, and Contributors Documentation text and blog posts in this repository are licensed under a permissive CC-BY license. For anybody interested in derivative works of documents and specifications, remember that: - you must give attribution (credit) to the original work - you must indicate any changes made - trademark rights are not granted (for example, to "Bluesky", "AT Protocol", or "atproto", or any logos or icons) Inline code examples, example data, and regular expressions are under Creative Commons Zero (CC-0, aka Public Domain) and copy/pasted without attribution."
seydor 2y ago
At this point in history it's wrong to suggest that any mass communication medium can be non-politicized
- poszlem 2y ago
  And using BlueSky as an example of a "non-politicized" platform is even more inaccurate.
  - hb-robo 2y ago
    It's politicized by default when it stands in opposition to the most blatantly ideologically slanted social media site in existence this side of Gab and Truth Social.
- threeseed 2y ago
  You can. Threads achieved this for a while before Zuckerberg capitulated. All you need to do is down-rank political content in general and prevent it from appearing in For You type feeds. Then it just becomes a case of people needing to specifically follow political content which heavily limits its reach.
  - rexpop 2y ago
    Down-ranking "political content" requires a definition of "politics" which is, inherently, an ideological posture, QED all content that remains is "political content." It's an oxymoron.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Like I said Threads did this and it was effective. So much so all the journalists left for BlueSky and they have had to reverse it.
consumerx 2y ago
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captainepoch 2y ago
Pure Bluesky endorsement from a MIT blog. ActivityPub, Pleroma and Mastodon existed before this, and they just work.
aussieguy1234 2y ago
I'll bet that most who casually encounter hate speech/far right content on X, Meta or other platforms are not far-right and don't actually want to see or be influenced by it. It likely creates a negative user experience for them. However powerful the X/Meta AI feed algorithms are at surfacing content people are interested in, it all counts for nothing if people see content that they find repulsive. Its not just far right content, disturbing content in general gets more engagement and is surfaced in feeds. BlueSky and its AT Protocol, by putting moderation back into the hands of the user, allows people to see the content they want and not what they don't want, making for a much better and more positive user experience. I predict that this means that at some point, it will take over as the dominant social media platform. There are already multiple startups with VC funding building things on the AT Protocol. As for the moment, whenever someone complains to me about toxicity in social media on X/Facebook or whatever platform they are using, I recommend BlueSky and advise others to do the same. Word of mouth spread is powerful.
camgunz 2y ago
I guess this is a "oh Twitter got bought and TikTok got shutdown for a day, so we need a free Twitter/TikTok that wouldn't have any of these problems" response? It's a pretty inane article that provides no solutions. Twitter got bought and TikTok got made because attention is valuable. There's ads/enshittification because a service like this is expensive to run, also you want to raise money for new features, also greed is a thing. TFA wrestles with none of this? At least like, consider nationalization or some kind of nationalized e2e platform. Aren't we wishcasting after all?

262 points by srameshc 2y ago

npvrite 2y ago

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dorsal 2y ago
You sound unwell.
quotemstr 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

IAmGraydon 2y ago

Being able to share block lists sounds like a perfect formula for an even more extreme version of the social media echo chamber effect we've seen on other platforms. Now, not only can you subscribe to those with like opinions, but the collective can reject dissenting opinions en masse. What could go wrong?

NewJazz 2y ago
You call it "social media echo chamber" I call it "not exposing myself, family, or friends to gore or lewd content".
numpad0 2y ago
Doubt it, Twitter had that feature years ago and there wasn't a major problem that linked to it. Crazy people can't follow protocols, and most realizes they're in the wrong before blocking million accounts. References to useful contents from blocked accounts will occasionally leak through channels, and that should validate/invalidate choices. It's probably a pain for spammers and an extra processing cost for serving platform, though. edit: if you consider it must to block massive amount of real users(i.e. not script bots and/or third world hired guns trying to destroy a platform) to use a platform normally, that's just not sane.
anon-3988 2y ago
This is solved by blocking everyone by default and invites via some temporary UUID that you can use to add someone.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  I'm sure that blocking everyone by default will really help them attract users...
deleted 2y ago
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toomuchtodo 2y ago
Educated people will remain educated. Ignorant people will remain ignorant. Angry people will remain angry. Block lists aren’t going to make a material difference in winning hearts and minds. The average reading level in the United States is between 7th and 8th grade, for example. Users will pick what they want to read, and they should be able to.
- adolph 2y ago
  I wonder what’s the max lexile score for 144 characters
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Seems to be the wrong measure for the angry dopamine machine. I should’ve mentioned critical thinking and emotional intelligence as well in my first comment. Citations below. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71263-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-71263-z https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430608-trending-science-social-media-making-us-angrier-study-reveals https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430608-trending-science-... https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/mit-sloan-study-finds-thinking-style-impacts-how-people-use-social-media https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/mit-sloan-study-finds-thinkin... https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07779 https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07779
pixl97 2y ago
The internet is filled with shit. Bots, influencers, spammers, the clinically insane, outright enemies. Why should I listen to the endless amount of slop flat earthers shat upon the internet at large? The early internet was a pretty decent place to talk, debate, and see opinions you didn't agree with. But those days are long gone. He'll, these days the other side of the conversation could just be a bot that will never change its mind, and waste your time you could be talking to an actual human.
- nbittich 2y ago
  The internet of the 2000s was good because it didn't have these "discover" and "for you" algorithms. If you were interested in a subject, you actually had to search and filter results to find what you wanted; no AI choosing for you. If you're not interested in politics, you shouldn't see political content, unless you specifically search for it.
- ianburrell 2y ago
  Usenet had kill files. It was invented before the Internet was widespread. There was even a term, plonk, for adding someone usually as parting message. Kill files were required for reading Usenet. There were less bad posters, but since saw everything in newsgroup, it helped to filter the problems.
- computerthings 2y ago
  > The internet is filled with shit. Bots, influencers, spammers, the clinically insane, outright enemies. And also with people who just add people they consider enemies for whatever reason to all sorts of lists, and others who just subscribe to those lists blindly, without ever checking any. Why would they want to, it's supposedly unsavory. Blocking things as they actually become a problem for you has a way higher chance of success than outsourcing it. Just because it says "list of X" doesn't mean it's a list of X, it just means anyone can title things however they like.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    depends on the trustworthiness of the source. at some point we have to trust something; could be our own selection process, but it can very well be the opinion of someone who you follow that seem genuine over X amount of time. The false positives are probably a necessary evil, humans will make mistakes, miss sarcasm, etc.
kiba 2y ago
Hacker News is heavily curated. Do you think there's an echo chamber effect? I frequently encountered opinions that differ from mine, sometime completely on the opposite end.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  As much as I like and enjoy HN most of the time, it's very much an echo chamber. Even if we ignore politics and politics-adjacent threads and focus on tech stuff, there are some popular perceptions/opinions that have not earned their popularity, and god help you should you suggest you're not on that bandwagon. The blanket ban on outright politics here may blunt the echo chamber effect a bit, but it exists because echo chamber susceptibility is part of the human condition. We cannot get away from it.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    While there's a ban on overt politics, a lot of social discourse is ultimately political. It's impossible to discuss health care approaches for example. Americans believe in for profit Healthcare, while (most everyone else) tend to favor universal health care (despite its many imperfections. ) And that's before we discuss other tricky topics like the military etc. There are plenty of folk ready to downvote based on opinion rather than discussion. So yes, there's plenty of echo chamber here - but equally plenty of alternate thinkers, not to mention nutters. This is ultimately how human societies work.
    - thrwwawayyay 2y ago
      Yes try making a comment in favor of bulk data collection by the intelligence agencies, or stating that Snowden's actions caused significant harm and really only helped adversaries - to give two examples. Even if you write a well argued and decently sourced comment, it's very likely to get flagged by people with ideological disagreements to this. And there are a lot of them on HN, so your comment will likely disappear pretty quickly.
      - 2y ago
heavyset_go 2y ago
Yeah, I don't want to see spam and inane posts, it isn't some moral imperative that everyone gets exposed to every thought someone shits out.
burgerrito 2y ago
I noticed that those blocklist on Bluesky tends to have false positives too! I've seen an instance where an innocent user added to a blocklist that blocks Nazi ideology or something like that. Honestly if that happened to me, I'd quit Bluesky instantly
- verdverm 2y ago
  The comments on that post (I saw the same or similar on Reddit) point out that there are very aggressive lists and more discerning lists. Some lists filter out based on links in a profile or certain emojis or if you follow certain accounts. These are 3rd party lists and a user has to opt into them to leverage their blocking choices. If a list blocks 1M accounts but only has 100 followers, it's not such a big deal. When you subscribe to a well built list, you are given options for how like mute vs block, your choice, or label | warn | hide, per label, a subchoice within an opt in labeller. What ATProto gives us as users is choice and competition. Bad lists will not gain subscribers and will be marginalized by the market effect. High quality lists will be shared and gain network effect. We shouldn't expect or want a one-size fits all solution to moderation. Our social graphs in real life and online are not a giant blob where everyone has to listen to everyone. We naturally break down into subgraphs or communities. Online communities or groups should be able to exclude people for any reason they wish. They should be seen similar to a private group in real life. You shouldn't expect to be allowed into or to participate in a group if your going against the group's rules or customs in real life. Online should be no different.
- Kosovid 2y ago
  There are lots of lists like that. Like I stumbled across this one the other day titled "Pedophiles of Bluesky" at https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zufzme6bw4kqvd7uwff3qfpc/lists/3lewg3m7htw2j https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zufzme6bw4kqvd7uwff3qfpc/li... Now I had a good look and I'm pretty sure the people added to this list haven't posted anything to warrant this accusation. Yet if you go to their profiles on Clearsky or whatever it will show them in this pedophile list, like https://clearsky.app/messyjhesse.bsky.social/lists https://clearsky.app/messyjhesse.bsky.social/lists That's not right, and the worst thing is you can't see on the app if you've been wrongly labeled that way, you have to use a third-party website to find out.
mrshadowgoose 2y ago
From my admittedly subjective perspective, it's the lesser of two evils. The alternative of having centralized control of "truth" is a far more awful option.
baobun 2y ago
Sounds better than everyone outsourcing the same to Musk, Zuck, spez, or similar.
Starlevel004 2y ago
> Being able to share block lists sounds like a perfect formula for an even more extreme version of the social media echo chamber effect we've seen on other platforms. I like my echo chamber. I like talking to my friends online. I don't want things I don't want to see.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I get this, and I use bsky. What I don't understand is why some of my more liberal friends have a meltdown when I tell them I successfully use Twitter for what I want to get out of: instant news and commentary, some memes, some Instagram like feeds, and a couple of other things. I don't use the firehouse feed, I just pay attention to those I follow and have almost zero issues.
  - CartyBoston 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
      This is it anywhere near good faith. Also, aren’t you tired of “everyone I don’t like is a fascist”?
      - metabagel 2y ago
        Elon Musk is everyone?
    - likeabatterycar 2y ago
      Because caring about a stranger's political opinions that much, simply to play pretend activist, is mentally and physically exhausting.
nastoy 2y ago
Agreed. Bluesky is useless for this reason and the way that blocking works individually as well. Imagine if HN had a "block" option you could select against a user, that when you click it, it wipes out every comment that this user ever made on a post that you both commented in, past and future - but not just for you, for every other HN user as well. And there's no "showdead" option to see them either, for anyone. Like if I or anyone who replied to you blocked you now, with this hypothetical Bluesky-like feature on HN, no-one at all would be able to see your comment. Except maybe dang if he went poking around in the database. That's basically how Bluesky blocks work. It's absurd.
- verdverm 2y ago
  Musk Social provides some options for you to control who can reply to your posts (like followers only), at least it did before I nuked all my accounts. Bluesky provides a richer set of options. I should be able to choose who interacts with my posts. If that's not your style, fine, there are other options out there. Bluesky users like this feature. It reduces the toxicity and makes it a more enjoyable platform. The culture around "don't engage, just block" the trolls helps keep the discourse more civil. With a fresh start, we can stay ahead of the trolls and bots. It's a group effort
  - nastoy 2y ago
    You have misunderstood. The way Bluesky blocking works is not just about controlling who else can interact with your posts, it affects the posts of others too, and applies to every other user whether they like it or not. See https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/7021 https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/7021 for more detail. A relevant comment from that issue: > As it stands, if 20 people are involved in a discussion, and ONE single person decides to block someone, then all of a sudden, the 19 other people in the discussion (+ any other viewers) are now inconvenienced simply because one person had an issue with someone else. > Bluesky does have a bit of a block culture, and as such, this issue is only going to get worse and worse, and threads are going to get harder and harder to read and follow as more and more people get blocked. > Just the other day I got a notification, and I clicked on it, and once again, the post they were replying to was "blocked", not because of me, but because the person who made the post blocked the person they were responding to. I was trying to make sense of their post, but now I couldn't as I had no idea what the hell they were replying to... then I think I found the post they replied to; it showed "1 reply", but when I clicked on it, no replies were shown. > Now, this functionality was probably done with good intentions - but you know what they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Another comment explaining the problem: > This is working as intended but I agree it should be reassessed. For example: > 1. In a popular thread, User A posts some nonsense > 2. User B replies to that reply explaining why it's nonsense > 3. User A blocks User B > 4. Now User A has successfully hidden the rebuttal to his comment from everyone. The only defense against this is if the thread OP happens to block User A. > This is a pretty serious downside of the "nuclear block" system imo. It creates an escalation ladder of blocking where the first user to hit "block" is advantaged. On the other hand it causes me personally to avoid blocking where I otherwise would, because I want the conversation to still be visible for others. > There should at least be a "show reply" button on posts that are hidden for this reason IMO. Otherwise you've given every user the unilateral power to hide a reply, for everyone, permanently. If I hide a reply the normal way, it's not deleted for everyone! There is a "show hidden reply" button! The effect of hiding someone else's reply should be consistent across these two ways to do it.
yfw 2y ago
Echo chamber or filtering out noise?
frontalier 2y ago
the "collective" has been able to block out toxic shit for a while https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spamhaus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spamhaus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing https://web.archive.org/web/20250107144929/https://blocktogether.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250107144929/https://blocktoge... https://web.archive.org/web/20241230160146/https://gardenfence.github.io/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241230160146/https://gardenfen... folks just get riled up when their diatribes don't get traction
rsynnott 2y ago
Shared blocklists are older than social media; in particular see USENET killfiles, which were often shared. More recently, you had user-made shared blocklists on Twitter until Musk broke the API. There’s nothing particularly new about them, though having them as a convenient first-class feature is somewhat new. They help make Bluesky usable; for instance I subscribe to one which nukes transphobes, because, really, I do not have the patience to listen to their One Joke anymore, thanks. And another which warns on people with AI-generated profile pics (these are virtually always some form of scammer, or, worse, AI evangelists). The blocklists are not mandatory.
- likeabatterycar 2y ago
  Interesting how the concept of blacklisting was so horrifying to people that they immediately changed their vocabulary, code, and even broke APIs (despite the origins predating unrelated current events by hundreds of years) only to immediately turn around and justify the newly christened "blocklist" as a great thing we should all embrace.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    [flagged]
continue-100 2y ago
https://sites.google.com/view/sources-why-we-hate-each-other/ https://sites.google.com/view/sources-why-we-hate-each-other... § The Myth of the Filter Bubble
KaiserPro 2y ago
Everyone in life has a blocklist, and they are shared. You have a list of public people that piss you off and avoid, when you are asked about them you say "ugh I don't like x because". Now, you might get someone say "dont be mean about x, they had y, which is why they did z" and you might accept or reject the point they made. However that person is unlikely to blast you with content or facts to do with said public figure, unless they want to drive you away. It is part of human nature, infact its the basis of society. The only way we can function is by having effective way to have some shared core "principles" (formally around religion, feudal chiefs, now around semi cult leaders) This means rejecting other ideas as heretical. (see civil rights marches, universal suffrage, silver/gold standard the fracturing of protestantism)
AndyNemmity 2y ago
Twitter had shared block lists for a long time before they were removed. Twitter was better then. We don't have to guess how that works, it existed.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  Better for you? Better for discourse? Better for protecting your echo chamber from things that might challenge you?
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    See, the thing is, I do not wish to hear from idiots. Life is too bloody short. This is how normal in-person social interaction works too, by the way. If you’re in a pub and someone comes up and starts ranting at you about how the pizza restaurant basements are turning the frogs gay, you’re probably not going to engage them. And if they keep at it, they’ll probably get kicked out. The internet is full of people who (a) insane, and (b) insane in a very boring, same-y way. Filtering these people out is _fine_. There is no moral obligation to listen to every ranting idiot who comes along.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Yeah this is the thing. I see the same here in Holland since the extreme-right won the elections. People are constantly dragging up topics like transsexuality in completely unrelated discussions. I completely disagree with their opinion and I like challenging them on it (for example, what is it to them what other people do with their bodies?). They've never been able to give me a good answer to that so far. But they're constantly derailing topics about completely different things. They seem so obsessed with this topic. It's also getting so tediously repetitive. Always the same slurs without any kind of actual discussion. The thing is, here in the Netherlands we used to have 'echo chambering' as the foundation for the country. We used to call it 'verzuiling' (literally translated "pillarification"). After the war the country was made up of several groups that didn't get along so well so each had their own newspapers, social circles, TV and radio broadcasters etc. There were the Catholics, the super-strict Calvinists, the Labour/progressive atheist crowd etc. They basically lived alongside without really interacting. And really, lately I'm starting to think this was not such a bad idea at all.

crznp 2y ago

I largely agree, but it is odd to write that column and not mention Mastodon/ActivityPub. On one hand, it is another alternative if Bluesky falls, but on the other hand I feel like the algorithm makes it a different sort of community.

CharlesW 2y ago
> I largely agree, but it is odd to write that column and not mention Mastodon/ActivityPub. Is that an omission, or is that because Mastodon is already in the process of "establishing a new legal home for Mastodon and transferring ownership and stewardship"¹, and because ActivityPub was published as a W3C Recommendation back in 2018? ¹ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-...
verdverm 2y ago
Mastadon is too complicated for your average, non-technical user. There is also the issue that your account is tied to a specific server and migration means you lose your followers. Discovery and server DDoS on a viral post are also challenges for the way ActivityPub was architected. ATProto is still young, even compared to ActivityPub. It will continue to evolve and improve. It certainly has the momentum compared to ActivityPub
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > Mastadon is too complicated for your average, non-technical user. The only headache is picking the server. If I pick one for them it's pretty smooth sailing from there. If someone can't handle the basic interface, there's a really really high chance he doesn't have much of value to say. The problem isn't that it's "complicated". It's that they have no incentive to sign up. As much as the HN crowd hates it, ads and marketing work. People went to Bluesky not because it's easier but because several famous people talked about it loudly and everyone knows the people behind the original Twitter are behind it. Marketing.
  - verdverm 2y ago

ThalesX 2y ago

[flagged]

jagger27 2y ago
[flagged]

lazzlazzlazz 2y ago

Interesting how the online left now is beginning to care about decentralizing social media again after years of deriding the topic and espousing (obviously politicized) "content moderation" efforts. Unfortunately, this is also strike in favor of the blockchain people (like Farcaster) — the best of which have been working to find ways to keep systems permanently decentralized (and not just temporarily decentralized, like Bluesky/Nostr/Mastodon/SMTP/etc.).

llvm-dev 2y ago

[dead]

adolph 2y ago

wants to create a nonprofit foundation to govern and protect the AT Protocol, outside of Bluesky the company Bluesky and Graber recognize the importance of this effort and have signaled their approval. But the point is, it can’t rely on them. What’s the point of this article? The repo is dual MIT/Apache [0]. Nothing seems to prevent the author from forking and hacking away. Just do it. 0. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto

neilv 2y ago

I can't tell why the writers feel that Bluesky's AT protocol is somehow the technologically best, or most politically strategic foundation, for a viable open mechanism for this kind of communication. This article does seem to have the effect of being an endorsement of Bluesky, though. (What I mean by endorsement: "Why would this progressive political operator be saying that we need to focus on freedom safeguards for this Bluesky platform, if it wasn't obviously the place for progressives to be. And no mention of anything else, like W3C standard ActivityPub, so that's right out. Clearly we must once again get behind a platform that someone owns. And then work from a position of weakness, like activists. Since that went so well for the co-author's former MoveOn.org, as evidenced by the incoming administration. And we can keep telling people they are under attack, and keep raising donations from them, to continue the fight.")

DeepPhilosopher 2y ago
Agreed. I don't understand why so many are choosing to rally around Bluesky and its AT Protocol, which is promising federation but has yet to deliver. Not to mention it is backed by a for-profit company that has all the incentive to enshittify much like Facebook and Twitter have. Compare this to Mastodon (which unlike Bluesky) is just one service in a sea of many others using ActivityPub (Pixelfed, PeerTube, etc) which overall makes for a much more vibrant and promising platform. And unlike Bluesky, Mastodon has put federation into action; as an anecdote, even for posts with lots of replies, I've rarely seen more than two people from the same server comment on a given post. The diversity is astounding. Mastodon is already everything everyone wants from Bluesky in this regard. To me, it just looks like everyone is getting set up again to shoot themselves in the foot much like what happened with Twitter, and I don't understand why? Is it because choosing a server is to hard or stressful?
- sumeno 2y ago
  It's because people don't care about federated services, they care about services that are easy to use and have people on them and that's bluesky right now
  - 2y ago

pornel 2y ago

They're right that they need to actually shift the power away from Bluesky and have users use other servers. The AT protocol may promise decentralisation and an insurance policy, but that is meaningless if Bluesky the company can stop using the AT protocol and survive it. As long as the majority of users use the official app and log in to the primary server with their username/password, not the protocol's private key, Bluesky isn't forced to continue using the AT protocol. They still have power to push the enshittify button, block federation, and keep users captive on the official app/website like Musk's X does.

zeckalpha 2y ago

No mention of their benefit corporation status

idlewords 2y ago

Bluesky is two completely separate things: 1) A Twitter clone without the political baggage and chaos of the current Twitter ownership. 2) A vastly overengineered distributed software system with a strong ideological commitment to federated design. There's no inherent relationship between the two, but a lot of the people who run 1 are heavily committed to 2, and so end up sowing a lot of confusion about it. I would wager that most Bluesky users don't care about it being decentralized, and in fact want a lot of features (soft block, private blocklists) that the federated design makes impossible.

enos_feedler 2y ago
I agree and don't believe 1) is the killer app for 2) but it definitely helps make 2) viable because at least there is a production social app running on it.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I got the impression from Christine Webber that the Blue sky protocol could not practically be federated, there's a bottleneck (relays iirc) that can only be properly implemented with huge resources, and which scales quadratically https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Bluesky is designed for the appearance of federation.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    Also the appearance of no political baggage, but that’s not actually true either.
- dang 2y ago
  Discussed a bit here: How decentralized is Bluesky really? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42215410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42215410 - Nov 2024 (16 comments)

EGreg 2y ago

I have been saying the same things for over a decade, and writing about it. But more importantly - I built the alternative, we’ve tested it with lots of local communities and will be going to market Nov 5th this year https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

mitchbob 2y ago

https://archive.ph/VDPuq https://archive.ph/VDPuq

tasuki 2y ago

> In terms of content moderation, posts related to child sexual abuse or terrorism are best handled by professionals trained to help keep millions or billions safe. Does that mean bluesky will somehow centrally moderate posts "related to terrorism"?

chad1n 2y ago

Who's this "we"? Is there anything that runs on the Bluesky protocol outside of the Bluesky itself which has its own extensions which can't be federated. Also, when I opened this site, all the posts were from a certain political ideology. The algorithm is probably more or less the same as Twitter in pushing contents loved by their creators.

threeseed 2y ago
> The algorithm is probably more or less the same as Twitter in pushing contents loved by their creators Do you some evidence that BlueSky owners are manipulating the feed like we know Elon has been doing with X. Because I would argue it's more just that the communities have fragmented.
hb-robo 2y ago
Considering everyone NOT in a specific ideological umbrella has been fleeing X en masse, yeah it's obviously sensible that alternative ideologies would be more present by default.

derelicta 2y ago

[flagged]

azangru 2y ago

> The internet doesn’t need to be like this. As luck would have it, a new way is emerging just in time. If you’ve heard of Bluesky... Why do they write as if activitypub and mastodon do not exist?

mxmilkiib 2y ago
don't forget SOLID from W3C! https://solidproject.org https://solidproject.org https://github.com/solid https://github.com/solid
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Perhaps because, in terms of numbers, they don't?
- archagon 2y ago
  Deceptive. Half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter now post exclusively on Mastodon.
  - jghn 2y ago
    Deceptive. While half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter moved to Mastodon, three quarters of them have either shifted to bsky or post to both via mirroring.
    - azakai 2y ago
      Aside from tech, though: practically none of the non-tech people I followed on Twitter moved to Mastodon. Almost all of them went to Bluesky. I follow a mix of people, so I ended up mostly on Bluesky. I would have been happy on Mastodon too, and I don't know why it didn't catch on with non-tech people, but it just hasn't. So Bluesky is our main opportunity for an open social web, at this time.
      - ajmurmann 2y ago
        It sounds stupid but I think the bit where you pick your host was too much for normies or led to pushing off the decision and just not joining. Even when you have an account you know have to pick a client.

softwaredoug 2y ago

With it seeming like even fewer powerful people will control how social media is moderated, as they say depending on the “policy environment” there’s never been a more important time to work towards distributed social media.

browningstreet 2y ago

I lost interest in Bluesky when I got an “account required” blocker after I clicked on a Bluesky post link. UPDATE: OK, didn't realize it was a configurable setting. I guess I ran into it a few times and assumed it was a default block. Thanks for the clarification.

excerionsforte 2y ago
Interesting given I can access this[1] without an account. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lfdzltlsik2i https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lfdz...
Starlevel004 2y ago
This is a per-account flag that's only honoured by the official web app and some third party ones
- dymk 2y ago
  I don't know if "only" is the right adverb to use when it's how the first-party apps and website works. I don't know what usage looks like for third-party sites, but I would imagine it's incredibly small compared to bsky.app, and it's nearly everyone's first impression of Bluesky.
TZubiri 2y ago
What's wrong with requiring an account to view some content? Does everything need to be 100% public? What if I want to post somewhat private thoughts or images and restrict the content in some manner?
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  AT proto is a cleartext protocol, hiding content is a matter of clients respecting a flag, a false sense of privacy. If you want to restrict the audience of a post, you should post it encrypted and send keys to intended recipients

mystified5016 2y ago

Framing bluesky as a "competitor" to mastodon makes about as much sense as framing a quarterback making the winning run as "beating" the kid drawing clouds in the bleachers. They're in the same general space, but only one is playing the game.

RobotToaster 2y ago

Why would we want to protect a protocol that isn't federated in any meaningful way?

deyom78042 2y ago

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mindcrash 2y ago

The protocol is protected. https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/ "Dual MIT/Apache-2.0 License Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Bluesky PBC, and Contributors Except as otherwise noted in individual files, this software is licensed under the MIT license (<http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>), or the Apache License, Version 2.0 (<http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>). Downstream projects and end users may chose either license individually, or both together, at their discretion. The motivation for this dual-licensing is the additional software patent assurance provided by Apache 2.0." Even when Bluesky decides to fuck around with the licenses, everybody is free to fork the current version crediting Bluesky PBC due to the MIT and Apache 2.0 license allowing this. And besides that, the community could also decide not to support AT at all but put their full weight behind Nostr (https://nostr.com/ https://nostr.com/) UPDATE: And the protocol spec is licensed under Creative Commons: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/ "Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Bluesky PBC, and Contributors Documentation text and blog posts in this repository are licensed under a permissive CC-BY license. For anybody interested in derivative works of documents and specifications, remember that: - you must give attribution (credit) to the original work - you must indicate any changes made - trademark rights are not granted (for example, to "Bluesky", "AT Protocol", or "atproto", or any logos or icons) Inline code examples, example data, and regular expressions are under Creative Commons Zero (CC-0, aka Public Domain) and copy/pasted without attribution."

seydor 2y ago

At this point in history it's wrong to suggest that any mass communication medium can be non-politicized

poszlem 2y ago
And using BlueSky as an example of a "non-politicized" platform is even more inaccurate.
- hb-robo 2y ago
  It's politicized by default when it stands in opposition to the most blatantly ideologically slanted social media site in existence this side of Gab and Truth Social.
threeseed 2y ago
You can. Threads achieved this for a while before Zuckerberg capitulated. All you need to do is down-rank political content in general and prevent it from appearing in For You type feeds. Then it just becomes a case of people needing to specifically follow political content which heavily limits its reach.
- rexpop 2y ago
  Down-ranking "political content" requires a definition of "politics" which is, inherently, an ideological posture, QED all content that remains is "political content." It's an oxymoron.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Like I said Threads did this and it was effective. So much so all the journalists left for BlueSky and they have had to reverse it.

consumerx 2y ago

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captainepoch 2y ago

Pure Bluesky endorsement from a MIT blog. ActivityPub, Pleroma and Mastodon existed before this, and they just work.

aussieguy1234 2y ago

I'll bet that most who casually encounter hate speech/far right content on X, Meta or other platforms are not far-right and don't actually want to see or be influenced by it. It likely creates a negative user experience for them. However powerful the X/Meta AI feed algorithms are at surfacing content people are interested in, it all counts for nothing if people see content that they find repulsive. Its not just far right content, disturbing content in general gets more engagement and is surfaced in feeds. BlueSky and its AT Protocol, by putting moderation back into the hands of the user, allows people to see the content they want and not what they don't want, making for a much better and more positive user experience. I predict that this means that at some point, it will take over as the dominant social media platform. There are already multiple startups with VC funding building things on the AT Protocol. As for the moment, whenever someone complains to me about toxicity in social media on X/Facebook or whatever platform they are using, I recommend BlueSky and advise others to do the same. Word of mouth spread is powerful.

camgunz 2y ago

I guess this is a "oh Twitter got bought and TikTok got shutdown for a day, so we need a free Twitter/TikTok that wouldn't have any of these problems" response? It's a pretty inane article that provides no solutions. Twitter got bought and TikTok got made because attention is valuable. There's ads/enshittification because a service like this is expensive to run, also you want to raise money for new features, also greed is a thing. TFA wrestles with none of this? At least like, consider nationalization or some kind of nationalized e2e platform. Aren't we wishcasting after all?