5 ms·

So the plan is moving from a centralised platform to another centralised platform? As a loop? :)

throwaway150 2y ago
This is something I don't understand either. Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? Sounds counterproductive to me. Btw do you have any good suggestions for distributed platforms? Would Mastodon be considered a distributed platform?
- matijao 2y ago
  https://nostr.com https://nostr.com
- skybrian 2y ago
  Maybe they don’t care as much as you do about whether a service is decentralized?
- diggan 2y ago
  > Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? Personally, I'm eager because it's not just another centralized platform but a sufficiently distributed one. Most of the infrastructure you need for ATProto, you can run yourself today. Mastodon/ActivityPub is neat too, but personally I don't find it as easy to find interesting stuff there, especially if you try to run your own solo instance and need to make sure you connect to interesting parts of the ActivityPub-net.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    > Most of the infrastructure you need for ATProto, you can run yourself today. Citation needed. Without the AppView and their relays you are left only with your identity and your data, which by itself is not a social media/messaging platform.
    - pfraze 2y ago
      …both of which you can run yourself
      - what 2y ago
        And how much would it cost me to run the app view?
        verdverm 2y ago
        An AppView is a bit more than just the code. In example, you have to do moderation, which involves paying people for a thankless, awful task. (unless you are just a thin client to Bluesky records and rely on their moderation)
      - riffraff 2y ago
        As I understand it, there's an argument that while in theory you can, in practice you cannot so easily, e.g. you needed 5 terabyte of storage for a relay already some months ago. I think this[0] was on HN some time ago with good reasoning about bluesky offering a "potentially decentralized enough" while not actually being so. 0: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
        pjc50 2y ago
        > you needed 5 terabyte of storage for a relay I have sixteen terabytes mirrored sitting next to my television. It's 2025. Sixteen terabytes is not that much any more. But rather than the only options being "global megacorp" or "individual", I think people should consider the possibility of medium-sized collective organizations for doing this kind of thing. You could club together to run a PDS. There are more options for organizational scale than "huge" or "atomized".
        DrammBA 2y ago
        > I have sixteen terabytes mirrored sitting next to my television. It's 2025. Sixteen terabytes is not that much any more. I have a 512GB laptop and a 64GB phone, that's all the local storage I own.
- wlonkly 2y ago
  > Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? There's good content there. Distributed is better than centralized, but it doesn't matter if the people I'm interested in talking to and hearing from aren't there.
- bravoetch 2y ago
  The reasons I have heard are not related to it being a centralized platform. More that people like the features of bluesky over x.
- mayneack 2y ago
  Platforms age/enshittify. Twitter wasn't the first, bluesky won't be the last.
- ibejoeb 2y ago
  There are couple of things going on in that question. 1. There's a contingent that does not like the management of X, so they want to move elsewhere. 2. The technology aspect of it is irrelevant in the decision making, because most people don't understand it. 3. Moreover, a truly free, federated system doesn't alleviate any of their complaints about the platform, because, in that case, they would be unable to effectively quarantine the others.
- ActorNightly 2y ago
  In terms of centralization, if you are in the tech sphere, you should have learned by now from the crypto fiasco that decentralization leads to abuse by people with money to game the system. But in general, if you don't understand why people are moving to Bluesky, you probably need to be more in tune with US politics and realize we have a nazi in the white house who also happens to own Twitter.
  - odo1242 2y ago
    You’re conflating decentralization with financialization. Just because something is decentralized (e.g. BitTorrent, Mastodon) doesn’t mean it’ll be abused by people with money. Decentralization just means “not keeping everything in one server / something controlled by a single person”
    - ActorNightly 2y ago
      >Decentralization just means “not keeping everything in one server / something controlled by a single person” Except that servers cost money, and internet is not free. Im all for setting up mesh networks with appropriate protocols that are truly decentralized, but people have to be willing to accept lots of pain points and slowness along the way, which quickly makes people not care.
  - borgdefenser 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - 1234letshaveatw 2y ago
    creeps want an echo chamber, got it thanks
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I don’t think they want one, they are just ending up with one naturally as the normal people leave Twitter.
    - spankalee 2y ago
- user3939382 2y ago
  AFAIK it’s SaaPS - software as a political statement
- sMarsIntruder 2y ago
  Mastodon and nostr are two good alternatives with pro and cons of course. nostr is probably and imho the best implementation, but at the moment it’s a bitcoiner echo chamber.
- pjc50 2y ago
  People want something that feels as much like Twitter as possible, without the enshittification. Both in terms of stupid UX features and stupid political features. Having been interested in how people use social communication systems since the BBS era, I'm pretty confident that most people don't really want fully distributed systems, they want a single system with good governance. Because governance is hard work and anarcholibertarianism makes it everyone's problem. However, "Exit, Voice, And Loyalty" applies here: by providing a theoretical Exit option in some sort of decentralization, even if someone never takes that option, they feel a benefit from having the option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
- alkonaut 2y ago
  Because X was (initially) good, while every attempt to make something distributed has been relatively bad. I don't really care how the platform works so long as the content is the content I want. Nor does 99% of users. And that's the precise reason the centralized platforms are the good ones: that's where people are. If a truly distributed platform could be created that had the content/people/appearance of the centralized one, then great. I'd want that. But if it would be slightly slower or harder to use, or lack the people/content of a centralized platform then I'm not interested. Decentralized could be fine for communicating with a _community_ of some kind. But that's not why I'm on X/Bluesky. It's to drink from the firehose of the current times. If something happens in the world I want to see the actual people who drive those events. Read the instant comments of the biggest most famous commenters of the same events.
ljsprague 2y ago
[flagged]
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  this is literally the only reason. talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face, sheesh
est 2y ago
the ATProto missed a lot by using websocket. If it allows polling static pages, then everyone can host their timeline on Github Pages or something. That would be much better decentralized.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
[dead]
martin82 2y ago
It's even worse... you move from a centralized platform that has reach and is highly relevant to one that has zero reach and is a closed off and completely irrelevant echo chamber.

This is something I don't understand either. Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? Sounds counterproductive to me. Btw do you have any good suggestions for distributed platforms? Would Mastodon be considered a distributed platform?

matijao 2y ago
https://nostr.com https://nostr.com
skybrian 2y ago
Maybe they don’t care as much as you do about whether a service is decentralized?
diggan 2y ago
> Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? Personally, I'm eager because it's not just another centralized platform but a sufficiently distributed one. Most of the infrastructure you need for ATProto, you can run yourself today. Mastodon/ActivityPub is neat too, but personally I don't find it as easy to find interesting stuff there, especially if you try to run your own solo instance and need to make sure you connect to interesting parts of the ActivityPub-net.
- rglullis 2y ago
  > Most of the infrastructure you need for ATProto, you can run yourself today. Citation needed. Without the AppView and their relays you are left only with your identity and your data, which by itself is not a social media/messaging platform.
  - pfraze 2y ago
    …both of which you can run yourself
    - what 2y ago
      And how much would it cost me to run the app view?
      - verdverm 2y ago
        An AppView is a bit more than just the code. In example, you have to do moderation, which involves paying people for a thankless, awful task. (unless you are just a thin client to Bluesky records and rely on their moderation)
    - riffraff 2y ago
      As I understand it, there's an argument that while in theory you can, in practice you cannot so easily, e.g. you needed 5 terabyte of storage for a relay already some months ago. I think this[0] was on HN some time ago with good reasoning about bluesky offering a "potentially decentralized enough" while not actually being so. 0: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
      - pjc50 2y ago
        > you needed 5 terabyte of storage for a relay I have sixteen terabytes mirrored sitting next to my television. It's 2025. Sixteen terabytes is not that much any more. But rather than the only options being "global megacorp" or "individual", I think people should consider the possibility of medium-sized collective organizations for doing this kind of thing. You could club together to run a PDS. There are more options for organizational scale than "huge" or "atomized".
        DrammBA 2y ago
        > I have sixteen terabytes mirrored sitting next to my television. It's 2025. Sixteen terabytes is not that much any more. I have a 512GB laptop and a 64GB phone, that's all the local storage I own.
wlonkly 2y ago
> Why is everyone so eager to move from one centralized platform to another? There's good content there. Distributed is better than centralized, but it doesn't matter if the people I'm interested in talking to and hearing from aren't there.
bravoetch 2y ago
The reasons I have heard are not related to it being a centralized platform. More that people like the features of bluesky over x.
mayneack 2y ago
Platforms age/enshittify. Twitter wasn't the first, bluesky won't be the last.
ibejoeb 2y ago
There are couple of things going on in that question. 1. There's a contingent that does not like the management of X, so they want to move elsewhere. 2. The technology aspect of it is irrelevant in the decision making, because most people don't understand it. 3. Moreover, a truly free, federated system doesn't alleviate any of their complaints about the platform, because, in that case, they would be unable to effectively quarantine the others.
ActorNightly 2y ago
In terms of centralization, if you are in the tech sphere, you should have learned by now from the crypto fiasco that decentralization leads to abuse by people with money to game the system. But in general, if you don't understand why people are moving to Bluesky, you probably need to be more in tune with US politics and realize we have a nazi in the white house who also happens to own Twitter.
- odo1242 2y ago
  You’re conflating decentralization with financialization. Just because something is decentralized (e.g. BitTorrent, Mastodon) doesn’t mean it’ll be abused by people with money. Decentralization just means “not keeping everything in one server / something controlled by a single person”
  - ActorNightly 2y ago
    >Decentralization just means “not keeping everything in one server / something controlled by a single person” Except that servers cost money, and internet is not free. Im all for setting up mesh networks with appropriate protocols that are truly decentralized, but people have to be willing to accept lots of pain points and slowness along the way, which quickly makes people not care.
- borgdefenser 2y ago
  [flagged]
- 1234letshaveatw 2y ago
  creeps want an echo chamber, got it thanks
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I don’t think they want one, they are just ending up with one naturally as the normal people leave Twitter.
  - spankalee 2y ago
user3939382 2y ago
AFAIK it’s SaaPS - software as a political statement
sMarsIntruder 2y ago
Mastodon and nostr are two good alternatives with pro and cons of course. nostr is probably and imho the best implementation, but at the moment it’s a bitcoiner echo chamber.
pjc50 2y ago
People want something that feels as much like Twitter as possible, without the enshittification. Both in terms of stupid UX features and stupid political features. Having been interested in how people use social communication systems since the BBS era, I'm pretty confident that most people don't really want fully distributed systems, they want a single system with good governance. Because governance is hard work and anarcholibertarianism makes it everyone's problem. However, "Exit, Voice, And Loyalty" applies here: by providing a theoretical Exit option in some sort of decentralization, even if someone never takes that option, they feel a benefit from having the option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
alkonaut 2y ago
Because X was (initially) good, while every attempt to make something distributed has been relatively bad. I don't really care how the platform works so long as the content is the content I want. Nor does 99% of users. And that's the precise reason the centralized platforms are the good ones: that's where people are. If a truly distributed platform could be created that had the content/people/appearance of the centralized one, then great. I'd want that. But if it would be slightly slower or harder to use, or lack the people/content of a centralized platform then I'm not interested. Decentralized could be fine for communicating with a _community_ of some kind. But that's not why I'm on X/Bluesky. It's to drink from the firehose of the current times. If something happens in the world I want to see the actual people who drive those events. Read the instant comments of the biggest most famous commenters of the same events.

ljsprague 2y ago

[flagged]

stronglikedan 2y ago
this is literally the only reason. talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face, sheesh

est 2y ago

the ATProto missed a lot by using websocket. If it allows polling static pages, then everyone can host their timeline on Github Pages or something. That would be much better decentralized.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

[dead]

martin82 2y ago

It's even worse... you move from a centralized platform that has reach and is highly relevant to one that has zero reach and is a closed off and completely irrelevant echo chamber.