3 ms·

Which components are you referring to?

by edavis 1y ago

jchw 1y ago
In case of Bluesky, there will also only ever be a single instance of the App View. As far as I am aware though in practice there's really only the official relay or indexing services either.
- skybrian 1y ago
  Why can't someone run another App View?
  - jchw 1y ago
    You can, it just won't be the Bluesky App View, so it's not really Bluesky. It's not like the fediverse where the instances own the URLs of the posts: they go through app views and there's a canonical URL to a Bluesky post and that's through the official app view.
    - danabramov 1y ago
      This seems misleading. Different AppViews would obviously be branded differently, but the whole point of ATProto is that there is a shared "picture" of the world. People are running alternative AppViews that consume Bluesky posts (and serve Bluesky threads). Here's the same thread on three different AppViews: - https://zeppelin.social/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://zeppelin.social/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu... - https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbo... - https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/po... These are three independent webapps indexing the same information and serving it independently. They're not different frontends for one API; these are all independent backends.
      - fluoridation 1y ago
        So, it's the same underlying data structures (e.g. posts, threads, etc.), and the way they're exposed depends on the implementation? So there's one BlueSky, but BlueSky is just one interface (UI + API). Am I getting this right? I just want to know if I can run my own node in my own hardware.
        danabramov 1y ago
        You can think of ATProto like this. Each user has a "website" with JSON of their own content (e.g. all my posts, all my likes, all my follows, actually live in a sqlite database hosted somewhere). It's not really a website but more like a git repo — one per user. And then, there's a protocol for how to aggregate information from all such "websites" in the network into a stream of changes. Apps subscribe to that stream of changes and update their local databases (which act as app-specific caches) in response to those events. When I make a Bluesky post, I'm really writing JSON into my sqlite file. This change gets broadcasted to all interested apps which update their own databases (which may or may not care about specific content type like "Bluesky post"). Obviously forks of Bluesky backend do index Bluesky posts (and then return them in the same UI), but you could imagine other backends that only care about other content types, or that record Bluesky posts but in a different database structure, and ofc can present a different UI for it. Yes, you can run your own node — multiple types of nodes. You run your own PDS (https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds) to store own data (that's the "website" in my analogy), or you could run a Relay (https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l) that collects all PDS changes into a stream, or you could run an AppView (any backend that listens to Relay or PDS, basically your own app).
      - jchw 1y ago
        OK, to be honest, I'm surprised anyone runs a third-party Bluesky AppView even just as a curiosity. I genuinely can't understand why anyone would run one of these except as a raw curiosity. If 99% of the people are using the default AppView, the default relay, the default indexers, the default PDSes, etc, etc... that just means that everything that almost the entire userbase sees is completely controlled by one entity. It's technically possible for people to use alternative services, but the community would have to wrestle the majority control of the network away from Bluesky Social PBC for it to really matter. Running an alternate PDS or even AppView seems like mostly a symbolic gesture since whether anyone can actually see your posts is still up to the whims of one entity, just like Twitter, and that's partly because there's no way to really "own" the URLs of your posts or profile. The canonical URLs are one domain owned by one company. The others are just alternatives. But: > the whole point of ATProto is that there is a shared "picture" of the world I think everyone does understand that ATProto "solves" some of the problems with decentralization that you can observe from the Fediverse, but when you look at the practical reality of ATProto, it's hard to figure out exactly what aspect of decentralization users are supposed to be able to still benefit from. The whole thing could be re-centralized and literally 99% of all users wouldn't notice anything different. If you get censored by the entity running the primary AppView, or even deeper, you could theoretically run all of your own components... but then you'd just be talking to pretty much yourself. Even if you did succeed and somehow wrestled away a substantial portion of users, (which would be extremely expensive and impractical), now you just have the same split world that exists in the Fediverse, but with AppViews/moderation services. It kinda seems like the "shared picture of the world" concept is actually somewhat incompatible with having an actual decentralized network where users meaningfully have control. P.S.: I know that mentioning censorship is automatically polarizing, but with Bluesky I really feel like I have good reason. I tried Bluesky briefly a long while back just out of raw curiosity, and I actually managed to get my account taken down with zero posts. I literally was just following some artists, mostly Japanese, and I assume one of them got banned for something NSFW. I'm not even sure I liked any posts that were NSFW. Needless to say once I got unbanned I just deleted my account and gave up on it. I wasn't really planning on using it for anything, so it's not like I am horribly offended by this, but it definitely gave me an idea of how Bluesky Social PBC moderates. No thanks.
  - throawayonthe 1y ago
    there is https://deer.social https://deer.social
    - danabramov 1y ago
      This one isn't an AppView (it's a frontend for Bluesky's). However, https://blacksky.community/ https://blacksky.community/ and https://zeppelin.social/ https://zeppelin.social/ are full AppViews.
      - danabramov 1y ago
        Correction: Only https://zeppelin.social https://zeppelin.social is. Blacksky runs a PDS and a Relay but not an AppView. My apologies.

Which components are you referring to?

by edavis 1y ago

Which components are you referring to?

jchw 1y ago

In case of Bluesky, there will also only ever be a single instance of the App View. As far as I am aware though in practice there's really only the official relay or indexing services either.

skybrian 1y ago
Why can't someone run another App View?
- jchw 1y ago
  You can, it just won't be the Bluesky App View, so it's not really Bluesky. It's not like the fediverse where the instances own the URLs of the posts: they go through app views and there's a canonical URL to a Bluesky post and that's through the official app view.
  - danabramov 1y ago
    This seems misleading. Different AppViews would obviously be branded differently, but the whole point of ATProto is that there is a shared "picture" of the world. People are running alternative AppViews that consume Bluesky posts (and serve Bluesky threads). Here's the same thread on three different AppViews: - https://zeppelin.social/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://zeppelin.social/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu... - https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbo... - https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/post/3lxlbv2jddk22 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iyz5zf463ic52vqbonyu2ebu/po... These are three independent webapps indexing the same information and serving it independently. They're not different frontends for one API; these are all independent backends.
    - fluoridation 1y ago
      So, it's the same underlying data structures (e.g. posts, threads, etc.), and the way they're exposed depends on the implementation? So there's one BlueSky, but BlueSky is just one interface (UI + API). Am I getting this right? I just want to know if I can run my own node in my own hardware.
      - danabramov 1y ago
        You can think of ATProto like this. Each user has a "website" with JSON of their own content (e.g. all my posts, all my likes, all my follows, actually live in a sqlite database hosted somewhere). It's not really a website but more like a git repo — one per user. And then, there's a protocol for how to aggregate information from all such "websites" in the network into a stream of changes. Apps subscribe to that stream of changes and update their local databases (which act as app-specific caches) in response to those events. When I make a Bluesky post, I'm really writing JSON into my sqlite file. This change gets broadcasted to all interested apps which update their own databases (which may or may not care about specific content type like "Bluesky post"). Obviously forks of Bluesky backend do index Bluesky posts (and then return them in the same UI), but you could imagine other backends that only care about other content types, or that record Bluesky posts but in a different database structure, and ofc can present a different UI for it. Yes, you can run your own node — multiple types of nodes. You run your own PDS (https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds) to store own data (that's the "website" in my analogy), or you could run a Relay (https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l) that collects all PDS changes into a stream, or you could run an AppView (any backend that listens to Relay or PDS, basically your own app).
    - jchw 1y ago
      OK, to be honest, I'm surprised anyone runs a third-party Bluesky AppView even just as a curiosity. I genuinely can't understand why anyone would run one of these except as a raw curiosity. If 99% of the people are using the default AppView, the default relay, the default indexers, the default PDSes, etc, etc... that just means that everything that almost the entire userbase sees is completely controlled by one entity. It's technically possible for people to use alternative services, but the community would have to wrestle the majority control of the network away from Bluesky Social PBC for it to really matter. Running an alternate PDS or even AppView seems like mostly a symbolic gesture since whether anyone can actually see your posts is still up to the whims of one entity, just like Twitter, and that's partly because there's no way to really "own" the URLs of your posts or profile. The canonical URLs are one domain owned by one company. The others are just alternatives. But: > the whole point of ATProto is that there is a shared "picture" of the world I think everyone does understand that ATProto "solves" some of the problems with decentralization that you can observe from the Fediverse, but when you look at the practical reality of ATProto, it's hard to figure out exactly what aspect of decentralization users are supposed to be able to still benefit from. The whole thing could be re-centralized and literally 99% of all users wouldn't notice anything different. If you get censored by the entity running the primary AppView, or even deeper, you could theoretically run all of your own components... but then you'd just be talking to pretty much yourself. Even if you did succeed and somehow wrestled away a substantial portion of users, (which would be extremely expensive and impractical), now you just have the same split world that exists in the Fediverse, but with AppViews/moderation services. It kinda seems like the "shared picture of the world" concept is actually somewhat incompatible with having an actual decentralized network where users meaningfully have control. P.S.: I know that mentioning censorship is automatically polarizing, but with Bluesky I really feel like I have good reason. I tried Bluesky briefly a long while back just out of raw curiosity, and I actually managed to get my account taken down with zero posts. I literally was just following some artists, mostly Japanese, and I assume one of them got banned for something NSFW. I'm not even sure I liked any posts that were NSFW. Needless to say once I got unbanned I just deleted my account and gave up on it. I wasn't really planning on using it for anything, so it's not like I am horribly offended by this, but it definitely gave me an idea of how Bluesky Social PBC moderates. No thanks.
- throawayonthe 1y ago
  there is https://deer.social https://deer.social
  - danabramov 1y ago
    This one isn't an AppView (it's a frontend for Bluesky's). However, https://blacksky.community/ https://blacksky.community/ and https://zeppelin.social/ https://zeppelin.social/ are full AppViews.
    - danabramov 1y ago
      Correction: Only https://zeppelin.social https://zeppelin.social is. Blacksky runs a PDS and a Relay but not an AppView. My apologies.