4 ms·

It’s arguably much easier to solve the UX issues when you are designing a centralized service, which is what Bluesky is.

by zoul 1y ago

K0nserv 1y ago
I agree the UX challenge is much more challenging for decentralised services. I don't know enough about Bluesky to really comment on whether it is centralised or not. Regardless, I think there's another thing that helped Bluesky: VC capital. In particular, to hire people to work on UX. It's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I find it strange that designer don't contribute more to projects like Mastodon, which definitely need it. Even from the selfish angle of building a portfolio, helping solve Mastodon's UX challenges is much more impressive and realistic, than doing the millionth redesign of Gmail that will never get implemented.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  It's a "distributed protocol" but there's really only a single server using it.
ronsor 1y ago
It is easier, but it's still possible to solve the UX issues with a decentralized service, in my opinion. What I think is the main issue is that these decentralized services are made by programmers with little regard or intuition for UX, and there is also a lack of funding to work on UX problems.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
People are running every element of the Bluesky / AtProtocol stack independently. Bluesky could disappear and it would continue to function as is (albeit with lots of Bluesky data lost). PDS's to hold users data, relays/firehoses to aggregate & forward traffic, AppViews to create composite views of likes, replies, etc, resolvers to lookup DIDs, clients to access the network. Each of these has independent implementations. BlueSky is already decentralized & already has viable credible exit. It's not decentralized, and indeed the scalability & accessibility of having firehose consumers has the greatest scale out decentralization characteristics we've seen anywhere short of BitTorrent.
- fluoridation 1y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. I tried it the other day and this is indeed how it works. I could even see my home traffic rise and fall over the course of the day in time with activity on the network.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
    It seems quite reliable that Bluesky gets down voted. Whether it's mastodon/Fediverse folk or right wing pro twitter philes or both, I dunno, but it sucks to have aggressors out there, dark forest freaks sniping away. I try very hard to find the positive & to upvote things I don't fully agree with, if well argued. I wish the social network of HN could do more against adversarial zero-sim thinking, didn't have people who insist on draining.
hahajk 1y ago
Arguable indeed: plenty of email clients have great UI. Both RSS readers I used are better than Facebook.

It’s arguably much easier to solve the UX issues when you are designing a centralized service, which is what Bluesky is.

by zoul 1y ago

It’s arguably much easier to solve the UX issues when you are designing a centralized service, which is what Bluesky is.

K0nserv 1y ago

I agree the UX challenge is much more challenging for decentralised services. I don't know enough about Bluesky to really comment on whether it is centralised or not. Regardless, I think there's another thing that helped Bluesky: VC capital. In particular, to hire people to work on UX. It's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I find it strange that designer don't contribute more to projects like Mastodon, which definitely need it. Even from the selfish angle of building a portfolio, helping solve Mastodon's UX challenges is much more impressive and realistic, than doing the millionth redesign of Gmail that will never get implemented.

estimator7292 1y ago
It's a "distributed protocol" but there's really only a single server using it.

ronsor 1y ago

It is easier, but it's still possible to solve the UX issues with a decentralized service, in my opinion. What I think is the main issue is that these decentralized services are made by programmers with little regard or intuition for UX, and there is also a lack of funding to work on UX problems.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

People are running every element of the Bluesky / AtProtocol stack independently. Bluesky could disappear and it would continue to function as is (albeit with lots of Bluesky data lost). PDS's to hold users data, relays/firehoses to aggregate & forward traffic, AppViews to create composite views of likes, replies, etc, resolvers to lookup DIDs, clients to access the network. Each of these has independent implementations. BlueSky is already decentralized & already has viable credible exit. It's not decentralized, and indeed the scalability & accessibility of having firehose consumers has the greatest scale out decentralization characteristics we've seen anywhere short of BitTorrent.

fluoridation 1y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. I tried it the other day and this is indeed how it works. I could even see my home traffic rise and fall over the course of the day in time with activity on the network.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  It seems quite reliable that Bluesky gets down voted. Whether it's mastodon/Fediverse folk or right wing pro twitter philes or both, I dunno, but it sucks to have aggressors out there, dark forest freaks sniping away. I try very hard to find the positive & to upvote things I don't fully agree with, if well argued. I wish the social network of HN could do more against adversarial zero-sim thinking, didn't have people who insist on draining.

hahajk 1y ago

Arguable indeed: plenty of email clients have great UI. Both RSS readers I used are better than Facebook.