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Sadly, it's hard to imagine a world where something like this will ever catch on. The target audience for "traditional" social media is very different from the

Sadly, it's hard to imagine a world where something like this will ever catch on. The target audience for "traditional" social media is very different from the niche of people who want decentralized social media. Most people just use social media as a means to an end and don't really care about the systems behind it. If the answer is that most people should just make a bluesky account, that defeats the whole purpose because then everyone will still be on one or two large providers.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
Unfortunately, yes. The problem is, basically, people.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
mozzius 1y ago
Even if everyone is on bsky.social, that's still a huge improvement on the status quo. It's not like the web isn't decentralised just because lots of people are on AWS - you can move away at any moment, adversarially if necessary.
- Kye 1y ago
  Looking forward to the future where an app just sort of silently backs up your PDS/keys on your device until the day you need it and everyone finds out they can log into whatever platform replaces the one that blew up like nothing happened.
dingnuts 1y ago
[flagged]
- fruitworks 1y ago
  u mad?
RobotToaster 1y ago
AFAIK bluesky isn't even properly federated yet, everything relies on a single "BGS" router server.
- mozzius 1y ago
  Not true, there are many independent relays (one went online today, in fact: https://bsky.app/profile/upcloud.com/post/3lzqkrrqap22n https://bsky.app/profile/upcloud.com/post/3lzqkrrqap22n). This also completely misunderstands the architecture. Things don't hinge on the relays at all and they don't act as routers.
- danabramov 1y ago
  This is misleading. I’m not sure if you’ve read the article so it’s difficult to elaborate — it aims to explain precisely that. There isn’t such a thing as “Bluesky getting federated” — that doesn’t on its own mean anything. In Mastodon world, “getting federated” means many copies of the same webapp emailing each other. In atproto, you don’t create many copies of the same app. Instead, it’s shaped like the web — individual users can host their data in different places, and apps aggregate over that data. There’s no point in having many copies of the same app. The BGS server you’re referring to is the “relay” mentioned in the article. Running your own relay is possible (Blacksky does it, as mentioned in the article). It costs about $30/mo with the current traffic. However, note that a relay is very dumb (it’s just a retransmitter of signed JSON over websocket). It’s cool that anyone can run one but by itself this isn’t a vanity metric to chase. We’ll probably see more independent relays but usually someone would run one for a reason — to insulate a company or a community from upstream failures, or maybe to censor things (in repressive governments).
dangus 1y ago
I think the other issue here is that there's a serious question of why bother "upgrading" your social media from closed to open when we've all figured out that it's bad for you, worsens your mood, and generally wastes your time? If I'm going to delete my Facebook/Instagram account then why am I trying to pick up a new drug to replace it?
- krapp 1y ago
  Social media is just a paradigm for multimedia communication and networking over the internet. It isn't inherently good or bad, any more than telephones, television, radio or the internet itself. I think many people find social media useful. If you aren't one of those people, fair enough. But not everyone is angry and addicted all the time.
  - bluebarbet 1y ago
    For a significant subset of users - younger people and children - a consensus is forming among specialists that social media is indeed inherently bad.
    - krapp 1y ago
      They said the same thing about video games, and the internet as a whole, and cellphones, and television, and magazines. I'm not going to claim that social media can't have negative consequences for young people, lots of things do. But the hyperbole behind the discourse makes it obvious there is also a moral panic at work. In every case, technology is blamed for a failure of society's responsibility to educate and raise children properly.
      - dangus 1y ago
        IIRC peer reviewed scientific study was not saying that about video games, it was other less thoroughly researched sources and/or propaganda groups.
  - dangus 1y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago

Unfortunately, yes. The problem is, basically, people.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

mozzius 1y ago

Even if everyone is on bsky.social, that's still a huge improvement on the status quo. It's not like the web isn't decentralised just because lots of people are on AWS - you can move away at any moment, adversarially if necessary.

Kye 1y ago
Looking forward to the future where an app just sort of silently backs up your PDS/keys on your device until the day you need it and everyone finds out they can log into whatever platform replaces the one that blew up like nothing happened.

dingnuts 1y ago

[flagged]

fruitworks 1y ago
u mad?

RobotToaster 1y ago

AFAIK bluesky isn't even properly federated yet, everything relies on a single "BGS" router server.

mozzius 1y ago
Not true, there are many independent relays (one went online today, in fact: https://bsky.app/profile/upcloud.com/post/3lzqkrrqap22n https://bsky.app/profile/upcloud.com/post/3lzqkrrqap22n). This also completely misunderstands the architecture. Things don't hinge on the relays at all and they don't act as routers.
danabramov 1y ago
This is misleading. I’m not sure if you’ve read the article so it’s difficult to elaborate — it aims to explain precisely that. There isn’t such a thing as “Bluesky getting federated” — that doesn’t on its own mean anything. In Mastodon world, “getting federated” means many copies of the same webapp emailing each other. In atproto, you don’t create many copies of the same app. Instead, it’s shaped like the web — individual users can host their data in different places, and apps aggregate over that data. There’s no point in having many copies of the same app. The BGS server you’re referring to is the “relay” mentioned in the article. Running your own relay is possible (Blacksky does it, as mentioned in the article). It costs about $30/mo with the current traffic. However, note that a relay is very dumb (it’s just a retransmitter of signed JSON over websocket). It’s cool that anyone can run one but by itself this isn’t a vanity metric to chase. We’ll probably see more independent relays but usually someone would run one for a reason — to insulate a company or a community from upstream failures, or maybe to censor things (in repressive governments).

dangus 1y ago

I think the other issue here is that there's a serious question of why bother "upgrading" your social media from closed to open when we've all figured out that it's bad for you, worsens your mood, and generally wastes your time? If I'm going to delete my Facebook/Instagram account then why am I trying to pick up a new drug to replace it?

krapp 1y ago
Social media is just a paradigm for multimedia communication and networking over the internet. It isn't inherently good or bad, any more than telephones, television, radio or the internet itself. I think many people find social media useful. If you aren't one of those people, fair enough. But not everyone is angry and addicted all the time.
- bluebarbet 1y ago
  For a significant subset of users - younger people and children - a consensus is forming among specialists that social media is indeed inherently bad.
  - krapp 1y ago
    They said the same thing about video games, and the internet as a whole, and cellphones, and television, and magazines. I'm not going to claim that social media can't have negative consequences for young people, lots of things do. But the hyperbole behind the discourse makes it obvious there is also a moral panic at work. In every case, technology is blamed for a failure of society's responsibility to educate and raise children properly.
    - dangus 1y ago
      IIRC peer reviewed scientific study was not saying that about video games, it was other less thoroughly researched sources and/or propaganda groups.
- dangus 1y ago