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> I wrote this other comment that I think does well to address this misconception: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48601998 https://news.ycombinator.com/it

by jchw 4mo ago

> I wrote this other comment that I think does well to address this misconception: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48601998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48601998 OK, but that raises a question. Can I do that right now? If so, I don't understand why more people are doing this. When I looked into this I definitely didn't see anything like this. > And an account tied to exactly one of them, that is a pain to migrate if it's even possible with the ActivityPub application you use. This causes decision paralysis and dissuades most people from even considering joining. I like the concept of W3C DIDs, but it's a little soured for me that there was no real solution to the PLC DID problem. It is, quite literally, the exact opposite of being decentralized. (IIRC they do support one of the other DID methods, but it's not default, and I couldn't figure out how.) Which seems like a common theme. You can absolutely fix the downsides of the Fediverse, it just requires you to reduce how decentralized the network is :) > Within what is effectively a rounding error, everyone that uses ActivityPub uses Threads. Blacksky is definitely a larger percentage of the ATProto network than mastodon.social is of the ActivityPub network. While this is technically correct, Threads is not widely considered an instance in the Fediverse and is missing in "instance lists". Threads is less like a part of the Fediverse and more like a centralized social media service service that supports interoperability with ActivityPub. > True! Just like if there were hypothetically only two ATProto applications, that would not be very interesting. I think I've used four or five ATProto applications with my identity? Pretty cool stuff! This is cool but not relevant. I'm more specifically talking about Bluesky vs the Fediverse here, when referring to the protocols. Obviously there are also uses of ActivityPub that are not Mastodon/Misskey as well. I haven't seen another ATProto application that I found interesting enough to try yet. > There is nothing in the protocol enforcing this and this expectation has been broken in the past. > https://github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/issues/2224 https://github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/issues/2224 I never suggested it was literally impossible for someone to do it... but the concept of a "Mastodon" app is inherently agnostic to the instance in a way that Bluesky's apps are not. > This is in addition to the fact that "clients" in ActivityPub extend to the monolithic instance itself, and therefore is also broken by the very "defederation" you already mentioned! Sure. I'm suggesting you can't actually have decentralization without the possibility of all of ActivityPub's downsides. You can't use technical means to fix the social problems with decentralization; you can only defacto centralize things. > I am very familiar with ActivityPub. I don't hate it. I ran multiple instances for years (one for my friends, and one for my family). ATProto is simply more flexible (allows applications to scale up to provide an experience that one would expect coming from centralized applications) and easier for non-technical people to use. And it's decentralized, which is awesome. ATProto is decentralized, at least to some extent. Bluesky isn't really, though.

Zambyte 4mo ago
You're refusing to look at the ATmosphere network and instead compare Bluesky to the Fediverse. I can instead compare mastoson.social to the ATmosphere and draw the inverse conclusions. What's the point?
- jchw 4mo ago
  Uhhh, I'm comparing Bluesky to the Fediverse because that's the main applications of ActivityPub and ATProto? I don't care about the broader ATmosphere. How is comparing Mastodon/the Fediverse and Bluesky unfair? Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized by suggesting the AP analog of Bluesky is the largest Mastodon instance rather than the federation of them? This seems to contradict what you and much of the marketing around Bluesky says.
  - Zambyte 4mo ago
    Where do I login to the Fediverse? It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to ATProto. It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to Bluesky? https://bsky.app https://bsky.app Where do I login to Mastodon.social? https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social People use apps, not networks of apps. Saying you don't care about the broader ATmosphere is exactly the same as saying you don't care about the broader Fediverse. That's fine, but then let's compare apps to apps instead of an app to a network. How does bsky.app compare against mastodon.social? (Actually let's not do that, because comparing a single app in a decentralized network to a single app in another decentralized network is pretty boring). > Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized The data is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). The user identity is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). Moderation is meaningfully decentralized (similarly to AP apps). Independently developed applications are meaningfully interoperable (more so than most AP apps, especially leveraging DIDs). People can and do run their own AT infrastructure all the time. Ask questions instead of trying to pin people with gotchas based on incorrect assumptions.
    - 4mo ago

by jchw 4mo ago

Zambyte 4mo ago

You're refusing to look at the ATmosphere network and instead compare Bluesky to the Fediverse. I can instead compare mastoson.social to the ATmosphere and draw the inverse conclusions. What's the point?

jchw 4mo ago
Uhhh, I'm comparing Bluesky to the Fediverse because that's the main applications of ActivityPub and ATProto? I don't care about the broader ATmosphere. How is comparing Mastodon/the Fediverse and Bluesky unfair? Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized by suggesting the AP analog of Bluesky is the largest Mastodon instance rather than the federation of them? This seems to contradict what you and much of the marketing around Bluesky says.
- Zambyte 4mo ago
  Where do I login to the Fediverse? It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to ATProto. It's not an application. It's a network of applications. Where do I login to Bluesky? https://bsky.app https://bsky.app Where do I login to Mastodon.social? https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social People use apps, not networks of apps. Saying you don't care about the broader ATmosphere is exactly the same as saying you don't care about the broader Fediverse. That's fine, but then let's compare apps to apps instead of an app to a network. How does bsky.app compare against mastodon.social? (Actually let's not do that, because comparing a single app in a decentralized network to a single app in another decentralized network is pretty boring). > Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized The data is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). The user identity is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). Moderation is meaningfully decentralized (similarly to AP apps). Independently developed applications are meaningfully interoperable (more so than most AP apps, especially leveraging DIDs). People can and do run their own AT infrastructure all the time. Ask questions instead of trying to pin people with gotchas based on incorrect assumptions.
  - 4mo ago