4 ms·

Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.

by eqvinox 3mo ago

fsflover 3mo ago
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/ https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
- master-lincoln 3mo ago
  actually, you did not respond to what parent said. How is the standardization process related to joining the network?
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- p-e-w 3mo ago
  The single point of failure is always the biggest instances or communities, which impose their rules on everyone else under threat of refusing to communicate with them. This has happened with every single federated platform, and it can’t be solved with technology because it’s fundamentally not a technology problem. People want to be where other people are, so once the community reaches a critical mass it inevitably degrades into the same sump of mediocrities and their rules as everything else.
  - fsflover 3mo ago
    > This has happened with every single federated platform It didn't happen with the internet itself. You still can avoid Facebook and co. and happily discuss things on HN. And with the email, it is much less serious than people assume. I do not use gmail or MS and practically nobody I talk to does.
  - Quothling 3mo ago
    I think you will find that a lot of people find that to be a feature of the federated networks. It's how society works outside of social networks. You aren't likely to see football fans of different teams sharing pubs here in Europe. You wouldn't see judgemental people be allowed in accepting roleplaying communities and so on. Why would a network of community controlled servers be any different than this? IRC was like this, Discord is like this. When you give people control they are going to kick out the opinions and people they don't want around. If you find yourself on the outside, it might just be that you're the village idiot. Before SoMe platforms like twitter, facebook and other places without local moderation the village idiot didn't have much of a voice either.
    - bbg2401 3mo ago
      The village idiot analogy is misguided and unnecessarily accusatory. However, I do feel internet communities were better when they were smaller due to being special interest driven and self-policing. People wore different hats according to the community they were engaging with.
      - darkwater 3mo ago
        There was a very steep curve to access the Internet back then (both economically and technically), and that was a very big filter (although it let through many smart assholes anyway).
      - Quothling 3mo ago
        You're right, landsbytosse doesn't not translate well. To be fair the literal translation is village fool, which isn't much better. It's meaning would be more along the lines of village eccentric, which could be the village idiot, but not always.
    - mschuster91 3mo ago
      Email and Usenet are both decentralized systems that in theory aren't affected by instance admin bitchfights anywhere near to the level of drama in the fediverse. Yes: many providers didn't mirror the binary groups due to piracy, and in email, deliverability is a constant issue thanks to spammers. But the fediverse? Can't count how many times I've seen instance admins hold their users hostage in bitchfights over the Israel/Palestine stance of other instance admins.
  - tcfhgj 3mo ago
    > People want to be where other people are not neceessarily true, see Matrix where it pretty much doesn't matter where you are
danabramov 3mo ago
>Cool people use ActivityPub. ActivityPub solves a completely different (arguably, smaller) set of problems. This is like saying "Cool people use email instead of web". I have a few diagrams here that may help see just how different they are: https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so-where-are-all-the-bluesky-instances https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so... >Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when. Yeah, which is why atproto is going to IETF: https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group. You can join the mailing list to participate in the discussions: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/atp/?gbt=1&index= https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/atp/?gbt=1&index=.
- wwalexander 3mo ago
  The author of this comment is an engineer at Bluesky.
  - trial3 3mo ago
    this is no longer true as of a year ago. also “the author” is dan abramov lmao
  - danabramov 3mo ago
    Are you going to write it below my every comment? I've already replied to this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933050. Also, I don't think either claim in my reply is dependent on who wrote it. You can trivially verify them yourself.
    - eqvinox 3mo ago
      If it's no issue, why not put a "note: I work for bluesky" on your posts?
    - natebc 3mo ago
      Never underestimate the siren song of scene drama.
LelouBil 3mo ago
Look at how ActivityPub works before saying it's single vendor controlled. Really basically: Everyone can have their data (posts, media attachments) on whatever server they want or control, easily self hosted. And at the same time, people can also host "apps" like Bluesky that read said data and interpret conventions in naming to show it in a meaningfull way like as posts. you can self host your data. you can self host a bluesky view. It actually kind of reminds me of openstreetmap, where it's actually only a database of keys and values, but apps interpret their meanings based on conventions
jackyalcine 3mo ago
This is part of the reason why I stopped heavily engaging with ActivityPub. It's not everyone because I know the team of folks who make apps for the space but it's engagement like this who convinced me to write https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ and had me just step away from ActivityPub (at least until I can see https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api drop and I'll reengage).
- archagon 3mo ago
  This is a non-sequitur? ATProto was explicitly designed to not be compatible with ActivityPub. They shot first. So why are you focused on tone-policing ActivityPub?
  - blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
    What do you mean by “explicitly designed to not be compatible with ActivityPub”? What proof do you have for that other than “it doesn’t use ActivityPub”? And you can’t tone police a standard. That’s very weird.

Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.

by eqvinox 3mo ago

Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.

Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/ https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/

master-lincoln 3mo ago
actually, you did not respond to what parent said. How is the standardization process related to joining the network?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
p-e-w 3mo ago
The single point of failure is always the biggest instances or communities, which impose their rules on everyone else under threat of refusing to communicate with them. This has happened with every single federated platform, and it can’t be solved with technology because it’s fundamentally not a technology problem. People want to be where other people are, so once the community reaches a critical mass it inevitably degrades into the same sump of mediocrities and their rules as everything else.
- fsflover 3mo ago
  > This has happened with every single federated platform It didn't happen with the internet itself. You still can avoid Facebook and co. and happily discuss things on HN. And with the email, it is much less serious than people assume. I do not use gmail or MS and practically nobody I talk to does.
- Quothling 3mo ago
  I think you will find that a lot of people find that to be a feature of the federated networks. It's how society works outside of social networks. You aren't likely to see football fans of different teams sharing pubs here in Europe. You wouldn't see judgemental people be allowed in accepting roleplaying communities and so on. Why would a network of community controlled servers be any different than this? IRC was like this, Discord is like this. When you give people control they are going to kick out the opinions and people they don't want around. If you find yourself on the outside, it might just be that you're the village idiot. Before SoMe platforms like twitter, facebook and other places without local moderation the village idiot didn't have much of a voice either.
  - bbg2401 3mo ago
    The village idiot analogy is misguided and unnecessarily accusatory. However, I do feel internet communities were better when they were smaller due to being special interest driven and self-policing. People wore different hats according to the community they were engaging with.
    - darkwater 3mo ago
      There was a very steep curve to access the Internet back then (both economically and technically), and that was a very big filter (although it let through many smart assholes anyway).
    - Quothling 3mo ago
      You're right, landsbytosse doesn't not translate well. To be fair the literal translation is village fool, which isn't much better. It's meaning would be more along the lines of village eccentric, which could be the village idiot, but not always.
  - mschuster91 3mo ago
    Email and Usenet are both decentralized systems that in theory aren't affected by instance admin bitchfights anywhere near to the level of drama in the fediverse. Yes: many providers didn't mirror the binary groups due to piracy, and in email, deliverability is a constant issue thanks to spammers. But the fediverse? Can't count how many times I've seen instance admins hold their users hostage in bitchfights over the Israel/Palestine stance of other instance admins.
- tcfhgj 3mo ago
  > People want to be where other people are not neceessarily true, see Matrix where it pretty much doesn't matter where you are

danabramov 3mo ago

>Cool people use ActivityPub. ActivityPub solves a completely different (arguably, smaller) set of problems. This is like saying "Cool people use email instead of web". I have a few diagrams here that may help see just how different they are: https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so-where-are-all-the-bluesky-instances https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so... >Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when. Yeah, which is why atproto is going to IETF: https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group. You can join the mailing list to participate in the discussions: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/atp/?gbt=1&index= https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/atp/?gbt=1&index=.

wwalexander 3mo ago
The author of this comment is an engineer at Bluesky.
- trial3 3mo ago
  this is no longer true as of a year ago. also “the author” is dan abramov lmao
- danabramov 3mo ago
  Are you going to write it below my every comment? I've already replied to this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933050. Also, I don't think either claim in my reply is dependent on who wrote it. You can trivially verify them yourself.
  - eqvinox 3mo ago
    If it's no issue, why not put a "note: I work for bluesky" on your posts?
  - natebc 3mo ago
    Never underestimate the siren song of scene drama.

LelouBil 3mo ago

Look at how ActivityPub works before saying it's single vendor controlled. Really basically: Everyone can have their data (posts, media attachments) on whatever server they want or control, easily self hosted. And at the same time, people can also host "apps" like Bluesky that read said data and interpret conventions in naming to show it in a meaningfull way like as posts. you can self host your data. you can self host a bluesky view. It actually kind of reminds me of openstreetmap, where it's actually only a database of keys and values, but apps interpret their meanings based on conventions

jackyalcine 3mo ago

This is part of the reason why I stopped heavily engaging with ActivityPub. It's not everyone because I know the team of folks who make apps for the space but it's engagement like this who convinced me to write https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ and had me just step away from ActivityPub (at least until I can see https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api drop and I'll reengage).

archagon 3mo ago
This is a non-sequitur? ATProto was explicitly designed to not be compatible with ActivityPub. They shot first. So why are you focused on tone-policing ActivityPub?
- blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
  What do you mean by “explicitly designed to not be compatible with ActivityPub”? What proof do you have for that other than “it doesn’t use ActivityPub”? And you can’t tone police a standard. That’s very weird.