Does anyone have any statistics about the myth of Bluesky's decentralized nature?
I mean I know they have a protocol that allows decentralization, but are there really any other instances?
I'd be really surprised if 0,001% of users were anywhere else than bsky.social.
[#]bluesky #decentralization
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople there are howtos and UIs that seem to indicate that in theory it is possible to run other servers, but in practice I haven't found any. There is also the trap that there is a single known implementation of the AT proto server and afaik is not open source.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from jsoriano@mastodon.online
@PaulaToThePeople What I have read (but don't know to what extent is true) is that it's relatively easy to host your own data, much more complex and expensive to run a relay, and as of today impossible to host your own AppView (they hold all the keys). Would love to read a more in-depth analysis about this.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@PaulaToThePeople This is in line with what they state in their architecture page (https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-architecture). They state anyone can run a PDS and a relay, but when it comes to the AppView, that statement is blatantly missing, and the text seems to imply you have to write your own.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@PaulaToThePeople So I would be surprised if the number of users in instances other than bsky.social is bigger than 0%
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@doragasu No idea what data, relay and AppView mean.
We should tell Wikipedia that their first sentence in the article about bluesky is fake news.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople I suppose it's not false from an architectural perspective (the design allows it to be decentralized), but maybe impossible to fully achieve without a massive effort (partial decentralization seems to be achievable, complete decentralization does not seem possible as of today). But will take someone with more knowledge than me to clarify.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@doragasu Yeah, but that means "Bluesky is a centralized social media service operated by Bluesky Social PBC, that technically allows for decentralization" would be the factual version of the sentence.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople Yeah, that matches much more accurately my understanding.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@PaulaToThePeople Found a detailed article talking about this, and wrote a thread with my understanding after reading it: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@doragasu/113532194760865710
TL;DR: As of today, Bluesky is almost 100% centralized (only some PDSs are outside Bluesky control) and not federated in any way. Even if tomorrow an alternative appeared, you cannot migrate away from Bluesky without their blessing.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
@PaulaToThePeople
If I have understood correctly, Pinksea uses the AT protocol, but is otherwise independent of the Bluesky company.
https://pinksea.art/
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from Hamiller@octodon.social
@PaulaToThePeople
According to these people -
https://hackernoon.com/bluesky-and-the-at-protocol-decentralized-social-media-that-works
Mastodon, or ActivityPub Protocol
However, decentralization also introduces new challenges. For example, in the case of Mastodon, a user needs to choose a server when creating an account. This choice is significant because the server name becomes part of the username; migrating to another server implies changing username, and preserving one’s followers during such a migration requires the cooperation of the old server. If a server is shut down without warning, accounts on that server cannot be recovered – a particular risk with volunteer-run servers. In principle, a user can host their own server, but only a small fraction of social media users have both the technical skills and the inclination to do so.
The distinction between servers in Mastodon introduces complexity for users that does not exist in centralized services. For example, a user viewing a thread of replies in the web interface of one server may see a different set of replies compared to viewing the same thread on another server, because a server only shows those replies that it knows about [2]. As another example, when viewing the web profile of an account on another server, clicking the “follow” button does not simply follow that account; instead, the user needs to enter the hostname of their own server and be redirected to a URL on their home server before they can follow the account. In our opinion, it is undesirable to burden users with such complexity arising from the federated architecture.
Bluesky, or AT Protocol
The AT Protocol is designed such that for every part of the system there are multiple competing operators providing interoperable services, making it easy to switch from one provider to another.
Decentralization alone is not able to solve some of the thorniest problems of social media, such as misinformation, harassment, and hate speech [46]. However, by opening up the internals of a service to contributors who are not employees of a particular company, decentralization can enable a marketplace of approaches to these problems [38]. For example, Bluesky allows anybody to run moderation services that make subjective decisions of selecting desirable content or flagging undesirable content, and users can choose which moderation services they want to subscribe to. Moderation services are decoupled from hosting providers, making it easy for users to switch moderation services until they find ones that match their preferences. Our hope is that this architectural openness enables communities to develop their own approaches to managing problematic content, independently of what any particular service operator implements [38].
Atmosphere Protocol
https://atproto.com/
That protocol seems to be the open source part.
https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation
Up until now, every user on the network used a Bluesky PDS (Personal Data Server) to host their data. We’ve already federated our own data hosting on the backend, both to help operationally scale our service, and to prove out the technical underpinnings of an openly federated network. But today we’re opening up federation for anyone else to begin connecting with the network.
Bluesky, the company, is a Public Benefit Corporation. It is owned by Jay Graber and the Bluesky team. The board consists of Jay Graber; Jeremie Miller, the inventor of Jabber/XMPP; Mike Masnick; and Kinjal Shah.
https://bsky.social › about › faq
Not sure if that is really any consolation or guarantee of future service and service agreements.
I suspect the game plan is enterprises and organisation would host and federate their AT Protocol perhaps with their own deployment of Bluesky PDS servers. Guessing these are VMs or "containers" to be hosted on prem or in cloud provider?
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from Global_Repercussions@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople
I know that doesn't really answer your question about statistics. But the do not seem easy to find. A good sign there may not be much federation going on.
But hey, how often does a guy get a chance to mansplain the internet to someone kind enough to host a #fediverse node to call home.
I've been having a good time and feel I have been made welcome since you were kind enough to let me join. So thanks for your efforts and consideration.
Good luck with your research and choices.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from Global_Repercussions@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople Suspect the answer strongly depends whether you count Mastodon &c. users interacting with BlueSky via the bridge that allows interoperation between BlueSky's protocol and ActivityPub.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from only_ohm_follows_hashtags@mas.to
@only_ohm_follows_hashtags Yeah, no I don't.
But good point. So the correct first sentence for the Wikipedia article would be: Bluesky is a centralized micro-blogging service [by...] that would technically allow for decentralization, which doesn't happen and is, via detours, part of a larger decentralized network."
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople inthink the bridge for integrating mastodon and bsky is another instance
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from caycedo@oye.social
@caycedo okay, but its just a scraper/bridge - no real users.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social
@PaulaToThePeople There is fed.brid.gy which is all the infrastructure to bridge bsky to other fediverse, but a lot of mastadon instances (including my home base) don't support it
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from Parkperch@climatejustice.social
@Parkperch Yeah, but that's not what I mean. Bluesky being decentralized would mean that there is more than one Bluesky instance and they can communicate with each other. Communicating with something outside is being part of something decentralized.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini