The Nexus Of Privacy looks at the connections between technology, policy, strategy, and justice.
Yeah, it’s somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It’s great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren’t any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There’s certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta’ll happen.
There isn’t direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started
As Strypey acknowledges, there’s a lot he didn’t know about at the time and left out. Before Mastodon: GNU Social and other early fediverses includes a lot of that.
For what it’s worth, the guy who mostly maintains the Wikipedia page agrees with you. And yet even so, at least for now, the Wikipedia page states “The majority of fediverse platforms … create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol” – which pretty clearly implies that not all fediverse platforms use the ActivityPub protocol.
Anyhow whether or not you agree to disagree … we disagree. Time will tell how broad usage of the term evolves. In the original article I pointed to examples of TechCrunch and Mike Masnick using the term in the broader sense, but maybe those will turn out to be points off the curve. We shall see!
Yeah, it’s a great name.
Kuba’s link i that thread is good, it looks like there’s currently about 370 PDS’s – Bridgy Fed got an exception from Bluesky so is the only one that currently has more than 10 uses. https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdses I know some people who just run the open-source code for Bluesky’s PDS (which is pretty straightforward) and some run other implementations.
You’re not the only one who sees it that way. Historically the Fediverse was always multi-protocol but some people don’t think it shojld be today. I talked about this view some in https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/
“Anyhow, if Evan and Eugen and SWF and fediverse.party want to choose a definition of Fediverse where history stopped with Mastodon’s 2017 adoption of ActivityPub, erases earlier Fediverse history, and ties the Fediverse’s success to a protocol that has major issues … they can do that. “The Fediverse” means different things to different people. It’s still worth asking why they choose that definition.”
You didn’t miss it, I didn’t go into detail on it in the article … one big reason is that because of how ActivityPub works you only see a fragment of the overall conversation (instead of everything). If you’re on a big well-connected instance like mastodon.social you see more of it but still not all; if you’re on a smaller not-so-well-connected instance you miss most of it. This comes in conversations (the “missing replies” problem), with search, and with hashtags.
Another reason is that Twitter’s got a lot of journalists, activists and organizers, politicians, government agencies, athletes, etc … and Mastodon for the most part doesn’t. That’s not a technical issue, but for most people, following one or more of those groups is something they’re used to from Twitter, so Mastodon doesn’t fill the same role.
Again, there’s plenty of stuff Mastodon is good at! And Twitter clones replicate Twitter’s problems as well as what people like about it. But for people who are sick of Twitter and want a similar experience elsewhere (as opposed to trying something different), they’re more likely to get what they want on Bluesky (and in many cases even Threads, especially if they already have an Instagram account and don’t want to see political stuff) than Mastodon.
I personally wouldn’t say so – crossposting isn’t the same as two-way communications – but others might.
Ah okay, I agree that you need to trust Bridgy Fed from a privacy and security perpective. Also agreed that most people don’t know Bridgy Fed exists, and that’s a problem. And yes, it would be better for the platforms to have more support for opt-in federation, but alas Mastodon’s documentation describes allow-list federation as opposed to their mission … I asked Renaud a while ago whether that was likely to change and he said no. So, yeah, it’s certainly far from a perfect solution.
Dorsey’s not involved in Bluesky any more but I agree that there are lots of reasons not to trust them (including Dorsey’s original involvement).
Bluesky’s currently a much better Twitter alternative than Mastodon but I totally agree, there’s a lot more to social networking than that. I talk about ways I see Bulesky as complementary to the ActivityPub section in the last section, “It’s the end of the Fediverse as we know it – and I feel fine”
Personally I think that the connectivity via Bridgy Fed and Friendica are strong enough that it makes sense to consider Bluesky an instance on the ActivityPub Fediverse. Threads currently has less connectivity, and people in general consider it part of the Fediverse. For what it’s worth, in a discussion on Social Hub, Evan Prodromou also said he saw Bluesky as an instance in the ActivityPub Fediverse.
I also think that the ATmosphere is fediverse (descentralized social network) in its own right. So is Bluesky, as well as being part of the AcivityPub Fediverse and the ATmosphere.
But others define the Fediverse differently, https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/ goes into a lot of detail on the different views.
Thanks very much, fixed now!
You’re not the only one who thinks that way – opinions differ!
Agreed that Bridgy Fed is opt-in … I see consent as a good thing, but not everybody agrees.
And yeah, Bluesky’s just ike any other instance, you have to trust them with privacy. I think the argument that Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, and Wordress.com-hosted blogs shouldn’t be considered part of the Fediverse is intellectually consistent, I just don’t see a lot of people making that argument. But, “the Fedivese” means different things to different people, the followup post Is Bluesky part of today’s Fediverse? goes into a huge amount of detail on that …
For people who want to join a twitter clone there aren’t any good ActivityPub options – Mastodon’s good at other things, but isn’t a good Twitter alternative let along clone. And ActivityPub’s version of “true federation” isn’t the only kind of federation. That said, I agree that AT isn’t an option for people who want to join a federating-in-theActivityPub-sense-of-the-word Twitter clone,
Correct. Dorsey’s early involvement is certainly grounds for concern – the way I think of it, he’s gone now but his stench lingers on – but he’s not influential there going forward.
Yep. And that’s far from the only way it could work out badly. I talk about this a bit in the section on “Bluesky is a useful counterweight to Threads”
Bluesky is far from perfect. They’re venture-funded, so likely to end with an exploitative business model. They’ve got a surveillance-capitalism friendly all-public architecture. It’s great that Jack Dorsey’s no longer on the board but he was.
Thanks for the clarifications!