@Jan Beta @Christine Lemmer-Webber this is completely wrong. Decentralization means mostly that the servers that contains and redirect the data of the social are phisically situated in different places. Where users are is not significant at all. Bluesky IS NOT DECENTRALIZED.
@giorovv I am aware. I know sarcasm/irony sometimes doesn’t translate well in writing, particularly when it’s out of context, sorry about that. (I recommend you read the whole thread and especially look at the op‘s bio.)
@giorovv @janbeta What if the servers are PHILOSOPHICALLY situated in different places? Because I know two servers that will not stop arguing about nihilism vs solipsism and they're insufferable.
You ovbiously havnet researcht this very carfully, I believe one Lemmy Webster has written alot about this and you really should read up before asking dumb quetions maybe the internet is not for you.
(Note to onlookers: this post is intended to be humorously satirical. Please laugh politely. Thank you.)
This entry was edited (Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 12:42 PM)
As you may know, having no doubt researched the long history of your family name, a "lemmer" was traditionally someone who worked with lemmings -- most often the trainer in charge of herding them over cliffs to enable dramatic footage for Disney nature "documentaries".
With the passage of time, this practice came to be seen as cruel and inhumane, and agencies dedicated to the preservation of wildlife began training workers to gently and safely capture the lemmers in web-netting and return them to their native habitats -- thus creating the role of "lemmer webber".
(In those days, of course, many individuals were known by their given name plus their role in society; as formal recordkeeping became more ubiquitous, however, these surnames became detached from social roles and were simply inherited. It is thus possible now for, e.g., a person with the last name "Webber" -- in olden times most commonly used for those who created web content or wrote web software -- to be in a profession which has nothing at all to do with the World Wide Web.)
This important part of our
... Show more...
As you may know, having no doubt researched the long history of your family name, a "lemmer" was traditionally someone who worked with lemmings -- most often the trainer in charge of herding them over cliffs to enable dramatic footage for Disney nature "documentaries".
With the passage of time, this practice came to be seen as cruel and inhumane, and agencies dedicated to the preservation of wildlife began training workers to gently and safely capture the lemmers in web-netting and return them to their native habitats -- thus creating the role of "lemmer webber".
(In those days, of course, many individuals were known by their given name plus their role in society; as formal recordkeeping became more ubiquitous, however, these surnames became detached from social roles and were simply inherited. It is thus possible now for, e.g., a person with the last name "Webber" -- in olden times most commonly used for those who created web content or wrote web software -- to be in a profession which has nothing at all to do with the World Wide Web.)
This important part of our natural history is rarely mentioned and yet is essential to an understanding of how we have become a more humane society (until this year, anyway, but that's another story).
I did some digging through some back issues of CU Amiga, and I think I've figured out the answer!
It turns out, this BlueSky thing is indeed part of a decentralised network, and it's called the Internet!
Now, I know what you're thinking: What is this internet thing, and how is it different to the BBSes that I've been dialling into, using my home microcomputer?
Well, it turns out that the files on your local computer user group's BBS are typically all stored on the one computer.
But the internet is like a worldwide network of BBSes!
People are calling it an information superhighway!
You can start "surfing" from one BBS to another.
You can be in Canada and connect over the Internet to a BBS in Germany!
Is your mind blown yet?
It's compatible with all the popular microcomputers, including IBM Compatibles, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and Atari ST.
Beyond viewing overseas BBSes, there's a range of fun things you can find on the web, including newsgroups, gophers, MUDs, MOOs, and elec
... Show more...
Hi Christine,
I did some digging through some back issues of CU Amiga, and I think I've figured out the answer!
It turns out, this BlueSky thing is indeed part of a decentralised network, and it's called the Internet!
Now, I know what you're thinking: What is this internet thing, and how is it different to the BBSes that I've been dialling into, using my home microcomputer?
Well, it turns out that the files on your local computer user group's BBS are typically all stored on the one computer.
But the internet is like a worldwide network of BBSes!
People are calling it an information superhighway!
You can start "surfing" from one BBS to another.
You can be in Canada and connect over the Internet to a BBS in Germany!
Is your mind blown yet?
It's compatible with all the popular microcomputers, including IBM Compatibles, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and Atari ST.
Beyond viewing overseas BBSes, there's a range of fun things you can find on the web, including newsgroups, gophers, MUDs, MOOs, and electronic mail!
And now... BlueSky!
Some people say the internet won't catch on. But I saw it running on one of the Solaris workstations at a local university, and I have to say it looked pretty spiffy!
As users flee from Twitter/X, two visions of social media's future compete: Mastodon's community-controlled network versus Bluesky's venture-backed promises.
technically one might say it isn't, but that would be besides the point. You see "centralized" is only bad if it's centralized around bad people like Ramk Zuckembrog or Melon Sumk. But as long as it's centralized around nice people with a good moral compass who respect the law and have all the best intentions it's actually as good as, no! It's better than decentralized! And since it has only the best woke VCs backing it who have business plans with a goal for human societal prosperity and not RoI, we need not ask about decentralization.
@aires you see this is a common misunderstanding. you cant actually centralize clouds as all clouds share the same cloudness. making them inherently one cloud. so there can be no cloud but the cloud
ATProto is built to be decentralized. Right now, Bluesky is a company that both originated the protocol and is building a platform on it, so the impact is that it is functionally centralized as there is only one implementation on only one platform.
But if someone else built an ATProto implementation then it would no longer be only Bluesky, and then it would be decentralized.
not so much de- as re-centralized. you see bluesky started when a bunch of people were on a plane going to a blues fest and texting each other. Later they decided to create a place to share their wit and bon mots with the world.
It's "decentralized" but only has one, very central, instance.
So...it's like claiming you have a multicoloured pencil box, but with only one blue pencil inside, no other pencils available and no plans to provide them.
At the risk of asking a serious question, what's the deal with all these alternative ATProto apps? Are there any that have significant independent infrastructure?
I'm guessing that the answer is that they mostly share the same infrastructure and just provide a different AppView and possibly a different lexicon (not sure that's the right term) as far as the data they store and can interact with. But given that I have a very limited understanding of how Bluesky works under the hood, I'd be interested in a (much) more knowledgeable perspective.
A year ago, Bluesky was opening up to the public and was known as one of the many X competitors that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the network formerly
Being decentralized and have the capability of being decentralized are very different things. Bluesky has the capability of being decentralized. It also works a little bit differently than Mastodon. You see the same feed no matter what instance you use with Bluesky.
@reflex @phillycodehound exactly. If you already have all your users centralised in one location you're not going to move mountains to completely re-architect your system... For what? You already have user capture.
No way is a tech company giving up the power of potentially being the next Twitter
@phillycodehound It's funny to me how people keep buying into this idea that it will actually be decentralized when in reality that needed to be baked in from the very beginning to have any chance of being viable. It will likely always be an 'on paper' decentralized network but in reality, tightly controlled like every other corp social network.
it's decentralized by design, but running a second node is an expensive endeavour, which requires you to download the entire database of everything that has happened on the entirety of bluesky and running a computer that is able to search such a database. Only big companies are able to do so, and so far no one has. So effectively there is only a single node in bluesky.
As for the identity system, I didn't fully understand it, but I remember something on the line of "if the company goes down the entire identity system will shut down with no backup"
And finally the DM system was centralised last time I read something about it, but I have good faith that it's in their timeline to decentralise it. The two issues above are more concerning.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 2:50 PM)
I've been struggling all morning to come up with an obviously wrong answer that's sufficiently funny to post in reply. I got nothing. feels like I failed the assignment!!!!!
it doesn't use activitypub so it isn't decentralized. this is because activitypub is clearly the only decentralized social networking protocol that has been fully and completely adopted by several applications like mastodon, and billionaires cannot run mastodon unlike bluesky's expensive "relays" that the fediverse doesn't have
somewhat, but if bluesky the company goes down the network collapses
you can store your own data on your server
but bluesky owns: - the main appview - the main moderation service (which is hardcoded into their appview and can just disappear your account from everyone else) - the main relay (AFAIK there are no real alternatives, they can also ban you on this level if you run your own data server) - the service storing information about user IDs (DID:PLC, IIUC if this ever goes down most accounts are immediately gone)
did:plc is mirrorable and any serious project needs a local mirror because the rate limits are too low to look up every account that comes in off the firehose lol
BlueSky is split up into several separately hosted components. I forget the technical terminology
Contend providers actually provide posts in a way similar to an RSS feed. They are very easy to self-host
Aggregators collect these providers and create people's feeds. These require huge resources to self-host because you have to store the entire network (a very very high storage cost only businesses can afford)
There are also servers that provide moderation - something a client consults to go "should I consider this person banned?". These can be self-hosted, but in the default app it's hardcoded
If you use a non-default app, you can't see profiles that require logins (so any artist who wants to avoid AI scrapers)
from what I read it can be decentralised, in the sense that if you really try hard, you'd be able to host your own instance, but it will never be peer-to-peer, so the traffic will always go through the bluesky central hub.
I am not really a technical guy so I might misunderstood it, so I am looking forward to read the replies too.
it's decentralised, yeah. you can have it on your phone, but other people can have it on their phone, so it's not all centralised on one phone and you can still talk to each other. that's why people say it reminds them of twitter so much, because twitter was also decentralised like that.
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You mean decent-ralized, like making them decent? I hear Bluesky is making use of AI moderation plus libertarian market incentives, so I'm sure they're much more decent than this place.
Oooh good question! Uhhh so basically Fediverse is based on the concept of a federation, which is a form of hegemonic imperialism and therefore not decentralised.
Whereas BlueSky runs in the cloud, which is a distributed computing system and thus decentralised.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask me if you have any more questions.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 3:58 PM)
@cosmic @phillycodehound It's also just an absolutely terrible way to approach development, if it wasn't designed for this it will always be bad at it. In my opinion, it's been a lie from the beginning, as is their so called "billionaire proofing".
OK, hear me out... maybe it's controlled by a single entity, but that entity could have some kind of "offering" to sell shares of the company to the "public". Like, anyone could buy one! Then, naturally, the VCs will celebrate by purchasing billions of slices of avocado toast and lattes, and that wealth will "trickle-down" to everyone else, who will then buy their own shares. I will take my nobel prize in economics now, thank you.
@elplatt nice and serious try. but one cornerstrone of your theory: "trickle-down", doesn't exist, as it's actually "trickle-doom" (and always has been in fact).
it's pseudo decentralized you can run your own data server which hosts your account and everything you post (including media) but the relay is pretty much centralized because it provides and coordinates the whole network (that's why search across the whole network works) it's possible to also host your own relay but this comes at the cost of several TB of data basically it's the same concept as blockchain without the chain
Can I jump on with a related question? Could someone explain to me how to make something like komoot decentralised? A platform to share and find GPS tracks, and planned routes, to mark and recommend locations, to comment on your friend's activity, etc. It's obviously integrated in a map, but it's also a social network. And komoot just got bought by an investor with a bad record...
Posts like these are why popcorn memes were invented.
Thank you for being awesome!
(Meanwhile my joke mind is trying to think up the Star Trek joke equivalent of anti-decentralized and coming up with various Borg permutations and failing because that is already overloaded with Mark "Sucks they're Borg" FB/Meta/IG BS)
At least it's not centralized. I tested and I could open it in a browser window on the left half of the screen. But I could also open it in fullscreen. So... it's both not centralized and not decentralized?
But there's possible further research, I didn't test with multiple displays.
> One of the reasons I am enthusiastic about BlueSky is because of the way that it works. So in this post, I am going to lay out some of the design and the principles behind this design, as I understand them. I am not on the BlueSky team, so these are my takes only.
I have seen zero evidence that it is so, so my current operating assumption, which I share freely, is "in now way or shape or form".
They have - for the moment - implemented the protocol and platform (which are two things) in such a way as to cede control over some aspects of algorithmic feed manipulation to the user, but maintain final say on whatever they feel like, so far as I know, because there's no other way to run an open platform like that. This fact is how we came to have Section 230.
But basically, no, they are a single-entryway platform which requires huge sums of capital to live its short-ass lifespan, with enshittification as inevitable as the death of stars.
To those who choose it over this place, I get why, but I also know it's just a matter of time.
lgsp is moving
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Sure! What about this one 🤣
dustycloud.org/blog/how-decent…
How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
dustycloud.orgChristine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to lgsp is moving • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
lgsp is moving
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •well ok. There is this thread connected to the blog post, from a person that looks like she knows what she is talking about:
social.coop/@cwebber/113527462…
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lgsp is moving
in reply to lgsp is moving • • •Seriously, the other interesting piece (not from you) I could read about the topic (bit I bet you already know) is this one
social.wildeboer.net/@jwildebo…
Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to lgsp is moving • • •Aubrey De Los Destinos
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •sotolf
in reply to lgsp is moving • • •Niléane
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Niléane • • •Dr. Sobek
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Dr. Sobek
in reply to Dr. Sobek • • •Sensitive content
So you see, there's this big Blue Sky, and under the sky there are flowers, a huge many of flowers.
And those flower exchange stuff, though bees !
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Dr. Sobek • • •Sensitive content
Space Hobo
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@Sobex
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in reply to Dr. Sobek • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
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in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
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Dr. Sobek
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
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lobingera
Unknown parent • • •"Contrary to common understanding, the road to hell is not paved with good intentions, but with best laid plans."
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A Part of Bee
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to A Part of Bee • • •A Part of Bee
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
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in reply to A Part of Bee • • •A Part of Bee
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to lobingera • • •Daphne Preston-Kendal
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Daphne Preston-Kendal • • •Daphne Preston-Kendal
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Dr Kim Foale
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •real decents
realize
de centralize
hope this helps
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Dr. Sobek
Unknown parent • • •@Bam At least, this time I detected something was off ^^'
I hope the 🐝 carry this swiftly across the blue orb called the sky !
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Cunt Beanface 🧄
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •bituur esztreym
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@vmstan @lgsp
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Jan Beta
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Giovanni
in reply to Jan Beta • •like this
Jan Beta, Christine Lemmer-Webber, ulrike, David Fleetwood - RG Admin and raia like this.
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Jan Beta
in reply to Giovanni • • •Giovanni
in reply to Jan Beta • •like this
Jan Beta, Christine Lemmer-Webber and Marc like this.
Jan Beta
in reply to Giovanni • • •Abyssal Rook
in reply to Giovanni • • •Perry 🦆🦫🥚
in reply to Giovanni • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •@otfrom they could fix a lot of things I bet
someone should get DOGE in to fix up the protocols maybe
⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to ⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ • • •Joakim Fors
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@falken
viq
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
@agturcz @Sobex yes, but you have to be very careful, as even the Gaules knew.
Dr. Sobek
in reply to viq • • •Sensitive content
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •You ovbiously havnet researcht this very carfully, I believe one Lemmy Webster has written alot about this and you really should read up before asking dumb quetions maybe the internet is not for you.
(Note to onlookers: this post is intended to be humorously satirical. Please laugh politely. Thank you.)
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •As you may know, having no doubt researched the long history of your family name, a "lemmer" was traditionally someone who worked with lemmings -- most often the trainer in charge of herding them over cliffs to enable dramatic footage for Disney nature "documentaries".
With the passage of time, this practice came to be seen as cruel and inhumane, and agencies dedicated to the preservation of wildlife began training workers to gently and safely capture the lemmers in web-netting and return them to their native habitats -- thus creating the role of "lemmer webber".
(In those days, of course, many individuals were known by their given name plus their role in society; as formal recordkeeping became more ubiquitous, however, these surnames became detached from social roles and were simply inherited. It is thus possible now for, e.g., a person with the last name "Webber" -- in olden times most commonly used for those who created web content or wrote web software -- to be in a profession which has nothing at all to do with the World Wide Web.)
This important part of our
... Show more...As you may know, having no doubt researched the long history of your family name, a "lemmer" was traditionally someone who worked with lemmings -- most often the trainer in charge of herding them over cliffs to enable dramatic footage for Disney nature "documentaries".
With the passage of time, this practice came to be seen as cruel and inhumane, and agencies dedicated to the preservation of wildlife began training workers to gently and safely capture the lemmers in web-netting and return them to their native habitats -- thus creating the role of "lemmer webber".
(In those days, of course, many individuals were known by their given name plus their role in society; as formal recordkeeping became more ubiquitous, however, these surnames became detached from social roles and were simply inherited. It is thus possible now for, e.g., a person with the last name "Webber" -- in olden times most commonly used for those who created web content or wrote web software -- to be in a profession which has nothing at all to do with the World Wide Web.)
This important part of our natural history is rarely mentioned and yet is essential to an understanding of how we have become a more humane society (until this year, anyway, but that's another story).
#SplainingAsAService #LowQualityFacts
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stibbons
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •If you are also on Blue Sky, I am asking over there, feel free to help spread the word here or there bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dyyvy…
We will get to the bottom of this
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AJ Sadauskas
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Hi Christine,
I did some digging through some back issues of CU Amiga, and I think I've figured out the answer!
It turns out, this BlueSky thing is indeed part of a decentralised network, and it's called the Internet!
Now, I know what you're thinking: What is this internet thing, and how is it different to the BBSes that I've been dialling into, using my home microcomputer?
Well, it turns out that the files on your local computer user group's BBS are typically all stored on the one computer.
But the internet is like a worldwide network of BBSes!
People are calling it an information superhighway!
You can start "surfing" from one BBS to another.
You can be in Canada and connect over the Internet to a BBS in Germany!
Is your mind blown yet?
It's compatible with all the popular microcomputers, including IBM Compatibles, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and Atari ST.
Beyond viewing overseas BBSes, there's a range of fun things you can find on the web, including newsgroups, gophers, MUDs, MOOs, and elec
... Show more...Hi Christine,
I did some digging through some back issues of CU Amiga, and I think I've figured out the answer!
It turns out, this BlueSky thing is indeed part of a decentralised network, and it's called the Internet!
Now, I know what you're thinking: What is this internet thing, and how is it different to the BBSes that I've been dialling into, using my home microcomputer?
Well, it turns out that the files on your local computer user group's BBS are typically all stored on the one computer.
But the internet is like a worldwide network of BBSes!
People are calling it an information superhighway!
You can start "surfing" from one BBS to another.
You can be in Canada and connect over the Internet to a BBS in Germany!
Is your mind blown yet?
It's compatible with all the popular microcomputers, including IBM Compatibles, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and Atari ST.
Beyond viewing overseas BBSes, there's a range of fun things you can find on the web, including newsgroups, gophers, MUDs, MOOs, and electronic mail!
And now... BlueSky!
Some people say the internet won't catch on. But I saw it running on one of the Solaris workstations at a local university, and I have to say it looked pretty spiffy!
Now at @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to AJ Sadauskas • • •Bo Morgan
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •I liked this answer that you received on Bluesky, which I'm duplicating in Mastodon so people don't need to go to Bluesky to find it:
phillipjreese.com/the-social-n…
The Social Network That Can't Sell Out: Understanding Mastodon vs. Bluesky - phillipjreese.com
phillipjreese@gmail.com (phillipjreese.com)Domo 🦇
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Apprentice Bodega Cat 🐈⬛
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Paavi (ei se paavi)
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
Dr. Sobek
in reply to Paavi (ei se paavi) • • •Sensitive content
@paavi @agturcz "nōn possidet āera Mīnos", Ovid Metamorphoses 8.187
youtube.com/watch?v=mUMhry8lUo…
mhoye
Unknown parent • • •@vmstan @dpk @lgsp
If you see bare <h1> in the tags you know you’re in the right place.
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Ку 🇧🇬🇪🇺
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •reshared this
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samir, computer wielder
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •shadowwwind
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to shadowwwind • • •how now
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to how now • • •how now
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •mav
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Yes.
But also no.
Maybe?
*bites into breakfast apple*
*chews pensively*
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Space Hobo
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •cuan_knaggs
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
quintessence
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •As I understand it:
ATProto is built to be decentralized. Right now, Bluesky is a company that both originated the protocol and is building a platform on it, so the impact is that it is functionally centralized as there is only one implementation on only one platform.
But if someone else built an ATProto implementation then it would no longer be only Bluesky, and then it would be decentralized.
Again, as I understand it.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to quintessence • • •D. Olifant
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •quintessence
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Jorge Candeias
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Jorge Candeias • • •Jorge Candeias
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Oh, you know, this (*waves around aimlessly).
Invite the flood, sort of.
Parade du Grotesque 💀
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine.
We have talked about this before.
You really need to do your own research, and not ask random strangers on the internet.
Also: you need to stop posting that type of question, because everyone at work is now wondering why I am laughing so hard! 😉
Amber likes this.
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Parade du Grotesque 💀
in reply to Parade du Grotesque 💀 • • •Richard Hendricks
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Armchair Epistemologist
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Armchair Epistemologist
in reply to Armchair Epistemologist • • •Medea Vanamonde🏳️⚧️ ♀
in reply to Armchair Epistemologist • • •BlueSky so beyond The Cloud
Expertenkommision Cyberunfall
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Define „decentraliced“
This can mean different things.
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Expertenkommision Cyberunfall • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Amber
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Ahri Enby
in reply to Amber • • •Elias Mårtenson
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •@jdw @quintessence It's quite ironic. I went to the website, checked the FAQ and saw this:
On bluesky? Why can't I sign up on skylight? I thought it was decentralised?
Personne
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •It's "decentralized" but only has one, very central, instance.
So...it's like claiming you have a multicoloured pencil box, but with only one blue pencil inside, no other pencils available and no plans to provide them.
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Personne • • •Dan
in reply to Personne • • •int getRandomNumber() {
return 4; // chosen by fair dice roll
// guaranteed to be random
}
@cwebber
Nick
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •At the risk of asking a serious question, what's the deal with all these alternative ATProto apps? Are there any that have significant independent infrastructure?
techcrunch.com/2025/04/04/beyo…
I'm guessing that the answer is that they mostly share the same infrastructure and just provide a different AppView and possibly a different lexicon (not sure that's the right term) as far as the data they store and can interact with. But given that I have a very limited understanding of how Bluesky works under the hood, I'd be interested in a (much) more knowledgeable perspective.
Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol | TechCrunch
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maryjane
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Kaia 🦚
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Justin
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Pietervdvn
in reply to Justin • • •Justin
in reply to Pietervdvn • • •Philip Mallegol-Hansen
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •I don’t know what “decentralized” means, but I keep hearing about how much fun* bluesky is.
*Fun is limited to those in the good grace of the Turkish government and may be revoked at any time.
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Chadarius
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
SuperDicq
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •It's not decentralized because you can not host your own independent server using the Bluesky "AT Protocol".
I have no sources because it is impossible to prove something that doesn't exists.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to SuperDicq • • •Reid
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •the identity is technically decentralized since one can use any domain name they own as their handle
everything else, however, is hella centralized
I think the best way to put it is that it’s decentralized the same way as Decentraland
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Reid • • •kim_harding ✅
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Bluesky's Decentralized Architecture Compared to Mastodon and Twitter/X
Adam Warski (SoftwareMill)cosmic
Unknown parent • • •@reflex @phillycodehound exactly. If you already have all your users centralised in one location you're not going to move mountains to completely re-architect your system... For what? You already have user capture.
No way is a tech company giving up the power of potentially being the next Twitter
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David Fleetwood - RG Admin
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to cosmic • • •Dr. Dek 👨🚀🐧🚀 )
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •it's decentralized by design, but running a second node is an expensive endeavour, which requires you to download the entire database of everything that has happened on the entirety of bluesky and running a computer that is able to search such a database. Only big companies are able to do so, and so far no one has. So effectively there is only a single node in bluesky.
As for the identity system, I didn't fully understand it, but I remember something on the line of "if the company goes down the entire identity system will shut down with no backup"
And finally the DM system was centralised last time I read something about it, but I have good faith that it's in their timeline to decentralise it. The two issues above are more concerning.
notptr
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •I think John Mastodon is friends with blue sky so I think that makes it decentralize.
I don't know what a technology is.
NowWeAreAllTom
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •muž s klapkami na očích
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Tyrone Slothrop
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
eblu
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to eblu • • •Jerebee
in reply to eblu • • •luna the doggie
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •somewhat, but if bluesky the company goes down the network collapses
you can store your own data on your server
but bluesky owns:
- the main appview
- the main moderation service (which is hardcoded into their appview and can just disappear your account from everyone else)
- the main relay (AFAIK there are no real alternatives, they can also ban you on this level if you run your own data server)
- the service storing information about user IDs (DID:PLC, IIUC if this ever goes down most accounts are immediately gone)
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em
in reply to luna the doggie • • •luna the doggie
in reply to luna the doggie • • •luna the doggie
in reply to luna the doggie • • •also running your own data server is a clusterfuck.
but I still did it
016 Lunar Tech Misadventures - How to set up a Bluesky PDS
The LunarEclipse Zoneluna the doggie
in reply to luna the doggie • • •I just realized you wrote ActivityPub
I'm too autistic for this shit 
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to luna the doggie • • •Zalasur 🐸🇺🇦
in reply to luna the doggie • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to luna the doggie • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •mossfet ☭ -> EMF
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •BlueSky is split up into several separately hosted components. I forget the technical terminology
Contend providers actually provide posts in a way similar to an RSS feed. They are very easy to self-host
Aggregators collect these providers and create people's feeds. These require huge resources to self-host because you have to store the entire network (a very very high storage cost only businesses can afford)
There are also servers that provide moderation - something a client consults to go "should I consider this person banned?". These can be self-hosted, but in the default app it's hardcoded
If you use a non-default app, you can't see profiles that require logins (so any artist who wants to avoid AI scrapers)
DMs are entirely centralised
mossfet ☭ -> EMF
in reply to mossfet ☭ -> EMF • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to mossfet ☭ -> EMF • • •Tomasz Oryński
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •from what I read it can be decentralised, in the sense that if you really try hard, you'd be able to host your own instance, but it will never be peer-to-peer, so the traffic will always go through the bluesky central hub.
I am not really a technical guy so I might misunderstood it, so I am looking forward to read the replies too.
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Abyssal Rook
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Xech
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
dustycloud.orgilja
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •reshared this
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infinite love ⴳ
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •like this
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in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •reshared this
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no longer kopper
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •i found this diagram extremely intuitive, may be helpful to you as well!
like this
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MOVED TO @halva@mk.absturztau.be
in reply to no longer kopper • • •Demon Queen Lucretia likes this.
no longer kopper
in reply to MOVED TO @halva@mk.absturztau.be • • •m
in reply to no longer kopper • • •cosmic
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •theM0ntarCann0n
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •William Pietri
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •You mean decent-ralized, like making them decent? I hear Bluesky is making use of AI moderation plus libertarian market incentives, so I'm sure they're much more decent than this place.
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Misofist
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Oooh good question! Uhhh so basically Fediverse is based on the concept of a federation, which is a form of hegemonic imperialism and therefore not decentralised.
Whereas BlueSky runs in the cloud, which is a distributed computing system and thus decentralised.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask me if you have any more questions.
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cosmic
Unknown parent • • •David Fleetwood - RG Admin
Unknown parent • • •@cosmic @phillycodehound People love car analogies, perhaps mention something like adding a tow hitch to a Camry...
Or something better, I'm not a car guy lol.
cosmic
Unknown parent • • •David Fleetwood - RG Admin
in reply to cosmic • • •Edward L Platt
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
FediThing
in reply to Edward L Platt • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
bituur esztreym
in reply to Edward L Platt • • •nice and serious try. but one cornerstrone of your theory: "trickle-down", doesn't exist, as it's actually "trickle-doom" (and always has been in fact).
XANTRONIX
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to XANTRONIX • • •XANTRONIX
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Michelle Hughes
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Demon Queen Lucretia likes this.
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Michelle Hughes • • •A Flock of Beagles
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Octavia Con Amore Succubard's Library
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Octavia Con Amore Succubard's Library • • •D
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Shine
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •𝗣𝗠𝗝 ⚫
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •you can run your own data server which hosts your account and everything you post (including media) but the relay is pretty much centralized because it provides and coordinates the whole network (that's why search across the whole network works)
it's possible to also host your own relay but this comes at the cost of several TB of data
basically it's the same concept as blockchain without the chain
mic
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •ティージェーグレェ
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Posts like these are why popcorn memes were invented.
Thank you for being awesome!
(Meanwhile my joke mind is trying to think up the Star Trek joke equivalent of anti-decentralized and coming up with various Borg permutations and failing because that is already overloaded with Mark "Sucks they're Borg" FB/Meta/IG BS)
GLC
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •amd
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Thibaultmol 🌈
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •thelibre.news/why-i-recommend-…
Why I recommend against Bluesky
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Niccolò Venerandi
in reply to Thibaultmol 🌈 • • •Thibaultmol 🌈
in reply to Niccolò Venerandi • • •Fair enough, sorry
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Thibaultmol 🌈 • • •noodlejetski
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Leonard Menzel
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •reshared this
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Leonard Menzel • • •Jane Doe
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Giovanni
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • •like this
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David Gerard
Unknown parent • • •it works similarly, but instead of paying for a phone call, it leaches your soul
eventually you become a shuddering husk because this is the only way to withstand knowing how everything works
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njsg
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •At least it's not centralized. I tested and I could open it in a browser window on the left half of the screen. But I could also open it in fullscreen. So... it's both not centralized and not decentralized?
But there's possible further research, I didn't test with multiple displays.
(Ok, I didn't actually test anything at all.)
Esparta
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •this post may help:
How Does BlueSky Work?, by @steveklabnik.com
steveklabnik.com/writing/how-d…
> One of the reasons I am enthusiastic about BlueSky is because of the way that it works. So in this post, I am going to lay out some of the design and the principles behind this design, as I understand them. I am not on the BlueSky team, so these are my takes only.
How Does BlueSky Work?
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Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Esparta • • •JimmyChezPants 🇨🇦
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •I have seen zero evidence that it is so, so my current operating assumption, which I share freely, is "in now way or shape or form".
They have - for the moment - implemented the protocol and platform (which are two things) in such a way as to cede control over some aspects of algorithmic feed manipulation to the user, but maintain final say on whatever they feel like, so far as I know, because there's no other way to run an open platform like that. This fact is how we came to have Section 230.
But basically, no, they are a single-entryway platform which requires huge sums of capital to live its short-ass lifespan, with enshittification as inevitable as the death of stars.
To those who choose it over this place, I get why, but I also know it's just a matter of time.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to JimmyChezPants 🇨🇦 • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Jon
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •"Decentralization" and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Christine Lemmer-Webber
Unknown parent • • •Nordnick 🌐
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •David Gerard
Unknown parent • • •i must admit that, as a shuddering husk, having a kei truck full of gold back up to my house every month is pretty sweet
all I have to do is know what Kubernetes is
*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*
Krzysztof Sakrejda
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •Lien Rag
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •It's above my technical level, but it seemed legit.
nicole mikołajczyk
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •i tried to make it look more modern idk if it does
mkljczk.pl/uploads/how-decentr…
How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
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lgsp is moving
in reply to nicole mikołajczyk • • •@mkljczk 🤣🤣🤣
Perfect!
One thing you could add is the option to login with google, Facebook o X
@cwebber @vmstan
Lou.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber • • •