ok, but, does ActivityPub have portable identity and/or content addressability yet, so that when some of those servers (which are often hobbyist-run and/or tenuously funded) inevitably cease operating their users can continue on a different server? 👀

It's a rhetorical question, and the answer is no.

otoh, atproto's PLC DID method is also not really decentralized... but at least the rest of their system is actually substantially more decentralized architecturally than AP is.

To anyone interested in reading a very informative in-depth discussion of this topic, I recommend the blog post How decentralized is Bluesky really? by ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber (followed by this and this).

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

portable identity

So like when bluesky starts having to pay back their investors I can portable my identity to.... one of the other equally populated blueskies out there?

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yes. That's the idea.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A meaningless "idea". Might as well say BlueSky has "concepts of a plan".

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

There are already "other Blueskies" out there, and you can already port your identity to them.

However, most users haven't, and most users are not motivated to do so. Thus, OP created a website.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

We're counting hypotheticals as real now? I suppose your not-hypothetical girlfriend goes to another school too, right? Just not motivated to visit?

As you're no doubt aware, the reason 99.9% of bluesky users are on a single server is obviously not because "nobody is motivated" to create other servers.

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm gay.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'm sorry your credibility is at zero with me. You keep avoiding the point.

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

At no point in this conversation did I ever rely on my own credibility to make an argument.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

More avoidance. You astroturfing?

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’m literally just a guy

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ok and bluesky is literally centralized

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ok but it’s federated.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm just going to respond to what you said before you edited your comment to be a reaction gif.

Since (as of November of last year) a majority of Bluesky's user base is non-technical, they have don't have the knowledge or motivation to switch to another PDS. If 30 million users joined mastodon.social, the fediverse would also be centralized.

The only way for Bluesky to be decentralized by the metrics you use is for them to force users onto other PDSes.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

No, please respond to the gif. If my grandmother had wheels, would she be a wagon?

BlueSky is centralized. Describing it as "federated" is being (intentionally, in your case) misleading.

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t know what the point of the gif is, so I’m not going to respond to it.

Is Matrix federated? That’s also centralized

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

If a grandmother had wheels would you consider her to be a wagon?

[–] airportline@lemmy.zip 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t care

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 12 hours ago

Leaving the door open to the idea that putting wheels onto grandmothers could make them into wagons

[–] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

... but at least the rest of their system is actually substantially more decentralized architecturally than AP is.

In the blog post you linked, neither the author or myself came to your conclusion:

However, I stand by my assertions that Bluesky is not meaningfully decentralized and that it is certainly not federated according to any technical definition of federation we have had in a decentralized social network context previously. To claim that Bluesky is decentralized or federated in its current form moves the goalposts of both of those terms, which I find unacceptable.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The blog post also says this:

There is one other thing which Bluesky gets right, and which the present-day fediverse does not. This is that Bluesky uses content-addressed content, so that content can survive if a node goes down. In this way (well, also allegedly with identity, but I will critique that part because it has several problems), Bluesky achieves its "credible exit" (Bluesky's own term, by the way) in that the main node or individual hosts could go down, posts can continue to be referenced. This is possible to also do on the fediverse, but is not done presently; today, a fediverse user has to worry a lot about a node going down. indeed I intentionally fought for and left open the possibility within ActivityPub of adding content-addressed posts, and several years ago I wrote a demo of how to combine content addressing with ActivityPub. But nonetheless, even though such a thing is spec-compatible with ActivityPub, content-addressing is not done today on ActivityPub, and is done on Bluesky.

My comment should have been clearer; what I meant when i said it is more "decentralized architecturally" I was referring to the data model part of the architecture as opposed to the physical server infrastructure currently operating it. The latter is obviously quite centralized still, but the former is designed for resilience against nodes unexpectedly (and permanently) failing.

[–] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Okay yes this makes sense. Although, honestly i think I'd prefer the AP method of doing it because BlueSky sends ALL content to all nodes, so it's MUCH less cost effective to join with a private server.

I run my own lemmy instance, so i know the data volume since 2023 has been probably like a terabyte or so. But, with BlueSky I'd have to account for the data volume of all users on the platform as a whole, bringing the data volume way up to tens of terabytes (a guess based almost entirely on nothing).

So it really boils down to yes I agree that AP has problems with data accessibility, but I'd prefer that over unnecessary data redundancy

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

with BlueSky I’d have to account for the data volume of all users on the platform as a whole, bringing the data volume way up to tens of terabytes

I think this is a common misconception based on some critics' incorrect assumptions and back-of-the-envelope math. See the atproto overview for the different components involved, and then this post (from a BlueSky employee) "A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month" for some numbers.

If I understand correctly, to run a "full nework relay" does mean to consume all of the text posts from all known servers, but not necessarily all of the media, and not necessarily to keep data you aren't interested in for any long period of time.

Also, you can run your own PDS and/or App Views without running your own relay at all. And, you can also use multiple other people's relays.

Disclaimer: I'm not an atproto expert, and I haven't set any of this up myself.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

You can design an appview that crawls PDSes directly, no relay needed.

AppViewLite does that

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

You can actually do it like mastodon and only take on data from specific users or PDS. Wafrn does this.