The “relay” is an optimization and you can run your own. I think you’re confusing it for the actual data store, which can also run your own though indeed no one does. Maybe your info is out of date?
Sure, but the only difference between that and nostr is clients defaulting to connecting to more than one data hub. It’s big in practice, but to suggest we should dismiss Bluesky out of hand and not bother to learn from the cool other stuff they’ve built because of that one difference is…. Weird?
Bluesky separates the concept of the server that hosts your posts from the server(s) that clients connect to to fetch posts to display. The second group of servers intends to connect to every possible first group and download everything. It’s not like nostr where relays don’t sync.
Yes and the design of the system is very much that. There’s still work to go but just saying it isn’t and writing it off is naive imo.
Bluesky’s separation of moderation from hosting does reduce the chance of that pretty substantially. Unlike mastodon, where everyone is constantly screaming for servers to block each other, users can opt to do so without the operator taking that decision. Sure, the operator could as well, but the fact that they don’t have to (even if they think the content is objectionable) is pretty important imo.
But the only thing that sets nostr apart here is that clients connect to multiple servers. That’s….a very simple feature to add to any social protocol? They could just add that and be done with it and then we’d have nothing. Not sure they will, but…
Bluesky contemplates federated backends sync all data, so that concern only applies to nostr (relays), not Bluesky.
Yep, basically that. They can choose to push it in the future (eg if they run out of money), or might not. Given they’ve gone a lot of work towards it I assume they’ll at least try, subject to potentially limited budget.
But in the mean time they added a lot of decentralized features that have lapped nostr in some domains (anyone can create a feed algorithm, even if it’s run centrally, is huge! Same for ban decisions being shared lists).
All it takes is one person to stand up and build a new app with a different server and that goes away. It’s very centralized in practice today yea, but that can change fast…..or not. Depends on whether someone pushes it.
Basically their architecture is “the thing that stores your posts” separated from “the thing that an app contacts to ask for which posts to show in the UI”. The first is trivially run today and federates no problem (ofc that’s easy). The second is runnable but hard just because of size. I don’t see why no one would run that, though, at least if you think nostr relays are sustainable.
Much of it doesn’t actually need to be run to decentralize. “Labeling services” are basically just entities publishing messages to add tags to users (for blocking/adult content/etc), so you can just skip that and not block, or someone can just run that part and you can “subscribe” to that with your own server for the rest…
Also the UIs are on there and obv that’s just an app.
Finally….. currently much of it is one “docker run” soooooo
I did a deep-dive on the code and the only part of the architecture that is not currently decentralized is the plc-service, which resolves the DIDs with a custom method. You can literally run any other component yourself. Arguably this is the most important piece, so criticism is valid. But it's not clear how to decentralize governance of such a system while preserving the UX. Bitcoin 'gave up' on trying by just piggybacking off physics with PoW for consensus, which was not obviously going to work when it was created. I think perhaps the ultimate solution is just to use Bitcoin for the ID consensus with something like the did:btc or did:ion methods. The incentives to host decentralized infra without a token are not strong. Even nostr struggles with this currently. https://app.ilograph.com/@mikestaub/atprotocol%2520overview/Protocol%2520Overview/_walkthrough/1
Hmm, the did resolution part isn’t all that critical to the overall system, DID creation is basically just adding a DNS/HTTP record. I guess I don’t really understand your concern here, tbh.
Yea I dunno Will has done more for nostr than about anyone, I don’t think he deserves any stones.
Meh, every protocol starts with one client. That doesn’t mean progress hasn’t been made (most of the backend stack can be self-hosted with all the same data as the “official” backend, except one part AFAIU, which required a lot of work), nor that more progress won’t be made.
Yea, Bluesky has moderation, but that doesn’t mean it’s some centralized censored crap - especially if they manage to decentralize further and lean into the decentralized opt-in moderation design they have!
Yea, sustainability is definitely a big question, I assume at some point they’ll have to add ads (or a premium option) like everyone else. If they manage to redundant’ize the hosting before then (assuming that’s something they want), though, they may end up just eating all of nostr’s features….
Alright, nice chatting with you 👍
Except that’s not at all what they’ve built or what they’ve built towards. The whole point of Bluesky is that they separated hosting from moderation/censorship. Their goal is that individual users can select what they want to see or not see (which you may agree or disagree with as a design principle), which they’ve made great strides towards. I suggest you dig a bit deeper into how it works before you criticize it further :).
To some extent, but the “it’s not decentralized” argument *is* correct, I just think many haven’t dug in a hell of a lot deeper than that.
See that’s not true. They have actually made material progress towards their decentralization goals and suggesting “it’s just Web 2.0 centralized crap” is just being intellectually lazy.
I don’t really understand this kind of criticism (and not to pick on Will here, it seems to be from ~everyone).
Bluesky took a different approach - first build a product people want whose technology supports decentralization, and add the features the geeks want later. It’s easy to shit on their lack of decentralization, but Bluesky has made clear and consistent progress on that front since day one, and I assume they will continue to do so.
The result has been a product that’s growing (those user stats are pretty realistic, doubly so when you look at the number of accounts actually posting real content) way more than nostr with tons of anti-centralization features that nostr is missing (anyone can create a feed algorithm, and there are many, decentralized content tagging is a really cool innovation - different “adult content” tagging services, opt-in different moderation services, etc).
The federated model of Mastodon led to a trainwreck of fiefdoms run by weirdly obsessive and controlling mods, but Bluesky took that and addressed the issues by splitting moderation from hosting.
Sure, Bluesky’s hosting model means you don’t get the relay-redundancy that sets nostr’s censorship resistance apart, but that’s not all that hard to add in the future (with the sync assumption they make making it easier to make efficient, too).
Building the kinds of stuff Bluesky has on nostr is gonna take a huge investment, we can’t leave folks like Will stuck building critical nostr apps by himself. nostr:note1vpteqdxxlgkjndhghhlu4n47aj2sra5vgmdr465y4yfzwcshglvqrqann4