Technology

Oh, so NOSTR is not hated here anymore. Good Anakin good.

Seriously, an amazingly successful platform.

People always want to try subtler and subtler tech, and NOSTR's dumb architecture with relays is something that could only be conceived by people not that fond of tech brilliance. And that's good and right! And if those people are cryptobros, then so be it, they found the right way and this is what matters.

They had a task one can't solve with classic P2P, because mobile devices and energy consumption and uptime. They solved it the old-fashioned way which is still right, kinda like Usenet, except reducing news servers to asynchronous relays.

NOSTR already has some standard extensions for moderated communities, I'm just not sure if there are any clients supporting that.

Who could've ever predicted this?!?

Probably said something bad about their current dictator.

You're right that Bluesky isn't federated, but it most definitely is centralized.

Assuming you are serious:

Bluesky is ... arguably 'federated', but it is centralized, not decentralized.

https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20241128-bluesky-decentralization

Their model (AT Protocol) relies on a central, authoritative ... 'Relay', that all 'federated' users and posts on federated PDS (personal data servers) must go through, to actually reach the 'AppView', ie, what all other people/users can actually see.

So, this is not a many to many, tangled spider web of connections, the way lemmy, and other parts of the actual fediverse are.

It is a top down hierarchy, a pyramid.

And Bluesky runs the Relay, the chokepoint.

If Bluesky cuts off the PDS your account is on, everyone on it is now gone.

The actual fediverse, Mastadon, Lemmy, etc, runs on ActivityPub.

In that model... every instance is essentially self contained, and every instance that is federated communicates with every other instance that is federated.

Each instance can decide what other instances they want to federate with... and users on each instance can personally block even more other users, communities, or entire instances if they choose to, but that only effects what that particular user sees.

That is what you call decentralized, approaching, or also having elements of being 'distributed'.

To bring up an example without getting into the drama that led to it:

The 'Tankie Triad' of ml, lemmygrad and hexbear have had a number of other instances defederate from them.

But, there are also a good number of instances that have not done so.

So that means if your account is on hexbear... you can't see or post on an instamce that has blocked your instance.

But, if you (a hexbear...ian?), post on a neutral instance... users on that neutral instance will see the post.

But but, if a user from an instance that has defederated from hexbear goes to to the neutral instance... they will not see the hexbearian's post.

This sounds complicated, and it is, but ... thats the whole point of a decentralized system. It is more complex in the abstract... but the entire system ends up being more robust, more adaptable, more customizable... without a central authority in direct control of the entire system.

For those who don't know, Bluesky isn't really federated. The only way to host a non-Bluesky instance required 1TB of storage in July 2024, and 5 TB of storage in Nov 2024. Could be way more than that now.

You basically have to be a company to federate into the ATProto (Bluesky) ecosystem. You can't just "stand up an instance".

Lots of detail: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

(I know you've already realized that you were conflating Mastodon with Bluesky, I'm putting this here for others who come along so they can get the facts).

They're still a corporate entity, and they still want access to markets to make money.

Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either.

How could they follow the pied piper rasputin a SECOND TIME??? There's a saying in Texas, maybe it's in Tennessee, fool me once shame, shame on you, fool me twice eh.. Can't get fooled again!

My experience as a person who has a lot of experience working with computer is basically thus:

When you solve a problem for someone, you are a magician.

When you can't, you are completely full of shit and know nothing about tech and your entire life is a lie.

When you tell someone 'hey I wouldn't do that', your experience and expertise means nothing if what you are suggesting would mildly inconvenience them for 10 minutes, or takes more than 30 seconds to explain why it is a bad idea.

When you tell them 'hey have you tried this?' your experience and expertise also means nothing if you cannot do it for them and also make it so it never breaks again, and also they will keep doing the thing that makes it break even though you explained to them how to not do that thing that makes it break.

... I may as well just start an IT flavored Rodney Dangerfield comedy routine, it would be much more fun and less stressful than always being a db admin/data analyst/backend dev/frontend dev/whatever else my job title now apparently includes.