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Hey HN, the engineering team at Bluesky is especially excited to get to this point! We're happy to help answer questions and help anyone trying to run their own

• jakobdabo 3y ago
  Congratulations on the release! If I may ask a question - is it possible to register an account without a phone number on a 3-rd party server?
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    Thanks! Yes, it's totally up to a PDS operator to decide how they create user accounts. It's also not required on the Bluesky PDS service any longer, in most cases. By default the self-hosted PDS requires an invite code, to prevent random people from creating an account. Later other options will exist, including OAuth support which is coming soon.
    • jakobdabo 3y ago
      That's great, thanks! > It's also not required on the Bluesky service any longer, in most cases. That's also nice to hear - when last time I tried to register an account (shortly after the free registration launch) the phone number field in the registration form was marked as required, if I am not mistaken.
      • jakebsky 3y ago
        Yeah, you're right, it was. That was temporary measure during the public launch to prevent spam/abuse. We've made some improvements here recently.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• clot27 3y ago
  Hi, what is the status of integration with the activitypub protocol? as its currently the most popular protocol in federated social media
  • Arnt 3y ago
    There's a bridge nowadays, but… see https://pleromanonx86.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/mastodon-dated-and-broken-by-design/ https://pleromanonx86.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/mastodon-date... which also links to https://wedistribute.org/2024/02/tear-down-walls-not-bridges/ https://wedistribute.org/2024/02/tear-down-walls-not-bridges... https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/bluesky-and-mastodon-users-are-having-a-fight-that-could-shape-the-next-generation-of-social-media/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/bluesky-and-mastodon-users... and https://news.itsfoss.com/bluesky-mastodon-bridge/ https://news.itsfoss.com/bluesky-mastodon-bridge/
    • kstrauser 3y ago
      That was quit the mess. Ryan Barrett is a smart guy and seems quite nice, but it was very ill-advised to unilaterally decide to build an opt-out bridge. In general, if users one platform A want their stuff to be on platform B, they'll find a way to make that happen. If someone else takes it upon themselves to copy everything from A to B, people understandably get pretty bent about it. If it had been an opt-in system, the response would probably have been far different.
      • Repulsion9513 3y ago
        Public is public. And someone else will just go build an opt-out (or maybe even no opt-out!) bridge.
        • kstrauser 3y ago
          Nah. Consent is a thing and this wasn't consensual. Yes, the posts were publicly accessible, but the intent of posting to Mastodon isn't to have it show up automatically on another network. It's technically possible, yes. It's still a dick thing to do and it pissed people off. And again, it wasn't about Bluesky in particular. If Google announced that they were going to ingest all Mastodon content and post it in a new Google Groups kind of thing, they'd be pretty understandably upset about that, too. In general, "if I wanted my stuff on Bluesky, I would have put it there". It wasn't the bridge creator's decision to make.
• lolinder 3y ago
  It would probably be worth clarifying in that repo what the license is for both the code in that repo and the code that it's actually running. It looks like it's just a very thin wrapper around @atproto/pds, which is MIT/Apache 2.0 [0], but the repo you link to has no license. Edit: now it has one! Thanks! [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/@atproto/pds https://www.npmjs.com/package/@atproto/pds
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    Yup, it's MIT/Apache 2.0. We'll fix that. Thanks for the heads up.
• doublerabbit 3y ago
  Will this work for bare metal? I use BSD, and all I see is a installer for Debian/Ubuntu. No guide in sight for bare metal nor telling you what services/software are required.
  • whyrusleeping 3y ago
    yeah it works fine on bare metal, you'll just have to do a bit more set up work yourself (https terminating and such). The installer script should be instructive in how to run it but you'll have to figure out the BSD specific stuff
  • lolinder 3y ago
    Look into the service folder in the repo—this repo is just a very thin packaging wrapper for a JS library, which you should be able to run anywhere you can run Node.
• mariusor 3y ago
  Are there any independent projects implementing the AT protocol?
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    There are a number of independent projects using atproto in various ways. There's an (incomplete) list here: https://docs.bsky.app/showcase https://docs.bsky.app/showcase And the protocol is documented here: https://atproto.com https://atproto.com
    • mariusor 3y ago
      Thank you, I might be searching for the wrong things, but I don't see any independent servers. There's clients, libraries, bots, but no servers, am I missing something? My question was motivated by the fact that from the outside the AT proto ecosystem looks pretty monocultural, and personally I don't trust that. :)
      • steveklabnik 3y ago
        Federation was just opened up with this announcement. I don't think there was a lot of energy for working on independent PDSes until after this has happened. In the past day, a bunch of copies of this reference PDS have been deployed. We'll see how things change in the future. Basically, you're right, but just because you're asking early on. This is about to change real quick.
        • mariusor 3y ago
          Sorry to be dismissive but if people need a reference PDS to implement a protocol, I kinda lose faith in its expressiveness. I'm contrasting this through the prism of having seen people implementing ActivityPub software as early as 2017, when it was merely a draft and everyone was complaining about how many things had been left out.
          • steveklabnik 3y ago
• mightyham 3y ago
  I'm a little confused why the PDS server is both dockerized and has an installation exclusive to Ubuntu/Debian.
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    Yeah, there's nothing preventing someone from running the PDS server on other distributions. The installer just does a few convenient things for you (like install Docker, opens port 80/443 using ufw, etc) and we haven't added and tested support for other distributions. There is a Docker compose file in the repo, and advanced users shouldn't have any problems running the code on another distribution or even without Docker if they prefer. Advanced users can just view the installer script as documentation.
    • xelamonster 3y ago
      Why do you need to open ufw if it runs in Docker? Docker does its own routing magic and will happily blast right through any ufw rules. Very cool to see this available though, I might have to try it out later this week!
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mholt 3y ago
  Awesome! Why did you choose Caddy as a proxy for PDS? (Caddy creator here.)
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    Thanks for Caddy, Matt! Some of us on the team have been using Caddy for years, for many of our projects. Because it's so simple, sufficiently high performance, and has lots of nice features. The on-demand TLS certificates with an "ask" endpoint is especially useful for the PDS use-case. Because there's generally a wildcard DNS name that is used to give each new user a domain handle (@alice.example.com) but we don't want to be vulnerable to a TLS certificate DoS/rate limit situation.
    • mholt 3y ago
      Great reasons -- glad to hear that! Let me know if you encounter any hiccups or have feedback. Love the fresh federated model btw!
    • charcircuit 3y ago
      Even if it may be simple in some areas, it doesn't handle edge cases such as https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/1632 https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/issues/1632 in other areas out of the box unlike other server software.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • nativeit 3y ago
        Not for nothing, but when accessed from this HN app on an iPhone, Apple’s website with a trailing dot does not render correctly.
      • nyolfen 3y ago
        you have been repeatedly posting this incredibly niche complaint for years at this point
• myaccountonhn 3y ago
  Hey! Congrats on the release. Does the AT Protocol only optimize for Twitter-like flows, or does it allow for other types of social applications to be built like Activitypub? For example a reddit-like social media.
  • jakebsky 3y ago
    Currently, atproto works probably best for public social apps, like microblogging, forums, etc. So yes, it's definitely possible to build a reddit-like social app on atproto. Part of the change today is that the PDS and Relay[1] now support non-app.bsky record types. This is quite new, so there could be issues, but we're prepared to fix any issues that crop up. 1. https://bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture https://bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architect...
    • cabalamat 3y ago
      > microblogging Would it be possible to use it for macroblogging, i.e. long posts with markdown markup, embedded images, etc? If so is there a python library tghat implements atproto?
      • jakebsky 3y ago
        Yes, it should be totally possible to build a blogging system on atproto. And the "app.bsky" API should serve as an example for almost all of the functionality required. Another really neat aspect of atproto, is that apps can interact theoretically. So you might create a blog system but use "app.bsky" (Bluesky) for comments. OAuth support is coming soon as well, which is a big step in simplifying auth.
• hnbad 3y ago
  Hi. If the protocol is open, the software is free and the main instance openly federates with self-hosters, what's the monetization strategy here? Clearly it's not "harvest all the data and figure it out later" as that avenue seems to be shut down internationally by strengthened privacy laws and ads don't work well with federation and third party clients. Is "grow first, figure out how to make money later" still a viable strategy in this economy?
  • riffic 3y ago
    managed hosting perhaps? It works in the email industry at least (Google and Microsoft nearly dominate the email biz)
    • hnbad 3y ago
      Yeah but that assumes ATP reaches anything even remotely approximating the ubiquity of email rather than ending up like Google Wave (not literally by being handed off to Apache - which took Wave behind the barn in 2018 in case you're wondering what happened to it).
• paulgerhardt 3y ago
  Unrelated to engineering but the recent rebrand to a dead butterfly logo[1][2][3] may be off brand for a platform wishing to communicate a more open, social Internet built on first principles and scientific rigor. [1]https://www.emilydamstra.com/please-enough-dead-butterflies/ https://www.emilydamstra.com/please-enough-dead-butterflies/ [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013 [3]https://bsky.social/about/blog/12-21-2023-butterfly https://bsky.social/about/blog/12-21-2023-butterfly
  • ethbr1 3y ago
    Pedantic lepidopterists of the world, unite!
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • DinaCoder99 3y ago
    > built on first principles and scientific rigor. Are you joking? This is private enterprise we're talking about. We'll all die before this company or anything similar is built on "scientific rigor" unless it directly relates to their profit margins.
  • mehdix 3y ago
    > If you hadn’t previously noted the difference between a living and a dead butterfly, I’m afraid you will now begin to see dead butterflies EVERYWHERE, as I do. I didn't know this (as most of us I'd guess). It was an interesting read though, thanks.
    • miramba 3y ago
      It's true. I read it some time ago...they're everywhere. You can't unsee it.
  • idiotsecant 3y ago
    I think the value of a symbol is in the idea it communicates. Most people don't see a dead butterfly. They just see a butterfly. The reality of whether it is more or less like a dead butterfly doesn't especially matter unless a significant amount of people interpret the symbol that way.
• daredoes 3y ago
  Gonna be that guy! Any chance the team could create a Home Assistant add-on for this? https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/ https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/ I think the Home Assistant community would go WILD for being able to self-host their Bluesky data straight from home with just a few clicks. It's a pretty big crowd of people. https://analytics.home-assistant.io/ https://analytics.home-assistant.io/ 327k willing to opt-in to analytics.
  • floren 3y ago
    we need a new version of Zawinski's Law: every system capable of deploying plugins will eventually expand until it is a full hosting solution. I know if there's one thing I'm eager to do it's to host even more stuff in that clunky piece of shit that has half a dozen main menu items for nonsense and buries everything of interest or value under "Settings"
    • daredoes 3y ago
      The add-ons are just docker containers? It's wasteful to get an entire second machine for something that can use the resources available on the machine running Home Assistant OS
  • remram 3y ago
    How would it interact with or extend home assistant?
• throwaway828 3y ago
  Given the PDS server works on ports 80/443 and I'd like to use a domain (@nytimes.com in the documentation, but say @example.com), how does it interoperate with existing services that already operate on @example.com , for example a website, blog, cloud. I'd imagine this use case is quite common for self hosters. If it can't operate alongside an existing, say, nginx on this port, are there recommended alternate practices? I'm excited at separating identity from hosting, of which self hosting identity gets us closer.
• KerrAvon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • CaptainFever 3y ago
    This is incredibly rude, irrelevant (I could not find your claim anywhere in the article posted) and not the way to behave on Hacker News. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." Please be better.
• KoftaBob 3y ago
  Now that individual posts can be viewed without logging in, is there a way to view/load a feed without authentication? I'm working on a client and there's a specific scenario where I want to be able to show a feed like "Top 20 - Past 3 Hours" before a user has logged in to their Bluesky account.
• nivenhuh 3y ago
  If I wanted to create a consumer hardware product that packages the PDS host in a user-friendly interface, does the software license permit that? Also, services like Twitter started off with a developer friendly open API, and then it got closed off when the business needed to make money off the platform. What's the difference with Bluesky?
  • steveklabnik 3y ago
    (I don't work at bluesky) It's MIT/Apache 2.0 licensed, so yes. However, because it's also an open protocol, even if it wasn't, you could write your own under whatever license you want. > What's the difference with Bluesky? BlueSky is built off of an open protocol, called AT. https://atproto.com/ https://atproto.com/ BlueSky is a particular app built on the protocol. As such, there's no way to "turn off the API," as BlueSky itself is a participant in the open protocol. They could like, re-write everything to be a central service, port the user data over to it, and then pull out from the network, but then two things would happen: 1. stuff would break, as it's no longer part of the network. 2. since there is true account portability, users could simply swap to a different PDS and client, and re-route around the damage. Also given that it's against their entire stated mission and goals, it would be social suicide.
    • nivenhuh 3y ago
      Ok, I think I understand the hype now — this is sweet? Thanks for the reply. When I was thinking about rolling my own federated social service (during the whole Twitter / Mastodon shuffle), I started thinking about the negative impacts of federation. “How can I build a kill switch into this thing in case bad actors start to participate?” Of course, that means a central authority having moderation control. But then, part of me thought.. does there need to be a kill switch? Do we want centralized moderation control? If laws are being broken, or social issues are being pressed to the fringe (*lons X), then the ISP would intervene. Or… the responsibility of moderation shifts elsewhere than the provider of the software. (To where do moderation responsibilities shift, if anywhere? I think is still a question.) I personally landed at the spot of: it’s really no different than what the WWW provides — it’s just easier access. But, is that easier access to self host content and media dangerous? (lol I guess I’m still conflicted about what could happen with wider ease-of-access to self hosting.) … back to sleep. This stuff literally keeps me up at night lol (I didn’t get to the other comments further down in this post that talk about content moderation .. but I’m seeing them now!)