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Not only are they not end-to-end encrypted, Bluesky's DMs seem like they're entirely centralized. From their 2024 roadmap: > We looked closely at alternatives

Not only are they not end-to-end encrypted, Bluesky's DMs seem like they're entirely centralized. From their 2024 roadmap: > We looked closely at alternatives like linking to external services, re-using an existing protocol like Matrix, or rushing out on-protocol encrypted DMs, but ultimately decided to launch a basic centralized system to take the time pressure off our team and make our user community happy. https://docs.bsky.app/blog/2024-protocol-roadmap https://docs.bsky.app/blog/2024-protocol-roadmap

snapcaster 2y ago
I feel for them, because even if they (and weirdos like us on this site) value decentralization and other related values the average customer just DOES NOT CARE. They're trying to compete with other platforms without this handicap and very people people are willing to give them any "credit" for it
- TheBlight 2y ago
  I thought the entire point of Bluesky was that it was to be decentralized? Did that change?
  - ziml77 2y ago
    That was the idea with Bluesky, but people refuse to budge from Twitter without DMs integrated into the platform.
    - doublerabbit 2y ago
      Which applies to WhatsApp, TikTok too. The main issue with other platforms is that the content that exists within are too wild-west. Anime isn't a everybody thing nor are geeky Programming/Linux communities or furry artwork for that matter. Where do I find TikTok content within Matrix? That's what the current content-matter is. The corporate apply heavy exploitation; psychology and social exploits to the user. And while the other platforms don't and carry merits such as privacy and the likes; people really just don't care they are being used for systematic learning, being manipulated because some peer is influencing them. Companies pay large amount of money in R&D for developing social exploits, all the way down to the background colour of the icon of the app. A platform has to have a gimmick to catch. Privacy, decentralized isn't it. These foundations don't have corp money to pay for content producers, influencers and so you then end up with dwellings of niches which can turn urk at best.
  - ncallaway 2y ago
    From using Bluesky it feels like the goal is to build a social media experience that’s as decentralized as possible without sacrificing the user experience. So, they want the experience to be like Twitter for the users that don’t care about decentralization, but to be backed by something like ATProto underneath for those who care. I’d say Mastodon is more “the entire point is that it’s decentralized”. Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      When you're competing against goliath first-moved closed platforms, pragmatic eventual-decentralization makes sense. What use is first delivering today's table stakes features 5 years from now, albeit fully decentralized and open?
      - wmf 2y ago
        Twitter is over ten years old so arguably all its competitors are "late". Bluesky doesn't have 5 years of runway though.
      - ncallaway 2y ago
        Yea, especially when their rational is DMs are the most asked for feature. Build a good enough version now, and then tackle the end to end encrypted fully decentralized version. The cheap version can give them the breathing room to build the better version.
    - ramesh31 2y ago
      >Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point. And I'd say that was the right tradeoff to make. Mastodon is only marginally more useful than IRC at this point, and is completely useless to the average person. I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work. And no, I'm not going to spend hours digging through docs.
      - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
        I mean you can just sign up and use it. No need to read docs. I have plenty of complaints, but it’s largely alright imo.
  - summerlight 2y ago
    Decentralization is a solution for establishing a saner, fail-safe governance structure (or we can call it "billionaire-proof"), not the problem to be solved by itself. You need to have enough traction to achieve this goal and sometime it might make sense to compromise the decentralized implementation part.
  - jasonlotito 2y ago
    Yes. No.
- riffic 2y ago
  customer? who's paying for it?
- shadowfacts 2y ago
  I'm a little bit sympathetic, but they've also kinda tried to have it both ways. They spent ages inventing a new protocol for decentralized microblogging, and then ages more before you could actually use a server other than theirs. But DMs is now where they don't want to spend the time up front to do it the right way?
  - _djo_ 2y ago
    To be fair, they’re a tiny team with a ton of things on their roadmap and limited time to do it all. It seems they’re taking it slow on core stuff that they really need to get right, because it can’t be changed later, while adopting pragmatic solutions for things that users want now and which can be swapped out for better implementations in future.
- bachmeier 2y ago
  > the average customer just DOES NOT CARE They're not targeting the average customer (by whatever metric you measure an average customer). They're targeting people that value decentralization.
  - djur 2y ago
    Kind of, sort of, but not so much? They're also targeting people who left Twitter because of the moderation policies, ownership, and/or user base. Among Bluesky users, Twitter migrants easily outnumber decentralization enthusiasts 10 to 1 at this point.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  This is spot on. BlueSky and Threads have just become "left-wing Twitter", intentionally in quotes because it's actually a very small subset of users that left to found their own hug-box, due to some irrational hate of Musk, or that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again. Nobody cares about protocols, except maybe the handful of infosec nerds on Mastodon. It's about a middle school-level rearranging of friend groups. A VIP lounge where they only hang out with their own. There was an exodus of a small subset of users, and BlueSky was there like an abandoned building that was squatted. It being invite-only added to the exclusivity as invites were passed amongst like-minded peers online, further adding to the echo-chamber.
  - gammarator 2y ago
    > that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again. Sorry, but I think that deliberately obfuscates the changes Musk has made at Twitter. See https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energises-elon-musks-hate-machine/ https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energ... for one summary.
  - djur 2y ago
    Why is hating Elon Musk irrational? Regardless of politics or business practices, his personal conduct is revolting.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      Why do you care? You're not his friend or related to him. He is the CEO of a scaled text messaging app. Do you get upset if the CEO of your electric utility made stupid political statements? Or if the owner of a car dealership cheats on his wife? Tiger Woods slept with like fifty waitresses and masses of people were furious. Why? What did they expect his life as a star athlete was? People dislike Musk out of pure jealousy and try to rationalize it via other means. The logical option would be to simply not care.
      - lxgr 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
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stebalien 2y ago
It's a stop-gap because people want DMs and implementing them correctly (decentralized, e2e encrypted, etc.) is non-trivial. Rushing e2e encryption is not a good idea (and no, you can't just slap on matrix/signal and call it a day). The alternatives are to: 1. Wait a bit longer for something half-baked that appears to meet the goals (i.e., something you're going to regret but will be unable to replace). 2. Wait even longer for something perfect. By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed. But we all know that the more temporary the fix, the more permanent it becomes.
  - stebalien 2y ago
    In my experience, temporary fixes are more likely to "stick" the better they are at addressing the problem. The fact that nobody is satisfied with this fix is a good sign.
  - MyFedora 2y ago
    There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
- neiman 2y ago
  > By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed. Can you recall any example of anyone replacing a centralized protocol with a decentralized one?
  - ncallaway 2y ago
    Didn’t Bluesky ship centralized, and then later replaced the centralized protocol with the decentralized at proto?
gary_0 2y ago
Didn't the early versions of Skype, which was coded by like 4 guys, do decentralized end-to-end encrypted messaging like 20 years ago? Before MS bought it and removed all the security at the behest of the government[0], I mean. So two decades later, when we now have so many widely available open source libraries for networking and encryption, that job is somehow too hard for a well-funded organization like Bluesky? That's very sad. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_by_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping...
- theeandthy 2y ago
  Curious if they could simply piggyback on the Signal source code. Lots of folks try to reinvent the wheel these days. Just like protocol buffers reinvented ASN.1 + PER and so-forth. Even the crypto folks at protocol labs opted for the former in place of an established standard.
  - mjg59 2y ago
    No. I wrote about this a couple of years ago (https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/62598.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/62598.html) and the answer is that while Signal solves the cryptography problem, the other hard problem (ie, everything to do with key management) is still up to whatever's on top of the Signal protocol.
- mjg59 2y ago
  End to end encryption is not a hard problem from a cryptography perspective. It's a hard problem for key management (eg, how do you handle multiple devices?) and recovery (how do you handle someone losing their phone and wanting to recover their previous messages?). Twitter tried this and half-assed it, and Bluesky apparently want to do a better job.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    apparently they didn't.
anigbrowl 2y ago
They're not E2E yet, although they plan to introduce this later (and have had a good record so far of adding features incrementally with very few bugs). But you shouldn't be using any social media platform for communications that need to be secure.
upofadown 2y ago
It's nice that they are being honest about how the existing thing is not encrypted. Typically what happens with these things is that some entity announces that they have end to end encryption. But it turns out that they mean that end to end encryption is only possible. The user has to compare some ridiculously long number to achieve it and few users actually end up doing that. In most cases they are not even provided with any concepts to allow them to initially make things secure and maintain this security over time.
bbx 2y ago
Probably a noob question but: why is E2E encryption hard to implement? It took WhatsApp a long time to implement as well. Is there a particular reason?
- nhumrich 2y ago
  End to end encryption isn't hard. End to end encryption for non technical users who might forget their password, is hard. The trouble isn't the encryption. It's, how do you make it feel seamless without having access to the private keys, and without asking the end user for their private key.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

snapcaster 2y ago

I feel for them, because even if they (and weirdos like us on this site) value decentralization and other related values the average customer just DOES NOT CARE. They're trying to compete with other platforms without this handicap and very people people are willing to give them any "credit" for it

TheBlight 2y ago
I thought the entire point of Bluesky was that it was to be decentralized? Did that change?
- ziml77 2y ago
  That was the idea with Bluesky, but people refuse to budge from Twitter without DMs integrated into the platform.
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    Which applies to WhatsApp, TikTok too. The main issue with other platforms is that the content that exists within are too wild-west. Anime isn't a everybody thing nor are geeky Programming/Linux communities or furry artwork for that matter. Where do I find TikTok content within Matrix? That's what the current content-matter is. The corporate apply heavy exploitation; psychology and social exploits to the user. And while the other platforms don't and carry merits such as privacy and the likes; people really just don't care they are being used for systematic learning, being manipulated because some peer is influencing them. Companies pay large amount of money in R&D for developing social exploits, all the way down to the background colour of the icon of the app. A platform has to have a gimmick to catch. Privacy, decentralized isn't it. These foundations don't have corp money to pay for content producers, influencers and so you then end up with dwellings of niches which can turn urk at best.
- ncallaway 2y ago
  From using Bluesky it feels like the goal is to build a social media experience that’s as decentralized as possible without sacrificing the user experience. So, they want the experience to be like Twitter for the users that don’t care about decentralization, but to be backed by something like ATProto underneath for those who care. I’d say Mastodon is more “the entire point is that it’s decentralized”. Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    When you're competing against goliath first-moved closed platforms, pragmatic eventual-decentralization makes sense. What use is first delivering today's table stakes features 5 years from now, albeit fully decentralized and open?
    - wmf 2y ago
      Twitter is over ten years old so arguably all its competitors are "late". Bluesky doesn't have 5 years of runway though.
    - ncallaway 2y ago
      Yea, especially when their rational is DMs are the most asked for feature. Build a good enough version now, and then tackle the end to end encrypted fully decentralized version. The cheap version can give them the breathing room to build the better version.
  - ramesh31 2y ago
    >Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point. And I'd say that was the right tradeoff to make. Mastodon is only marginally more useful than IRC at this point, and is completely useless to the average person. I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work. And no, I'm not going to spend hours digging through docs.
    - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
      I mean you can just sign up and use it. No need to read docs. I have plenty of complaints, but it’s largely alright imo.
- summerlight 2y ago
  Decentralization is a solution for establishing a saner, fail-safe governance structure (or we can call it "billionaire-proof"), not the problem to be solved by itself. You need to have enough traction to achieve this goal and sometime it might make sense to compromise the decentralized implementation part.
- jasonlotito 2y ago
  Yes. No.
riffic 2y ago
customer? who's paying for it?
shadowfacts 2y ago
I'm a little bit sympathetic, but they've also kinda tried to have it both ways. They spent ages inventing a new protocol for decentralized microblogging, and then ages more before you could actually use a server other than theirs. But DMs is now where they don't want to spend the time up front to do it the right way?
- _djo_ 2y ago
  To be fair, they’re a tiny team with a ton of things on their roadmap and limited time to do it all. It seems they’re taking it slow on core stuff that they really need to get right, because it can’t be changed later, while adopting pragmatic solutions for things that users want now and which can be swapped out for better implementations in future.
bachmeier 2y ago
> the average customer just DOES NOT CARE They're not targeting the average customer (by whatever metric you measure an average customer). They're targeting people that value decentralization.
- djur 2y ago
  Kind of, sort of, but not so much? They're also targeting people who left Twitter because of the moderation policies, ownership, and/or user base. Among Bluesky users, Twitter migrants easily outnumber decentralization enthusiasts 10 to 1 at this point.
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
This is spot on. BlueSky and Threads have just become "left-wing Twitter", intentionally in quotes because it's actually a very small subset of users that left to found their own hug-box, due to some irrational hate of Musk, or that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again. Nobody cares about protocols, except maybe the handful of infosec nerds on Mastodon. It's about a middle school-level rearranging of friend groups. A VIP lounge where they only hang out with their own. There was an exodus of a small subset of users, and BlueSky was there like an abandoned building that was squatted. It being invite-only added to the exclusivity as invites were passed amongst like-minded peers online, further adding to the echo-chamber.
- gammarator 2y ago
  > that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again. Sorry, but I think that deliberately obfuscates the changes Musk has made at Twitter. See https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energises-elon-musks-hate-machine/ https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energ... for one summary.
- djur 2y ago
  Why is hating Elon Musk irrational? Regardless of politics or business practices, his personal conduct is revolting.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    Why do you care? You're not his friend or related to him. He is the CEO of a scaled text messaging app. Do you get upset if the CEO of your electric utility made stupid political statements? Or if the owner of a car dealership cheats on his wife? Tiger Woods slept with like fifty waitresses and masses of people were furious. Why? What did they expect his life as a star athlete was? People dislike Musk out of pure jealousy and try to rationalize it via other means. The logical option would be to simply not care.
    - lxgr 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

stebalien 2y ago

It's a stop-gap because people want DMs and implementing them correctly (decentralized, e2e encrypted, etc.) is non-trivial. Rushing e2e encryption is not a good idea (and no, you can't just slap on matrix/signal and call it a day). The alternatives are to: 1. Wait a bit longer for something half-baked that appears to meet the goals (i.e., something you're going to regret but will be unable to replace). 2. Wait even longer for something perfect. By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
> By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed. But we all know that the more temporary the fix, the more permanent it becomes.
- stebalien 2y ago
  In my experience, temporary fixes are more likely to "stick" the better they are at addressing the problem. The fact that nobody is satisfied with this fix is a good sign.
- MyFedora 2y ago
  There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
neiman 2y ago
> By making the protocol centralized and stupid-simple, it's also stupid-simple to replace in when everyone is done painting the perfect bikeshed. Can you recall any example of anyone replacing a centralized protocol with a decentralized one?
- ncallaway 2y ago
  Didn’t Bluesky ship centralized, and then later replaced the centralized protocol with the decentralized at proto?

gary_0 2y ago

Didn't the early versions of Skype, which was coded by like 4 guys, do decentralized end-to-end encrypted messaging like 20 years ago? Before MS bought it and removed all the security at the behest of the government[0], I mean. So two decades later, when we now have so many widely available open source libraries for networking and encryption, that job is somehow too hard for a well-funded organization like Bluesky? That's very sad. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_by_design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping...

theeandthy 2y ago
Curious if they could simply piggyback on the Signal source code. Lots of folks try to reinvent the wheel these days. Just like protocol buffers reinvented ASN.1 + PER and so-forth. Even the crypto folks at protocol labs opted for the former in place of an established standard.
- mjg59 2y ago
  No. I wrote about this a couple of years ago (https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/62598.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/62598.html) and the answer is that while Signal solves the cryptography problem, the other hard problem (ie, everything to do with key management) is still up to whatever's on top of the Signal protocol.
mjg59 2y ago
End to end encryption is not a hard problem from a cryptography perspective. It's a hard problem for key management (eg, how do you handle multiple devices?) and recovery (how do you handle someone losing their phone and wanting to recover their previous messages?). Twitter tried this and half-assed it, and Bluesky apparently want to do a better job.
- fragmede 2y ago
  apparently they didn't.

anigbrowl 2y ago

They're not E2E yet, although they plan to introduce this later (and have had a good record so far of adding features incrementally with very few bugs). But you shouldn't be using any social media platform for communications that need to be secure.

upofadown 2y ago

It's nice that they are being honest about how the existing thing is not encrypted. Typically what happens with these things is that some entity announces that they have end to end encryption. But it turns out that they mean that end to end encryption is only possible. The user has to compare some ridiculously long number to achieve it and few users actually end up doing that. In most cases they are not even provided with any concepts to allow them to initially make things secure and maintain this security over time.

bbx 2y ago

Probably a noob question but: why is E2E encryption hard to implement? It took WhatsApp a long time to implement as well. Is there a particular reason?

nhumrich 2y ago
End to end encryption isn't hard. End to end encryption for non technical users who might forget their password, is hard. The trouble isn't the encryption. It's, how do you make it feel seamless without having access to the private keys, and without asking the end user for their private key.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]