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> the promise of decentralisation AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort. I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC i

> the promise of decentralisation AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort. I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.

isodev 1y ago
Same, that’s why I said “the promise of”. Also how do they plan to bill actors in this decentralised system? Is it going to be developers footing the bill? Some premium features only “the main Bluesky instance” has? It’s not clear to me at all.
jacob2161 1y ago
Bluesky is built on atproto, which is designed to be "locked open" in a way that can't be rescinded. That was a core design constraint. VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to destroy the ideals of the web.
- evbogue 1y ago
  The PDSes (personal data servers) can be independantly hosted, but Bluesky itself indexes and presents the messages these servers contain in their social-app. Bluesky also maintains the directory of these servers.
  - jacob2161 1y ago
    Anyone else is also free to run these services (app views, relays) and a few people already are doing this. An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render the data.
    - evbogue 1y ago
      Yes, and running these things is prohibitively difficult such as I've only witnessed two full index attempts and no alternative plc directories. Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the criticism about Bluesky's design.
      - jacob2161 1y ago
        I agree there's a lot of room for improvement in making it easier. But certain things like full-network relays/app views just have inherent bandwidth/storage/compute costs associated with them but it's definitely something a non-profit (like Internet Archive) could easily afford to do. The PLC service could likely be hosted for ~$40/mo.
      - bnewbold 1y ago
        If you want a service which indexes every post in the public network, including from folks you don't follow, that is just going to require resources. I think $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin does) is very reasonable and approachable for organized groups without external funding. Many Mastodon instances cost more than that, and provide a must smaller scope of indexing. If you want a small scaled down setup for just a small community, which still interoperates with the full network but doesn't have a complete network, there are setups like AppViewLite, which can run on, eg, an old laptop at home: https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite Personally, I don't think individualist self-hosting is a necessary or helpful goal for indexing the network. Most humans are not interested in spending the time or learning the skills to do this, even if it was as easy as setting up a self-hosted blog with RSS. I think small collectives (orgs, coops, communities, neighborhoods, companies, etc) exist and can fill this role. Regardless, this is moving the discussion, which was about whether it was possible to decentralize each component the network, not whether it was pragmatic for individuals to self-host the whole thing.
        dingnuts 1y ago
        > I think $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin does) is very reasonable and approachable for organized groups without external funding. That's crazy cheap! Everybody on HN should be able to run one of these, just cancel your Claude Code Max subscription All kidding aside, that's incredibly cost effective and heartening to read. I expected the cost of running a relay to be much higher.
bnewbold 1y ago
hundreds (thousands?) of users have signed up for Bluesky Social, then moved their accounts to independent hosts. folks can use https://zeppelin.social/ https://zeppelin.social/ as a totally free-standing bluesky posting experience that interoperates with the full network. Bluesky Social still clearly dominates the ecosystem, but there is no single component of the system that does not have a open/alternative option for exit. Do you disagree? Is there a specific centralized component you take issue with?
- ttiurani 1y ago
  > there is no single component of the system that does not have a open/alternative option for exit. Users can move their follows, followers and posts to zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently? Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means, but in a social network easy migration between servers is the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized network to emerge. Edit. Does the network actually work over at zeppelin.social alone if Bluesky servers go down?
  - jcgl 1y ago
    > Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means, but in a social network easy migration between servers is the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized network to emerge. I totally agree. However, a lot of people in the fediverse/ActivityPub world apparently (?) disagree, seeing as your domain is tightly coupled to your server, i.e. no name portability. Seems like a wild oversight to me, and getting massive instances like matrix.org and mastadon.social seems like an inevitable consequence. Lack of name portability implies greater risk when choosing a server. Greater risk when choosing a server means choosing comparatively less risky servers. Choosing comparatively less risky servers means choosing more well-known servers. Thus you have the GMail-ification of the fediverse.
  - FiloSottile 1y ago
    > Users can move their follows, followers and posts to zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently? Yes, even if Bluesky was down (as long as they have a backup) which is not the case for ActivityPub.

isodev 1y ago

Same, that’s why I said “the promise of”. Also how do they plan to bill actors in this decentralised system? Is it going to be developers footing the bill? Some premium features only “the main Bluesky instance” has? It’s not clear to me at all.

jacob2161 1y ago

Bluesky is built on atproto, which is designed to be "locked open" in a way that can't be rescinded. That was a core design constraint. VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to destroy the ideals of the web.

evbogue 1y ago
The PDSes (personal data servers) can be independantly hosted, but Bluesky itself indexes and presents the messages these servers contain in their social-app. Bluesky also maintains the directory of these servers.
- jacob2161 1y ago
  Anyone else is also free to run these services (app views, relays) and a few people already are doing this. An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render the data.
  - evbogue 1y ago
    Yes, and running these things is prohibitively difficult such as I've only witnessed two full index attempts and no alternative plc directories. Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the criticism about Bluesky's design.
    - jacob2161 1y ago
      I agree there's a lot of room for improvement in making it easier. But certain things like full-network relays/app views just have inherent bandwidth/storage/compute costs associated with them but it's definitely something a non-profit (like Internet Archive) could easily afford to do. The PLC service could likely be hosted for ~$40/mo.
    - bnewbold 1y ago
      If you want a service which indexes every post in the public network, including from folks you don't follow, that is just going to require resources. I think $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin does) is very reasonable and approachable for organized groups without external funding. Many Mastodon instances cost more than that, and provide a must smaller scope of indexing. If you want a small scaled down setup for just a small community, which still interoperates with the full network but doesn't have a complete network, there are setups like AppViewLite, which can run on, eg, an old laptop at home: https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite Personally, I don't think individualist self-hosting is a necessary or helpful goal for indexing the network. Most humans are not interested in spending the time or learning the skills to do this, even if it was as easy as setting up a self-hosted blog with RSS. I think small collectives (orgs, coops, communities, neighborhoods, companies, etc) exist and can fill this role. Regardless, this is moving the discussion, which was about whether it was possible to decentralize each component the network, not whether it was pragmatic for individuals to self-host the whole thing.
      - dingnuts 1y ago
        > I think $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin does) is very reasonable and approachable for organized groups without external funding. That's crazy cheap! Everybody on HN should be able to run one of these, just cancel your Claude Code Max subscription All kidding aside, that's incredibly cost effective and heartening to read. I expected the cost of running a relay to be much higher.

bnewbold 1y ago

hundreds (thousands?) of users have signed up for Bluesky Social, then moved their accounts to independent hosts. folks can use https://zeppelin.social/ https://zeppelin.social/ as a totally free-standing bluesky posting experience that interoperates with the full network. Bluesky Social still clearly dominates the ecosystem, but there is no single component of the system that does not have a open/alternative option for exit. Do you disagree? Is there a specific centralized component you take issue with?

ttiurani 1y ago
> there is no single component of the system that does not have a open/alternative option for exit. Users can move their follows, followers and posts to zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently? Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means, but in a social network easy migration between servers is the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized network to emerge. Edit. Does the network actually work over at zeppelin.social alone if Bluesky servers go down?
- jcgl 1y ago
  > Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means, but in a social network easy migration between servers is the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized network to emerge. I totally agree. However, a lot of people in the fediverse/ActivityPub world apparently (?) disagree, seeing as your domain is tightly coupled to your server, i.e. no name portability. Seems like a wild oversight to me, and getting massive instances like matrix.org and mastadon.social seems like an inevitable consequence. Lack of name portability implies greater risk when choosing a server. Greater risk when choosing a server means choosing comparatively less risky servers. Choosing comparatively less risky servers means choosing more well-known servers. Thus you have the GMail-ification of the fediverse.
- FiloSottile 1y ago
  > Users can move their follows, followers and posts to zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently? Yes, even if Bluesky was down (as long as they have a backup) which is not the case for ActivityPub.