Axel RauschmayerNov 20, 2024

Mastodon’s weaknesses and how to fix them
https://2ality.com/2024/11/mastodon-weaknesses.html

#2ality #Mastodon

Mastodon’s weaknesses and how to fix them

As a web developer, I love Mastodon: Since Twitter became X, there are enough web dev people here. I’m happy with the web app – it even has several nice touches where it is better than Twitter. I’m not locked into an ecosystem that is controlled by a single company. That being said, Mastodon still has several major weaknesses. In this blog post, I collect those and explain what’s being done to fix them. It is not meant to be exhaustive: If there is a weakness that affects you and isn’t mentioned here, then please let us know in the comments.

Show threadAxel Rauschmayer

Do I understand Bluesky’s protocol (*) correctly? It seems less decentralized than ActivityPub:

* A lot is nice, pluggable and decentralized: feeds, PDSes, etc.

* However, core functionality (e.g. for finding replies to a post) depends on the Relay as a “firehose”. A Relay is expensive to run (especially if combined with AppView & Labeler). It has to be comprehensive, otherwise accounts can’t follow each other. Isn’t that an obstacle to more federation(?)

(*) https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03239

Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media

Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 10 million registered users by October 2024. In this paper we introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: to enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; to make it easy for users to switch providers; to give users agency over the content they see; and to provide a simple user experience that does not burden users with complexity arising from the system's decentralized nature. The system's openness allows anybody to contribute to content moderation and community management, and we invite the research community to use Bluesky as a dataset and testing ground for new approaches in social media moderation.

arXiv.org
Nov 20, 2024 at 3:52pmWeb
Show threadAustin WillisNov 20, 2024
@rauschma this thread made it make more sense to me: https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3l7y5rlcleb2y
Trying to think of it as “decentralized” but not “federated”. Maybe it’s decentralized more in the sense that DNS is decentralized? In the respect that eventually you will need use a relay that you don’t/can’t control, otherwise you cut yourself off from the network (or you need to spend a ton of money to become a root DNS/relay basically)
Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social)

Appreciate the kind words about me from my old friend @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy here, but I think he's misunderstood the architecture of @atproto.com. The system is absolutely building in Ulysses Pacts and you can exit Bluesky infra while staying in contact. https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/

Bluesky Social
Show threadAxel RauschmayerNov 20, 2024

@austinwillis Interesting, thanks!

I’m not sure what that sentence means: “[…] ATproto thinks of decentralized more like the web is decentralized, not that you have to pick your own feudal lord.”

The Relay is your feudal lord on Bluesky.

I think in terms of: What are the centralized elements of a system? And a Relay is such an element (in practice). They went with a firehose where Mastodon retrieves on demand.

Also: Someone has to moderate the Relay. That’s labor/cost-intensive, too.

Show threadAxel RauschmayerNov 20, 2024
@austinwillis My current and preliminary conclusion is that ActivityPub going with server = community is a compromise but a good one that helps with making the Fediverse diverse.
Show threadAustin WillisNov 20, 2024
@rauschma Right, I think that compromise is necessary to make moderation possible at a volunteer capacity. It would be a complete disaster if the volume of people joining Bsky were jumping on mastodon.social right now, and honestly I think it’s best that they don’t. We’ll see how Bsky pans out, but I do think their design is the best way to handle that level of scale that we have seen so far. If the day comes where they turn the dials too far, then maybe then the technical crowd can provide a non-extractive relay to free everyone 🤷‍♂️. Switching costs may be high, but at least it is technically possible
Show thread𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇨🇦)Nov 20, 2024

@rauschma

Thats true and thats on purpose. Its by design!

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@serapath/113506518317820040

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) (@[email protected])

Why Bluesky is not the answer to any of our problems but rather a step back from what we achieved so far: https://destructured.net/bluesky-enshittification https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joecardillo_bluesky-bigtech-socialmedia-activity-7263206291139932161-BTim/ https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/11/15/Not-Bluesky https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-11-02-ulysses-pact-tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast-b2f89bb5b4d8

Gamedev Mastodon