Fediverse

There is a lot bluesky gets right, and a lot it gets wrong, the same is true with Activitypub.

(Some) strengths of Atproto

Atproto is content-addressed, and portable. This means that posts can exist independantly of their original server.
Instead of giving posts a https uri, which will stop working if a user moves servers or their server disappears, they give them at uris.
For example, this post on bsky.app: https://bsky.app/profile/ponder.ooo/post/3lk4yrmyugc2f
Has the at:// link is: at://did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk/app.bsky.feed.post/3lk4yrmyugc2f.
The post does exist over https at https://porcini.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.getRecord?repo=did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk&collection=app.bsky.feed.post&rkey=3lk4yrmyugc2f.

Atproto is very easy to build apps on. For example, tangled.sh, frontpage.fyi and flushes.app are all apps built on atproto.
Atproto allows more flexibility in what an app can do, as opposed to lemmy or mastodon's api.

Atproto is better documented. The ActivityPub spec leaves a lot up to the reader.

Atproto has some really good moderation tools for users. People can make public blocklists of users, and people can subscribe to labellers, people or services which give users/posts a label.

Weaknesses of Atproto

almost everyone is on bluesky's PDSes. I thought mastodon.social and lemmy.world were bad, but the people on alternate PDSes altogether adds up to only a few thousand.

Its decentralised identifiers are actually completely centralised! DID:PLC, their DID method, originally stood for placeholder, but they renamed it to Public Ledger of Credentials.
To use it, you have to use plc.directory.
You can use a DID:WEB DID, but if your website linked to it goes down you lose your identity.
(I find it extremely funny that its not actually a requirement for a decentralised identifier to be decentralised. )

Everything on the network has to be public to work.
since relays have to be able to collect all the information on the network for Appviews to be able to make use of that information, anyone can find out who's blocking someone, or who is on a list, or who's following who, with no way of hiding that information.
Private accounts and posts are impossible to do on atproto.

Since everything is public, DMs (for now) are centralised. They do seem like they want to change that though.

Strengths of ActivityPub

AP (ActivityPub) is better distributed. While it has large servers (like mastodon.social or lemmy.world (and threads, but we don't talk about threads)) the majority of users are not on those servers. There is no single point of failure. If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, atproto would still exist, it would just have a negligable amount of users.

One node in the network lets you do everything, as opposed to bluesky which has three parts (You can do stuff without a relay though). This means you can trust a lot less of the network.

ActivityPub scales better than ATProto. Atproto scales quadratically, meaning that having a lot of nodes in the network harms performance.
AP scales horizontally, meaning it works better with a lot of small servers.

ActivityPub can keep stuff private, like blocks and posts.
Though, a lot of implementations can leak posts.

Weaknesses of ActivityPub

The spec leaves so much out. They didn't propose a way to make sure requests between servers are validated, so mastodon chose HTTP signatures.
They didn't add any way of looking up handles, so mastodon chose webfinger.

A posts's id is its https uri, this means thatif a server goes down, stuff can't be fetched. A user can't move their followers if their server goes down (you can on ATproto). There is a standard to fix this, FEP-ef61, but it breaks compatibility with a lot of implementations.

Missing information is a problem. Its not really a problem on lemmy, but on mastodon likes and replies from other servers may not make it to your server at all (you can fetch replies in newer versions of mastodon though).

All this aside, I do think the two can coexist. I don't see anything like lemmy working on atproto. ActivityPub seems closer to social networking, as opposed to social media.
Something like facebook would be impossible to make on atproto, because not everything is made to be public.

I am hoping for a bridge, but good (bridgy is opt-in, making it useless).

I see a lot of misinformation about bluesky here, so I want to address a lot of the talking points against atproto/bluesky.

This is partially inspired by accounts like mastodon migration and feditips being really annoying about bluesky.

How Bluesky Works

I see a lot of people misunderstanding how it works.
The network has three main parts:

1. A PDS -- This stands for Personal Data Server. These store information in records, like who you are following, your posts, who you are blocking and your images.
2. A relay -- These crawl PDSes and keep a copy of all the records on them. They give a "Firehose" of all the data on the network (that they crawled).
3. An AppView -- These index and work through the data from the firehose. All interactions are handled through these, meaning if someone follows me on bluesky, that app.bsky.graph.follow record will be crawled by the relay, and recieved by the AppView. https://bsky.app/ is an Appview. Appviews don't always have to use the relays, https://whtwnd.com/ connects to PDSes directly.

This is different to ActivityPub, where if I follow someone, my server sends that information directly to the other person's server.

Common misconceptions

An atproto relay is too expensive to run.

https://atproto.africa/ is a second full-network relay run by the blacksky team. We already have a second relay, and they're not even that expensive to run anymore, a lot of people run non-archival (meaning it doesn't backfill every post) relays for less than $40 a month.

There is no instances available except for bsky.social

bsky.social isn't actually an instance, its just the domain name assigned to users by default. This is explained here: https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f8fc8da8-cd7e-4fae-a895-ac59dc28088f

Wafrn has (opt-in) bluesky support, they act as a PDS and AppView, so if bluesky disappears tomorrow they can switch to the atproto.africa relay. (There is DID:PLC which is a problem, but I'll get to that later.)

You can't defederate bsky.social, this proves atproto is centralised!

https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f8fc8da8-cd7e-4fae-a895-ac59dc28088f also explains this, bsky.social is just the name assigned to users, each PDS has names like https://brittlegill.us-west.host.bsky.network/ (where my account is).

While you could ignore records from a specific PDS on the App layer, its pretty pointless, since atproto is portable/content addressed, meaning a user could seamlessly move to another PDS. (AP does support moving, but its pretty seamful.)

(While I was writing this someone posted a pretty good blogpost about this: https://blog.cyrneko.eu/there-is-no-bsky-social-instance)

Bluesky can censor people in turkey, this proves they're centralised!

Those posts weren't removed, people on third party bluesky apps in turkey could still see them.
People in Turkey are automatically subscribed to a Moderation Service which hides those posts, as the government requires it.
If a person unsubscribes, or uses a third party app/server the posts are still there.

Bluesky isn't decentralised as someone was banned for pointing out the head of T&S liked jailbait porn.

That person came back on a different PDS. They literally are still on bluesky because they joined a different server.

Bluesky went down due to a DDoS, this proves they are centralised!

The DDoS only crashed the Bluesky PDSes. People self hosting were fine.

Wafrn

Wafrn is a federated tumblr alternative. It started off as a tumblr clone, the dev added AP support, and eventually, Atproto support.
Its a great example of how bluesky can be built on.
If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, Wafrn could switch relays to atproto.africa, and still interact with people on other PDSes.

AppViewLite

appviewlite is a cool project I forgot to mention in the original post. It lets you self host an extremely lightweight Appview.
You can crawl PDSes yourself, eliminating the need for a relay.
https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite

The main reason I made this post is because so many people are blindly anti-atproto, without fully understanding how it works and how it can be improved.

There is obviously problems with it, but it does a lot right. (There's a lot ActivityPub should do, like content addressing, DIDs and composable moderation).

I also think we could do with a better bridge. bridgy isn't really cutting it right now.

Note on did:plc, its the only centralised part of the network as of now, its essentially the underlying ID every account has. It is possible to use a did:web id instead, which is tied to a website name.

Total user error on my part.... I've managed to delete all the categories on my eggplant home page. This is stopping me from seeing my watch lists. I still have the edit layout button but there are no options for categories to edit. Any help would be appreciated.

post: https://polymaths.social/@rl_dane/statuses/01JY2NBJEASW1E21NFJ0NZ3GDC

github discussion: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086

I'm looking for a new instance since lemm.ee is closing by the end of the month. What's a good instance to be on these days?

I'm looking for a instance with the fewest trolls, bots, and anyone that likes to take things to the extremes.

I'm migrating away from lemm.ee and I want to open my Saved posts on lemm.ee, then open them on db0, and then save the posts on my db0 account.

But I can't figure out how to make the URL open via db0 instead of lemm.ee.

Any ideas? Thanks.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/4724285

As a personal observation, seeing it in this article was the first time I heard that they also had an AMA on Reddit in parallel, and I was positively surprised to see, that Lemmy had the vastly better numbers here, (and, subjectively speaking, more insightful questions, too).

Lemmy - 1035 upvotes, 7 Downvotes, 226 comments

Reddit - 251 score, 71 comments

Of course that is the most favourable demographic to expect to perform better in the Fediverse - FLOSS fedi enthusiasts - but still, it shows the giant userbase alone does not have to translate to better engagement for your topics on Reddit. First time I saw that live in action.

Thank you, everyone who contributed! And thank you, Framasoft, for providing free and open services like it to everyone!

I want to be part of the solution of the problems I see on Lemmy, that is why I opened my alt account at my current server to open new communities while fixing their issues.

I had been informed by the server admin that I should not post more than 5 posts in any local community which is guaranteed to kill my communities on my current server.

I am explaining the backstory here for people to understand my logic for my question.

So, I really appreciate any help here. If anyone can give me good servers to open my communities in.

My current communities:

• News: to lower the load on Lemmy. World server and to improve the Fediverse health.
• Europe: due to less than optimal moderation actions as documented in "power trippin " community.
• Misinformation/ Disinformation: Because there is no community to post research and news about this topic.

Thank you all for your help. I really would appreciate any lead here.

I admin a Facebook group with just about 30k people in it. It used to be great, and over the past few years the enshittification has been too much. Lately there is an out of control Facebook AI bot posting constantly pissing everyone off that we can't seem to turn off. I only use FB for the group, and don't have their spyware - I mean, app - installed and wont. Admin abilities are severely limited on the webapp.

I'm stepping down as admin cuz I'm tired of this mess. But I'd like to offer an alternative community to members who are ready to jump ship. Is a Lemmy community the best option? It's a photo heavy group so when Pixelfed launches groups that will be great, but I haven't seen an ETA on that. I've read that Piefed has better mod controls. It can/should be public and accessible across platforms.

Thoughts? And before anyone points it out, I know most folks won't bother switching. But I also miss when it was smaller and had more chill vibes so I can live with that.

I linked my bluesky account to bridgyfed, what instances will show my account and not say “error”?

I think this was asked by someone already, but I do wonder. I think it would be cool if my sister joined the Fediverse (but blocked NSFW content). She is a high school freshman, but I can’t have her join an instance where you must be an adult.

I do have friends on other social medias that are 13+ with their teen siblings making an account to follow them, but what are the rules here??

Welcome back to the Ghost Lab, where pull requests multiply faster than gremlins in the rain, and the phrase “just one more edge case, I swear” has been officially banned by HR (hi Beccy...

I know rekabu.ru does because I was looking for Russian-language instances and found that, what else uses it??

Hi,

i want to explore the various way we can highlight content.

Currently, on the threadiverse, we use vote to show our approval, discontent...and we can couple it with a bot for moderation. Or hide post below a certain score...

Some instance completly removed downvote as Beehaw. Piefed is experimenting private vote. On other fediverse software, mastodon, iceshrimp, there is no downvote and we use emojis to express our feelings.

You also have website as https://slashdot.org/ where you can tell that comment was insightfull or a troll, or funny...

There is also also website that compare software or video as https://tournesol.app/

• Do you think vote sould be private ? Public ? And why ?
• Are you sastified with the current voting system ? And why ?
• What other interesting software/website that tried something different do you know ?
• What way do you imagine to highlight content and improve search, discoverability ?

I tried to enter chachara.club but it didn't work. When I went to my account, the account he showed me was that of lemmy.ml. It says that I have no posts or comments on my account and I know that I have posts. What's going on?

cross-posted from: https://video.fedihost.co/videos/watch/6749fe45-dec9-430c-b8e2-b3d703fdf221

Bridgy is so easy to use you may find yourself accidentally going down the wrong path instead of just following the bot, but it's really that simple. > > Activity Pub users, follow: @[email protected] > BlueSky users, follow: https://bsky.app/profile/ap.brid.gy > > Written version: https://fedihost.co/blog/slug/how-to-bridge-to-bluesky

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/4595091

Check out their news post about reaching stretch goal number 3 here!

As of posting this, it sits at €61,437 - which means they met their first 3 stretch goals, which gives us these features for the coming mobile App:

• Play videos in background
• Cast your videos to your TV
• Get notified of newly released content
• Change the video definition
• Manage all channels of your account
• Edit video chapters, subtitles, info, etc.
• Get detailed stats of your content
• Upload new videos from your mobile
• Set up & manage livestream
• Use device cameras & connection
• Stream live from your hand
• No more need for a secondary mobile app dedicated to live streams

With all stretch goals that give "rewards" met, why is it still good to reach their final stretch target? To further help everything they do in providing a free (as in freedom and as in beer in this case) alternative to common internet services. In their own words, from their blog post about reaching 55k:

🫶 Next goal: Support Framasoft

We can imagine many of you have questions about this goal.

If you didn't know, PeerTube is developed by a small french non-profit called Framasoft (yeah, this is us!). Our mission is to raise awareness about digital issues and cultural commons: to help people all around the world (even if we mostly work in France) to have a critical look on our digital society by sharing keys to understanding.

However, we define ourselves as being an organization "that does". We like to think but above all we seek to build solutions that enable everyone to take ownership on these issues and become emancipated.

That is why we built PeerTube: to allow everyone to get back control on their videos.

That is also why we have been running the "De-google-ify" campaign for the past 11 years, providing alternative services to those offered by Big Tech. These services, which are free and accessible to all, are among the largest non-commercial services in the world!

Finally, we opened Framaspace for the same reason: to provide a free collaborative space (based on Nextcloud) for small non-profits and collectives.

We seek to equip those who wish to build a fairer and more equitable world.

Of course, even though all of our services are free, they still have a cost. We have to pay each month for our 10 employees and the whole infrastructure we maintain. To do so, our business model is based on solidarity: that's donations from thousands of people (mostly based in France) that fund us! That's thanks to all these people that PeerTube was born, that 2,000 collectives can enjoy Framaspace today or that more than 2,000,000 of people can freely use our services each month!

So, if you still have some money lying around and haven't donated yet, check out the link to help them meet the final goal. As a motivation, I like to think about where closed source software and proprietary services basically blackmailed me into giving them money through subscription services - and how even a fraction of that money given here can help them and others far more in the long run.

I'm looking to subscribe to some peertube channels and not go to youtube for entertainment.

Which ones do you recommend? Thanks in advance

Edit It can be for anything. For example gardening, news, tech, etc.