How decentralized Bluesky is compared to the Fediverse.

Capitalists love interoperability when they can use it to disrupt other capitalists. When they get in a dominant position they hate it.

It's basic enshittification theory.

Alternate history: Bluesky never happens. Instead, some company opens up a Mastodon instance as a Twitter replacement. So instead of Bluesky with 12M+ users, there's a Mastodon instance with 12M+ users. Now what?

How do you algorithmically manipulate those 12M people with Mastodon? BTW, Bluesky has almost 40M users.
- How do you algorithmically manipulate those 12M people with Mastodon?
  The usual way, whatever that is. What would Mastodon do about it? How do you manipulate Bluesky?
  BTW, Bluesky has almost 40M users.
  It's the number in OP, so I ran with that. The fediverse number apparently excludes Gab and Truth Social. Makes sense, since those aren't federated with the rest, but that also shows an issue.
- It only has to be compatible with Mastodon, not necessarily be an actual Mastodon instance, see Meta's threads.net.

Yeah, but bluesky has users.

I'm pretty happy with engagement in the Fediverse.
- Exactly.
  Communities are not higher quality with a million people. Small communities where you can know who the other posters are are a much better experience.
- Me too I love the hate bots.
Twitter has more users.
- Twitter has more bots.
So does Reddit but you presumably see some value in federated platforms yea?
- Oh yeah sure. I'm here after all, jumped ship from Reddit a year or so ago and I actually prefer Lemmy.
  I jumped ship from twitter to mastodon around the same time. And while I like the idea of mastodon and I like the interface, fact is that Reddit / lemmy is a different sort of usage from twitter / bluesky / mastodon. Twitter I mostly used to keep up with my favourite content creators, and occasionally shout at clouds. Those content creators just aren't on mastodon, they've mostly moved to bluesky. Those are the users that are the foundation of a platform like that. So yeah, I use lemmy and bluesky now.
  TBH I'm not sure mastodon could scale up big anyway - it would be a nightmare trying to regulate bad content and comply with local laws etc.
So does Twitter.
- I'm always shocked by the number of of BlueSky fans that show up on Lemmy. If they don't care about centralization why are they here and not on Reddit?

So why does everyone keep referring to Bluesky as decentralized or even comparable to the fediverse

Bluesky is the newest iteration of privately owned and controlled social media

Because Bluesky claims that they want to develop their relay tech into a standard like HTTPS or something, and then hand it off to a nonprofit to maintain so that it's usable by everyone. The tech has the possibility to be decentralized/federated baked into it, but whether or not it will be anything other than a pipe dream/marketing hype has yet to really be seen.
They present themselves as basically a Lemmy.world equivalent to those who care about decentralization, which is not a significant portion of their user base. For most people it's just a buzzword, I believe.
- Wasn't there a similar promise made by Reddit at some point? I remember people referring it to often until it became just some myth ... and then at one point, people just realized it was never going to change and then it became a full blown private corporation that wanted an IPO and became a monolith that never even considered sharing anything.
Because silicon valley thinks it can define reality however it wants and keep telling us not to believe our lying eyes.
Weirdly this seems to work better on techy people who don't like thinking about politics but understand the technical details of this extremely well than it does on normie progressives because progressives just see the obvious predatory reality and don't get distracted in minutiae connected to very obviously empty promises.
The tech press does not ever talk to progressives though...
- this seems to work better on techy people who don't like thinking about politics but understand the technical details
  Not weird at all; this was the case with cryptocurrency too. Otherwise qualified and intelligent people would invest in centralized scam coins because they had no understanding of economics, just tech.
  It's sad but cool that it works the same way with social capital.
- Does it? None of my normie progressive friends are on the fediverse. The ones that tried it didn't like it.
So why does everyone keep referring to Bluesky as decentralized or even comparable to the fediverse
They call it marketing, I call it propaganda.
- "It's the same picture."
  Always has been. The only difference is what they're selling.
Because, despite being wildly impractical, it's technically built on tech that COULD be decentralized. Only recent a new host launched called Black sky. So it is no longer just one host. But it's been one host for so long it almost doesn't matter because so few people will switch.
- Technically, yes, if you squint; but, practically, no. It was designed with a prioritization of passing the information/data around to avoid any lack of missing anything (so you get a closer experience to the connectedness of Twitter than Mastodon) which means every instance hosts, basically, the entire world. Naturally, there's only going to be a few entities that can store and afford to store the entirety of the data of the network. There's no such thing as a small instance, in their protocol.
- Because, despite being wildly impractical, it’s technically built on tech that COULD be decentralized.
  Yes exactly, it reminds me of the logic of cryptocurrency boosters. I just found out that the bluesky CEO (not to mention jack dorsey) are both crypto advocates so it makes a lot more sense now.
- Doesn't BS have things in it's software that are hard coded to the main server, so it's not possible to make a completely independent host at the moment?
So why does everyone keep referring to Bluesky as decentralized or even comparable to the fediverse
Parrot the marketing hyperbole.
The enshitification continies.
It's where the useful idiots are being herded. They are using it because it's "not twitter" and other people are influencing them. They don't care about decentralization.
- Would have been nice if they went to Mastodon, but I wouldn't call them idiots. I don't use that media format, but if there isn't a lot of users there, I cant see the service being that useful to the users who do go there. It's like Lemmy struggles with niches. Not enough people, want to find something or ask someone about something, you'll hit a wall and find yourself looking for results elsewhere. Someday hopefully, but that movement from Twitter would have been a great time for activity pub to shine if it hadn't gotten skipped over
- @humanoidchaos
  @ininewcrow
  Yup. I don't think the average user is even aware of the debate over decentralization. All they wanted was a new twitter, and Bsky was the closest. That's it.
- Why should they care about decentralization anyway? Isn’t number of users and ease of content discovery far more important?
I don't understand it at all. Where are all the supposed blueskys? It's so easy to fact check.
Because people who are Bluesky fanatics tend to be tech illiterate and are easily swayed by vibes and marketing.
Because it is decentalised, and beats the fediverse in many aspects.
- It's not:
  In July 2024, running a Relay on ATProto already required 1 terabyte of storage. But more alarmingly, just a four months later in November 2024, running a relay now requires approximately 5 terabytes of storage. That is a nearly 5x increase in just four months, and my guess is that by next month, we'll see that doubled to at least ten terabytes due to the massive switchover to Bluesky which has happened post-election. As Bluesky grows in popularity, so does the rate of growth of the expected resources to host a meaningfully participating node.
  https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

ok, but, does ActivityPub have portable identity and/or content addressability yet, so that when some of those servers (which are often hobbyist-run and/or tenuously funded) inevitably cease operating their users can continue on a different server? 👀

It's a rhetorical question, and the answer is no.

otoh, atproto's PLC DID method is also not really decentralized... but at least the rest of their system is actually substantially more decentralized architecturally than AP is.

To anyone interested in reading a very informative in-depth discussion of this topic, I recommend the blog post How decentralized is Bluesky really? by ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber (followed by this and this).

portable identity
So like when bluesky starts having to pay back their investors I can portable my identity to.... one of the other blueskies out there?
- Yes. That's the idea.
... but at least the rest of their system is actually substantially more decentralized architecturally than AP is.
In the blog post you linked, neither the author or myself came to your conclusion:
However, I stand by my assertions that Bluesky is not meaningfully decentralized and that it is certainly not federated according to any technical definition of federation we have had in a decentralized social network context previously. To claim that Bluesky is decentralized or federated in its current form moves the goalposts of both of those terms, which I find unacceptable.
- The blog post also says this:
  There is one other thing which Bluesky gets right, and which the present-day fediverse does not. This is that Bluesky uses content-addressed content, so that content can survive if a node goes down. In this way (well, also allegedly with identity, but I will critique that part because it has several problems), Bluesky achieves its "credible exit" (Bluesky's own term, by the way) in that the main node or individual hosts could go down, posts can continue to be referenced. This is possible to also do on the fediverse, but is not done presently; today, a fediverse user has to worry a lot about a node going down. indeed I intentionally fought for and left open the possibility within ActivityPub of adding content-addressed posts, and several years ago I wrote a demo of how to combine content addressing with ActivityPub. But nonetheless, even though such a thing is spec-compatible with ActivityPub, content-addressing is not done today on ActivityPub, and is done on Bluesky.
  My comment should have been clearer; what I meant when i said it is more "decentralized architecturally" I was referring to the data model part of the architecture as opposed to the physical server infrastructure currently operating it. The latter is obviously quite centralized still, but the former is designed for resilience against nodes unexpectedly (and permanently) failing.

For those who enjoy in-depth write-ups, Christine Webber has looked at how decentralized BlueSky is really, before: https://social.coop/@cwebber/113527462572885698

It is my understanding Bluesky outright is not decentralized. It may have an API that allows satellite instances but if the main official instance goes down the platform dies.

Mastodon, Lemmy and their siblings are decentralized in that no one instance is sacred. If sh.ijust.works were to go offline right now, the rest of Lemmy would keep right on trucking. Hell, all of "Lemmy" could die and Mastodon and Peertube et al would keep right on trucking.

25% is too high, but at least it's not as embarrassing as 99%

True

There are a lot of cool features from at protocol that activity pub should steal. The way users can pick their algorithm is game changing

The tradeoffs Bluesky made to achieve that means that Bluesky doesn’t have private posts. In fact, Bluesky doesn’t have private blocks.
- I do enjoy how that couch fucking fascist cunt is the most blocked person.
- Private posts is planned, but it's not trivial. Mastodon can't exactly brag about their nonintuitive technically just not broadcasted posts, where multiple implementations keep making private messages publicly discoverable due to bugs.
Wouldn't that work more with a client or a server software than the protocol itself? The protocol shares the posts. It's the client and the instance which chooses what the user sees.
- It's doable on Mastodon but significantly more complicated.
  You need crawlers to index posts across the Fediverse (and avoid getting them blocked), personalized recommendation models per user, and you need pre-emptive caching on the user's instance for anything recommended (ideally the crawler would make a cache on behalf of each of the opted-in users' instances, but without content addressing this is a security risk). You also need to poll for edits / deletions.
- Idk the wizardry required to make it work its just something i think would be cool

i'm so tired of these posts. okay, fediverse, you won! you are more decentralized than bluesky. maybe it's time to create real useful and interesting content instead of reveling in your elitism?

But....I came here just for the gloating fediverse content.
What else could there be?
I mean I agree... it's kind of the constant crux isn't it?
The IT nerds pick a protocol that's uncontrolled, you need to select options and servers, because... well obviously that's kind of the definition of uncontrolled.
Some big name with big VC backing makes a big platform, makes it simple as possible, no choices, no control but good defaults. Average joes all flock there, build huge communities, users happy. Obviously the bulk of the creative types, celebrities etc... that most people care about flock there.
Big corp or VCs start demanding more monetization, or political censorship, or whatever kind of enshittification they inevitably always will. Users complain, but it all continues to amplify... open communities announce "hey we've got our alternative here", they say "thanks but nah that's too complicated, and you don't have the users that I want to see anyway". People complain more... and either adapt and accept the enshitification as normal... or maybe another big VC backed individual or other corp opens an alternative and pulls off the impossible critical mass goal, and process repeats.
I don't really know the solution, just know the pattern. Bluesky is IMO the new twitter... fundimentally I don't see it as super different than the old twitter. Only way I really see everything working is if say... a corporate backed giant actually played nicely and allowed interoperability with a federated protocol that's actually... well hostable.
It's basically like exactly what happens out in the real world... walmart comes offers better convenience and lower prices than local competitors... local economy adapts to walmart, individual stores shut down... half of owners, etc... forced to working for walmart for garbage pay.
- I think the difference is that while other services boom and bust, the fediverse keeps growing slowly because it is decentralized, and can't be enshittified in the same way.
  It is not as easy or attractive as Bluesky right now, but it keeps growing slowly and getting more kinds of people.
  Maybe it won't be the network of choice for journalists, metal celebrities, etc, like twitter and bluesky, but it already is making its way as something more like old school tumblr -- some people like it, some don't.
It would be fair to say something like that if you yourself made content but your last post was 3 months ago lol
- first, no, it's fair to say regardless of how often i create content. posts like this is cancer, which adds nothing to the platform. second, even on this account my last post was 1 month ago.

Wait, there are 1600 BlueSky instances to join? Are they counting people using a custom domain name as an entire instance?

I suppose PDS instances are included: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
- OK so it sounds like there is still just the single BlueSky that is "federated" with a handful of single-user BlueSkies?

Im trying to get more content on a few hobby communities on lemmy. I’m not really a big poster. I love to comment. But I’m willing to go through and start trying to build some momentum.

Awesome!

If your idea of a federated Twitter is a bunch of mini-Twitters that sometimes exchange indirect replies or something, then the Fediverse fulfills that purpose completely. Mission accomplished, we can all go home now.

If your idea is that the replies to every post look the same to any user, anywhere, at any time, even the thing Mastodon merged half a year ago that supposedly fetches all replies if you remember to navigate to the topmost post, and wait up to 15 minutes for your view of the thread to coalesce, falls short.

And this is why hosting Mastodon is cheap, it fundamentally cannot provide the functionality BlueSky offers. Of course, you might think that such functionality is not desirable anyway, and that's entirely fair. But if you're looking for the immediacy that centralized Twitter gave users, I don't see a way for Fedi to ever provide that, whereas there is a path to BlueSky decentralization. It's a fact that your UX is diminished if all of your followers and followeds are not on the same instance.

But in the end, I think there is space for both.

If your idea is that the replies to every post look the same to any user, anywhere, at any time
This is only true of Bluesky because everyone is using Bluesky's infrastructure at the moment. If Bluesky ever deindexes someone and they start posting to an alternative relay, you suddenly don't have a guarantee of a full view of a post's replies.
- Content addressing means you can make your instance pull from both their relay and the bluesky relay and trivially merge threads and views without consistency issues, so that's solvable.
  The bigger issue is all those other regular users who doesn't, and still get confused (unless they manage to pick a client app that does it for them)

Anyone have the numbers for Lemmy specifically?

Lemmy has about 40,000 monthly active users. Lemmy.world accounts for about 15,500 of that. That's about 40%.
- Thanks. Yeah .world is definitely a bit too big, but it's still miles better than bluesky.

Which server is representing 25% of the index on the Fediverse?

This site currently measures the concentration of user data for active users: in the Fediverse, this data is on servers (also known as instances); in the Atmosphere, it is on the PDSes that host users' data repos. All PDSes run by the company Bluesky Social PBC are aggregated in this dataset, since they are under the control of a single entity. Similarly, mastodon.social and mastodon.online are combined as they are run by the same company.
I guess mastodon.social
Lemmy.world
- I believe Lemmy is quite smaller than Mastodon (hence it is not even mentioned on the diagram), so it's probably a Mastodon instance.

WHEN YOU SEE IT

Not sure which IT I'm supposed to see...
- It's a double reference to osu player Cookiezi's two plays on Blue Zenith's [FOUR DIMENSIONS] difficulty using HR and HDHR respectively getting 727pp in both plays with a miss right around the end, and Aireu's reaction after getting a 727pp play