All the lefties fled to Bluesky following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. But CEO Jay Graber says the app is for everyone—and could revolutionize how people communicate online.
I think that it’s fair to want the interviewer to ask more critical questions and in general be more precise with their phrasing but
repeat that PR talking point
is a very cynical and uncharitable take on bluesky and decentralization. Cynical takes aren’t necessarily wrong but they’re not necessarily correct either.
The AT protocol is by its own account an ongoing project with problems that still need be solved before it is able to provide a social network with all the properties that they’re interested in.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized. One reason for this is that it’s prohibitively expensive to self-host relays. This is something that the AT protocol devs have plans for addressing, so it’s possible that this de-facto centralization is a temporary stage in the evolution of bluesky and AT proto.
It is of course possible that they are lying or that they will be unsuccessful despite best intentions but taking for granted that it’s just a “PR talking point” is, once again, very cynical in a way that I don’t think is completely motivated.
I want to second this, and go further with a hot take: I liked Graber’s answers a lot.
I think skepticism of her and the entire artifice of VC and big tech is totally warranted. But a lot of people in this section seem to basically say, ‘no matter what she says I don’t trust her and I’m certain that BlueSky will be another bad actor.’ And I think that’s an overly simplistic take.
It’s true that there are no trustworthy CEOs. You shouldn’t trust Graber. It will always be a mistake to pin hopes of good management of a platform on the magnanimity of any business leader. However if we want to see a new era of decentralization but are honest about the fact that most users are more likely to join big, corporate-styled platforms (in the short term, at least) then the ideal platform is one that attempts to build their business model around portability.
It’s totally true that BlueSky isn’t there yet. But they’re basically building a set of escape hatches for users. Cory Doctorow talks a lot about how restricting users from leaving a platform is a key requirement to enshitify. So if BlueSky uses a protocol that at least has the potential for this, they’re creating an incentive structure that really does serve a purpose. They may later on try to reverse course. But at least for now, they’re doing the thing that gives users and the third party developers the best chance of escape if things go bad. And that is exactly what I want to see from a big tech platform.
Yeah I in general think that Graber is very good at giving good answers in interviews!
Honestly even if bluesky does become enshittyfied, which is a very real possibility, the work they’ve done on AT proto so far will probably be extremely useful for whoever takes a crack at a more decentralized internet next. There are a lot of clearly smart and passionate people who are given space to research and experiment with different ways of doing things and I think that’s both very valuable and interesting
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized.
That’s like me calling myself a millionaire because I could theoretically be one at some point in the future. I am de facto not a millionaire, but I also have more than zero dollars. so I’m not completely a non-millionaire.
So first of, the part of my comment that you quoted doesn’t make sense because what I’m saying is that bluesky theoretically allows for decentralized relays but it’s impractical in practice. Your analogy doesn’t really apply to that.
I do think that it’s misleading to call bluesky decentralized today (at least without any caveats). The goal of the project however is to eventually create a more meaningfully decentralized social network and they have tangible plans for moving in that direction so I think it’s unfair to dismiss this aspect of bluesky completely.
If they do achieve decentralization in the future I’ll gladly call it decentralized, but “tangible plans” don’t warrant use of a descriptor like that. If someone is training in the hope of making their country’s Olympics team they don’t get to call themselves an Olympian. You have to have gone to the Olympics to justify that title. Working towards decentralization is the same thing. You don’t get to call yourself decentralized just because you wrote it down as a goal on your roadmap.
I agree that the interviewer shouldn’t have implied that they are decentralized today! I don’t know if bluesky even say that they are decentralized themselves, on their website it says that they’re “building an open foundation for the social internet” which is more accurate but maybe they mischaracterize themselves somewhere else.
I stopped at the bit about revolutionizing communication online. That revolution happened over a decade ago with the rise of social media. More social media is just more, not new.
Yall are so annoying. Bluesky is 2 years old. Mastodon is like 8 years old. Also theres already another instance and relays running on a raspberry pi.
Yall have such a hate boner you dont even do research. No wonder normies will never use mastodon or lemmy yall are insufferable and mastodon is still just a copy of twitter with no new features
Edit: to anyone curious about keeping up with bluesky’s progress in decentralization and all the other stuff theyre working on here’s a good blog https://fediversereport.com/
Oh, when did twitter add CWs that required a clickthrough? The ability to set your own character limit? When did it remove its algorithms to show you posts it considered relevant? When did it become open source? When did it become decentralised and federated? When did it start working on end-to-end encryption for DMs? When did it allow for built in themes?
Do you have a link to people talking about running a relay on a raspberry pi? I find it hard to believe that’s possible. A PDS, sure, but a relay requires multiple terabytes of storage alone and plenty of bandwidth/CPU/RAM that I just don’t see a raspberry pi being able to support.
I’d be curious to hear about any progress on setting up new relays though.
Which will increase heavily in the coming years. Blueskys "de"centralization is basically - use one of three instances, and probably pay for it sooner or later because it’s fucking expensive.
We don’t have a hate boner. We see “decentralized” being thrown around like a buzzword and we know that it really doesn’t apply to their platform.
It’s like the Libertarian Party taking the word “libertarian” and flipping the meaning to describe their ideology.
It’s a distortion of the spirit of the word and actual libertarians obviously want to clear up the misunderstandings that result from being introduced to the concept of libertarianism through such a group.
I stopped reading when the “journalist” asked this question:
How little research must one do to credulously repeat that PR talking point for a platform that is in fact completely centralized?
I think that it’s fair to want the interviewer to ask more critical questions and in general be more precise with their phrasing but
is a very cynical and uncharitable take on bluesky and decentralization. Cynical takes aren’t necessarily wrong but they’re not necessarily correct either.
The AT protocol is by its own account an ongoing project with problems that still need be solved before it is able to provide a social network with all the properties that they’re interested in.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized. One reason for this is that it’s prohibitively expensive to self-host relays. This is something that the AT protocol devs have plans for addressing, so it’s possible that this de-facto centralization is a temporary stage in the evolution of bluesky and AT proto.
It is of course possible that they are lying or that they will be unsuccessful despite best intentions but taking for granted that it’s just a “PR talking point” is, once again, very cynical in a way that I don’t think is completely motivated.
I want to second this, and go further with a hot take: I liked Graber’s answers a lot.
I think skepticism of her and the entire artifice of VC and big tech is totally warranted. But a lot of people in this section seem to basically say, ‘no matter what she says I don’t trust her and I’m certain that BlueSky will be another bad actor.’ And I think that’s an overly simplistic take.
It’s true that there are no trustworthy CEOs. You shouldn’t trust Graber. It will always be a mistake to pin hopes of good management of a platform on the magnanimity of any business leader. However if we want to see a new era of decentralization but are honest about the fact that most users are more likely to join big, corporate-styled platforms (in the short term, at least) then the ideal platform is one that attempts to build their business model around portability.
It’s totally true that BlueSky isn’t there yet. But they’re basically building a set of escape hatches for users. Cory Doctorow talks a lot about how restricting users from leaving a platform is a key requirement to enshitify. So if BlueSky uses a protocol that at least has the potential for this, they’re creating an incentive structure that really does serve a purpose. They may later on try to reverse course. But at least for now, they’re doing the thing that gives users and the third party developers the best chance of escape if things go bad. And that is exactly what I want to see from a big tech platform.
Yeah I in general think that Graber is very good at giving good answers in interviews!
Honestly even if bluesky does become enshittyfied, which is a very real possibility, the work they’ve done on AT proto so far will probably be extremely useful for whoever takes a crack at a more decentralized internet next. There are a lot of clearly smart and passionate people who are given space to research and experiment with different ways of doing things and I think that’s both very valuable and interesting
That’s like me calling myself a millionaire because I could theoretically be one at some point in the future. I am de facto not a millionaire, but I also have more than zero dollars. so I’m not completely a non-millionaire.
So first of, the part of my comment that you quoted doesn’t make sense because what I’m saying is that bluesky theoretically allows for decentralized relays but it’s impractical in practice. Your analogy doesn’t really apply to that.
I do think that it’s misleading to call bluesky decentralized today (at least without any caveats). The goal of the project however is to eventually create a more meaningfully decentralized social network and they have tangible plans for moving in that direction so I think it’s unfair to dismiss this aspect of bluesky completely.
If they do achieve decentralization in the future I’ll gladly call it decentralized, but “tangible plans” don’t warrant use of a descriptor like that. If someone is training in the hope of making their country’s Olympics team they don’t get to call themselves an Olympian. You have to have gone to the Olympics to justify that title. Working towards decentralization is the same thing. You don’t get to call yourself decentralized just because you wrote it down as a goal on your roadmap.
I agree that the interviewer shouldn’t have implied that they are decentralized today! I don’t know if bluesky even say that they are decentralized themselves, on their website it says that they’re “building an open foundation for the social internet” which is more accurate but maybe they mischaracterize themselves somewhere else.
I stopped at the bit about revolutionizing communication online. That revolution happened over a decade ago with the rise of social media. More social media is just more, not new.
Decentralisation via activitypub is the next revolution
or possibly something else, but definetly not atproto as it stands
Yall are so annoying. Bluesky is 2 years old. Mastodon is like 8 years old. Also theres already another instance and relays running on a raspberry pi.
Yall have such a hate boner you dont even do research. No wonder normies will never use mastodon or lemmy yall are insufferable and mastodon is still just a copy of twitter with no new features
Edit: to anyone curious about keeping up with bluesky’s progress in decentralization and all the other stuff theyre working on here’s a good blog https://fediversereport.com/
Oh, when did twitter add CWs that required a clickthrough? The ability to set your own character limit? When did it remove its algorithms to show you posts it considered relevant? When did it become open source? When did it become decentralised and federated? When did it start working on end-to-end encryption for DMs? When did it allow for built in themes?
Lmao cant tell if youre trolling because all of that is already possible or being worked on (assuming you meant bluesky idk why you wrote twitter)
That’s what you said, so I was just going off of that.
Do you have a link to people talking about running a relay on a raspberry pi? I find it hard to believe that’s possible. A PDS, sure, but a relay requires multiple terabytes of storage alone and plenty of bandwidth/CPU/RAM that I just don’t see a raspberry pi being able to support.
I’d be curious to hear about any progress on setting up new relays though.
Heres a good blog, this specific post mentions the independent relays (you can set one up already for under $50 a month) https://fediversereport.com/atmosphere-report-116/
Heres the guide on setting up a relay https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l
Heres a speedrun of someone setting one up https://whtwnd.com/futur.blue/3lkubavdilf2m
Which will increase heavily in the coming years. Blueskys "de"centralization is basically - use one of three instances, and probably pay for it sooner or later because it’s fucking expensive.
We don’t have a hate boner. We see “decentralized” being thrown around like a buzzword and we know that it really doesn’t apply to their platform.
It’s like the Libertarian Party taking the word “libertarian” and flipping the meaning to describe their ideology.
It’s a distortion of the spirit of the word and actual libertarians obviously want to clear up the misunderstandings that result from being introduced to the concept of libertarianism through such a group.
Bluesky’s model is built in a way that means it won’t ever be decentralized. There are plenty of articles about it.
What new features does Bluesky have…?
Being a centralized decentralized platform of course. Very innovative.
Someone clearly has never used context menus or opened their account settings in Mastodon.
Reddit is now decentralized, I just set up nginx to cache it🤡
Oh wait, PDS’ don’t even cache lol
Oh yeah? I can join that second server right now and communicate with folks on the main server?
Do you have a link to the raspi instance?