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Why Bluesky not adding the federation systems (pluralistic.net)
4 points by cannibalXxx 70 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



> I don't know why Bluesky hasn't added the federation systems that would enable freedom of exit to its service

Is this entirely up to the Bluesky team? In the activitypub universe there are many independent implementations of the protocols, not just multiple mastodon servers but multiple types of servers.

Its not clear if the lack of comparable efforts in the atproto universe is a matter of timing / resources, lack of information, incompleteness of the protocol or some other (non)technical issue.

Concretely, can somebody now simply build an alternate atproto tech stack that would more or less seamlessly federate with bluesky (the way say pixelfed federates with mastodon). If yes, stop whining and get coding.

The issue of control of the protocol remains, so there are more frictions ahead but it would be wise (and a good omen) for the broader decentralization movement to be arguing only based on bare-bone facts. This will reduce wasted energy and accelerate the journey we all want.


The only thing that is tough to run an alternative to is https://web.plc.directory/. The team has said they intend to move this into a foundation eventually, so that they're also not in control of that.

Everything else, you can run a copy of it yourself, or reimplement yourself.

> Its not clear if the lack of comparable efforts in the atproto universe is a matter of timing / resources, lack of information, incompleteness of the protocol or some other (non)technical issue.

There are already alternative implementations of a lot of the stack. As a new and relatively smaller protocol, they have a variety of maturity levels. It's just the general "it's new" aspect to the whole thing. As stuff matures, so will all of this.


Then self host a mastodon instance if you don't want to not deal with platform decay?

You don't have to use Bluesky if you don't want to, some people don't care about federation, decentralization and whatnot.

They just want to communicate with their friends and fans.

Thats it.


Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Social media is not unique. It is just a specific example of a much older and larger issue.


Not the real title.




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