That sounds like a really dumb design idea. Why make a federating protocol if you still rely on the server? I don't even get why they did it at all then.

That's indeed very interesting and peculiar.

There are some people hosting their own identity server, but yes the centralisation of the main aggregator server seems to be by design as they even scare people away from trying by talking about the high resource requirements of doing so.

IMHO Bluesky is only federated in the sense that responsibility for content and moderation can be outsourced, but the user endpoint stays mostly in control of Bluesky. This makes a lot of sense if you think about it from a company perspective... outsource the legally and personnel critical parts and keep the ones that are lucrarive for advertisement and can be easily scaled by throwing hardware at it.

But you must be a real sucker to take them up on that very one sided offer...

Why would someone host a server and pay for it out of their own pocket, when the protocol just turns in to an invisible piece of infrastructure that people don't even know exists?

AP instances allow for communities and identity to build around them, so there is a non monetary incentive to running them, but what's the incentive to run an equivalent on bluesky and make it public?

From what I can tell, it’s perfectly possible to set up an independent Bluesky network. The only issue is that Bluesky users don’t give a shit about federation and won’t move to any alternative server, so if you want to reach them, you need to play nice with the main instance.

Makes sense

As for banning, they haven't written an explicit documentation on this yet, but generally it can be done on a few layers depending on the offence:

- labelling you via Bluesky official moderation service, in a way that can be ignored
- giving you a "force hide" label that can't be ignored
- suspending your account on a Bsky-hosted PDS
- preventing their AppView from indexing you
- preventing their Relay from indexing your account or whole PDS

well, it's not difficult to federate, it's difficult to seperate your identity from BlueSky itself, if you're trying to create something on ATproto.

I doubt you'll see big news about a service using ATproto, the way Fedi platforms do, besides BlueSky because they really don't want you to differentiate that way.🤦‍♂️

@fediverse

Bro just use twitter at this point.

That's like choosing gangrene on your foot because you can't decide which shoe to wear and tying the laces seems like a pain in the ass.

That's a wild interpretation of what they said.

Dude described a branding problem, not a technical problem.

no problem, friend.

I always worry if my long winded answers make sense to neurotypical people as I'm ADHD and slightly autistic.😅

So I hope it does make sense, at least even partially.

Overall, they're mostly centralized because there's *very* few relays and they're required infrastructure, but decentralized in other ways, which may or may not matter in the bigger picture because of this previous information.

@fediverse

you're welcome, and thank you for the reassurance, friend.🫡

@fediverse

thank you for the compliment and assurance friend.

I am always self conscious about my long winded replies because sometimes even I wouldn't wanna read a post that long.

Though, with topics like this that I'm very passionate about, I feel it's very important to lay out all the information and knowledge I have so that others can make informed decisions themselves based on the most important details.

I discuss Fediverse and networks like it, literally constantly and there's LOTS of nuances with these systems that need lots of explanations.

@fediverse

I am always self conscious about my long winded replies because sometimes even I wouldn’t wanna read a post that long.

No need to be self-conscious - that's a concise account of a complicated issue, which is going to go long. Long posts become an issue when they are rambling and unfocused.

TBH I think our biggest strength here is decentralization, but every day we're inching closer and closer to centralization here in many ways and most don't care.

Mastodon controls how 73% of users interact with Fediverse. Threads, if it fully federates will completely take that over, but then we have 2 corporate entities in charge here and there's nothing any of us are doing about it.

They will be able to enact change in AP that most other softwares can't and effectively completely change Fedi as we know it.

@fediverse

yes! I mistyped.🫣

It's frontpage.fyi

Sorry!😅

@fediverse

Lemmy.world used to cost that much, but I think they downscaled a bit recently, or are at least planning to as the current growth of the userbase has slowed down.

I was actually surprised by that 150 figure when I first read it, as it is much cheaper than what the BlueSky documentation makes it sound.

It is certainly possible to collect that much in monthly donations, but then again... how do you build a loyal base of supporters for running a mostly hidden piece of infrastructure? People always complain about the instance focussed nature of the fediverse, but the ability to build communities around them and get people actually emotionally invested in their home instance is IMHO rather a strength of it. That is also why I am slightly sceptic of easy account migration tools, as it devalues the instance as yourhome base to a certain extend.

Yeah, the instance-focus aspect of the Fediverse is a good thing. You are a good example with slrpnk.net, but dbzer0, all the language/country-based instances (feddit.org, jlai.lu, aussie.zone, lemmy.ca, feddit.uk) also have their own culture and feeling. That's cool to see.

as it devalues the instance as yourhome base to a certain extend.

That's definitely a thing for generalist instances. I don't really think there is much of a lemm.ee culture for instance. Which is also okay, some people just want access to Lemmy without a strong instance identity.

that's what I said, no? just in more words.🤷‍♂️

And yeah, my opinion is mixed in, but I figured that should be obvious. Maybe I should put *opinion* somewhere in there?🤔

Most of it is true, with my opinion in 2 or 3 sentences.

There's a small number of self-hosted personal PDSes (blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdse…), but the system isn't really open yet to running larger ones with open signup. The Bluesky Relay doesn't currently accept more than 10 users on one PDS (with exceptions like Bridgy).

Technically anyone can run a parallel Relay and/or AppView, and hopefully that will happen, but nobody has done it yet so far (Whitewind/Frontpage are kind of different services on the same protocol).