Let's clarify something: does Bluesky allow federated servers on their network? Is there a list of those independent servers?
Trying to figure this out as in the recent threads a few people said that Bluesky was federated, but it didn't seem to actually be the case.
bsky.social/about/blog/02-22-2β¦ in February announced that Bluesky would allow federated servers
The Bluesky documentation on the topic isn't very clear. They mention Bluesky.social a lot, as if it's supposed to be the one central server other PDS need to federate with:
Bluesky runs many PDSs. Each PDS runs as a completely separate service in the network with its own identity. They federate with the rest of the network in the exact same manner that a non-Bluesky PDS would. These PDSs have hostnames such as morel.us-east.host.bsky.network.However, the user-facing concept for Bluesky's "PDS Service" is simply bsky.social. This is reflected in the provided subdomain that users on a Bluesky PDS have access to (i.e. their default handle suffix), as well as the hostname that they may provide at login in order to route their login request to the correct service. A user should not be expected to understand or remember the specific host that their account is on.
To enable this, we introduced a PDS Entryway service. This service is used to orchestrate account management across Bluesky PDSs and to provide an interface for interacting with bsky.social accounts.
docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guβ¦
Self-hosting a Bluesky PDS means running your own Personal Data Server that is capable of federating with the wider Bluesky social network.
github.com/bluesky-social/pds?β¦
The custom domain name is still something else, and does not seem to require a PDS: bsky.social/about/blog/4-28-20β¦
So, to come back to the title question, do people know of an example of PDS that can be used to access Bluesky without being on the main server?
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ByteMe
in reply to Blaze • • •reesilva
in reply to ByteMe • • •Blaze
in reply to ByteMe • • •Indeed, but I'm a bit surprised there isn't any list of alternatives servers.
I would have to look more into the protocol specification, but it seems like this isn't really federation, alternative servers are still relying on the central server, and that's why nobody bothers with setting one up
hoshikarakitaridia
in reply to Blaze • • •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.
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Blaze
in reply to hoshikarakitaridia • • •They could pretend to be federated while they're not.
Might show them in a more positive light to the general public
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to hoshikarakitaridia • • •@fediverse I think the main reason is that this solves a lot of UX problems that Fedi has because of its architecture, things like:
- thread comments, like counts, follower lists not being consistent between instances
- not being able to easily interact with content that's not already cached on your instance
- user/post search not working globally, for the same reason
On Bluesky, the AppView indexes all that, and you load threads, feeds and do search through there.
poVoq
in reply to Blaze • • •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...
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Ada
in reply to Blaze • • •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?
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Blaze
in reply to Ada • • •originalucifer likes this.
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to Blaze • • •Ruud
in reply to Blaze • • •I have setup bskysocial.world to test that (there's no web interface, just select this domain when logging in or signing up via the app or bsky.app)
Note: This is for testing only, I can't promise it will remain running.
(I am @ruud.bskysocial.world)
Bluesky
Bluesky SocialBlaze
in reply to Ruud • • •Thank you Ruud!
If I understand correctly, using a custom domain name still makes you use the central Bluesky server, right?
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/usr/libexec/ccoremapd
in reply to Blaze • • •No, it doesn't have to. Custom domain does not tied to any instances (PDS) you reside in. The way custom domain handle works is for the verification itself.
The first time you've created your account to that instance, you've been given to a specific instance name to your handle. For example "user.bskysocial.world". With the "user" acts as a subdomain and "bskysocial.world" as a PDS name.
You can learn more of how the handles work in ATProto here:
atproto.com/specs/handle
/usr/libexec/ccoremapd
in reply to /usr/libexec/ccoremapd • • •You can still change your handle to however you'd like without having to migrate it to another PDS using your own domain name.
Every component in the ATProto (Handles, PDS, AppView, Relays, etc) are separated from each other and can be run individually, without having to cause massive interference to one another. I kind of think of it as a "Microservices" in ATProto, whilst ActivityPub is more like a "Monolithic" one.
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haui
in reply to Blaze • • •So, from up close it seems like people can have their own servers (i checked wurzelmann.at which is currently on the frontpage) but they do not seem to have their own frontend.
This indeed makes it so that for people to actually SEE your content you must federate with one entity and are controlled by them.
Imo this is very bad because it takes the freedom out of federation. Yes, you dont need to login to an app but if they ban you or defederate or delete your post, nobody will see it, right?
Please someone who has tried and gets the technical details shed light on this.
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Nate
in reply to haui • •Fediverse reshared this.
Skull giver
in reply to haui • • •I mean, you can run your own frontend if you want to? If you can run a backend, you can run a frontend. You can't get away with hosting a relay or an app view, though, you need to host a full personal data server, with your own indexers and everything. You can also rely on external indexing, but then you turn dependent on the servers you interact with.
As for federation, you can federate with smaller services just fine, but Bluesky's design makes it very centralised around the main server. There's nothing on the protocol level that enforces federation with the main site.
This is a bit like with the Fediverse: for a couple of years, the only relevant service on there was Mastodon, specifically a few larger Mastodon servers. If you didn't federate with them, you may as well not have federated at all. This also made some of Mastodon's weird quirks de facto standards for Fediverse support (like how some ActivityPub object types aren't supported, and people put every huge web page in a "post" object so it would be rendered by Mastodon).
If the main Bluesky server bans
... show moreI mean, you can run your own frontend if you want to? If you can run a backend, you can run a frontend. You can't get away with hosting a relay or an app view, though, you need to host a full personal data server, with your own indexers and everything. You can also rely on external indexing, but then you turn dependent on the servers you interact with.
As for federation, you can federate with smaller services just fine, but Bluesky's design makes it very centralised around the main server. There's nothing on the protocol level that enforces federation with the main site.
This is a bit like with the Fediverse: for a couple of years, the only relevant service on there was Mastodon, specifically a few larger Mastodon servers. If you didn't federate with them, you may as well not have federated at all. This also made some of Mastodon's weird quirks de facto standards for Fediverse support (like how some ActivityPub object types aren't supported, and people put every huge web page in a "post" object so it would be rendered by Mastodon).
If the main Bluesky server bans you, there's nothing preventing other Bluesky instances from indexing your content just as easily.
If anything, this setup allows for more freedom than (for instance) Lemmy does. If Lemmy.world bans you, you can't post in their communities anymore. Other servers can't discover your attempts to post, so your local posts will remain local, out of reach of any ActivityPub server. Sure someone could scan the Lemmy API for differing posts, but that's not how Federation is implemented here.
On Bluesky, independent servers can (should) index each other using the standard API. You can get banned from bsky.app, but other servers can still see your posts pop up in their feed.
I don't know for sure how banning works on a technical level, but it is my understanding that moderation on Bluesky is actually done not dissimilarly to nostr. Everything gets processed and stored, but there's a layer between the database and the frontends that handles blocking and banning. Of course Bluesky could disable federation with your server entirely, but it seems to me like they'd still federate your content even if your account is banned using normal banning tools, unless other servers propagate your ban as well. That's up to them to decide. This too is unlike ActivityPub, where an account ban will also halt propagation.
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.
Blaze
in reply to Skull giver • • •Makes sense
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to Skull giver • • •Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦ • • •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
flamingos-cant
in reply to haui • • •Their app is open source, but it doesn't give any instructions on how to self-host it, in fact it seems to not have been designed with self-hosting in mind given the forking section of the ReadMe:
... show moreThe impression I get from Bluesky is that it doesn't view federation as a core feature of its platform, just a nice technical oddity. I'm no expert on the AT protocol, but from a quick skim of the
Their app is open source, but it doesn't give any instructions on how to self-host it, in fact it seems to not have been designed with self-hosting in mind given the forking section of the ReadMe:
The impression I get from Bluesky is that it doesn't view federation as a core feature of its platform, just a nice technical oddity. I'm no expert on the AT protocol, but from a quick skim of the quickstart, their view of federation seems to be having disparate data repositories (Personal Data Servers) app developers can put their app data into. It doesn't really seems to be about different software communicating with each other.
In contrast, ActivityPub is about passing JSON between servers in a somewhat standard format so different software can reasonably understand what that JSON represents and act on it in a way that makes sense for that software.
(But again, I'm don't know anything about the AT protocol, I could be completely wrong here)
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haui
in reply to flamingos-cant • • •like this
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hitagi
in reply to haui • • •Nate
in reply to Blaze • •AT (Bluesky's protocol) is a little bit different then activity pub. There's two types of servers, a PDS and a relay. A PDS is basically a git repository of all your posts/interactions, it's super lightweight and doesn't do anything but host them and provide it to any server that asks for it. The PDS basically does the profile hosting portion of a Mastodon server, and is very similar to a Nostr relay if you're familiar with that.
A relay accesses data across a bunch of PDSs and provides it as one big network to the relay's users. It's basically the equivalent of the federated portion of what a Mastodon server does. It's also doing what a Nostr client does (although Nostr does that on the user's device) if you're familiar with that.
Any relay can pull data from any PDS, so theoretically it's very decentralized since anybody could host either a PDS and/or Relay. Bluesky was opened up very recently though, so there's not many non-Bluesky-hosted PDSs on the network yet and most are small and experimental. There's also no relays other than Bluesky that I'm aware of, althoug
... show moreAT (Bluesky's protocol) is a little bit different then activity pub. There's two types of servers, a PDS and a relay. A PDS is basically a git repository of all your posts/interactions, it's super lightweight and doesn't do anything but host them and provide it to any server that asks for it. The PDS basically does the profile hosting portion of a Mastodon server, and is very similar to a Nostr relay if you're familiar with that.
A relay accesses data across a bunch of PDSs and provides it as one big network to the relay's users. It's basically the equivalent of the federated portion of what a Mastodon server does. It's also doing what a Nostr client does (although Nostr does that on the user's device) if you're familiar with that.
Any relay can pull data from any PDS, so theoretically it's very decentralized since anybody could host either a PDS and/or Relay. Bluesky was opened up very recently though, so there's not many non-Bluesky-hosted PDSs on the network yet and most are small and experimental. There's also no relays other than Bluesky that I'm aware of, although it's only been open for ~6 months so I expect that'd change soon.
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Blaze
in reply to Nate • • •Thanks for clarifying!
BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to Blaze • • •Long winded, nuanced answer, ready your eyeballs:
It's a bit complicated, but since we're on Fediverse and at least somewhat familiar with how things work here, I'll try to explain with that comparison in mind.
On Fediverse, instances are in control of the user data directly. To "migrate" your account, you'd be switching instances and admins entirely.
BlueSky splits things up quite a bit more.
There, you can host your own "PDS" or Personal Data Server. That hosts your account and post info only.
Then, there's the "AppView". In comparison to Fediverse, these are like Lemmy, Mastodon, Mbin, etc. Right now, there's VERY few Appviews to choose from.
Then, there's the "relay". Which to Fediverse, the only thing similar is also relays, but they work differently. On BlueSky, they relay every post and interactions of all the PDS data that connect to AppViews. I do not think there's a choice on *what* is relayed, just a huge firehose. That being said, they're not optional like Fediverse. To complete the network, relays are required on ATProto and apparen
... show moreLong winded, nuanced answer, ready your eyeballs:
It's a bit complicated, but since we're on Fediverse and at least somewhat familiar with how things work here, I'll try to explain with that comparison in mind.
On Fediverse, instances are in control of the user data directly. To "migrate" your account, you'd be switching instances and admins entirely.
BlueSky splits things up quite a bit more.
There, you can host your own "PDS" or Personal Data Server. That hosts your account and post info only.
Then, there's the "AppView". In comparison to Fediverse, these are like Lemmy, Mastodon, Mbin, etc. Right now, there's VERY few Appviews to choose from.
Then, there's the "relay". Which to Fediverse, the only thing similar is also relays, but they work differently. On BlueSky, they relay every post and interactions of all the PDS data that connect to AppViews. I do not think there's a choice on *what* is relayed, just a huge firehose. That being said, they're not optional like Fediverse. To complete the network, relays are required on ATProto and apparently could be expensive to host, so right now, it appears the only relay is hosted by BlueSky the company. Which makes things slightly centralized.
Now, that we have those definitions out of the way, this is where things get a bit muddy and a bit of purposeful corporate created confusion for purpose of selfishness is quite apparent.
Right now, there's very few AppViews. The ones I'm aware of are, BlueSky itself, Whitewind, and Frontpage.xyz.
The confusion happens because BlueSky, the company, doesn't separate the fact that accounts hosted on self-hosted PDS, aren't technically Bluesky accounts, they're ATproto accounts. Everywhere you look to login, it says "login using your BlueSky account". I can only assume they're doing this on purpose so that anyone who tries to make an Appview, host a PDS, AND a relay, can't have their own "identity" like different instances and platforms have here on Fedi.
That will confuse people and make them think *everything* is just hosted by BlueSky the company. However, as we've now established, there's definitely a separation of "Bluesky" the company, "BlueSky" the AppView that you can login to using your "BlueSky" account, which doesnt technically have to be hosted by anything related to BlueSky.
I hope this all makes sense and you can tell that *technically* things are decentralized for the most part. It's just that BlueSky is purposefully muddying their own definitions of things so that anyone that tries to build on ATproto, has a hard time making themselves known as *not* bluesky due to the way they conflate all these definitions.
Sorry for the huge post and hope it makes sense in some way.
Thanks for reading.ππ
@fediverse
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tengkuizdihar
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •like this
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BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to tengkuizdihar • • •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.π€¦ββοΈ
@fediverse
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XNX
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •Or maybe they do it because it would be very confusing for 99% of users to read βsign in with your atproto accountβ when no one knows what that is. Its a good thing theyre keeping things simple for now instead of getting the mastodon βits too complicatedβ issue and having non tech users not use it.
Mastodon and the activitypub culture is very much either βits too complicatedβ or βhow do you not understand its so simple maybe youβre just dumb and shouldnt be hereβ energy and its why 99% of topics here are just tech and politics. Almost no artists use it and the few that use it are on mastodon.art which defederates from so many instances.
BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to XNX • • •well, it doesn't really matter their reasoning when the end result is the same.
It won't become truly decentralized with these things in the way.
@fediverse
XNX
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •It does matter their reasoning and they can change the word when atproto is more understood. No fedi software uses βsign in with your activitypub accountβ either because confusing users is a bad thing.
I personally like that theyre doing things to appeal to non tech users because i dont want to use a service no one uses. Its why i dont use any activitypub service for my art because theres no artists using activitypub but bluesky has a huge art community even though they still dont have video
BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to XNX • • •to each their own.
The anarchist in me doesn't feel right having a corporate overlord who can
me from existence whenever they choose.π€·ββοΈ
That's not important to everyone and that's fine. We are all different.
@fediverse
XNX
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to XNX • • •I certainly cannot. I'm on my own instance and there's like 20,000 instances. Someone can *attempt* to yeet me. They'll have a hell of a time getting admin privileges to all instances though.
@fediverse
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •/usr/libexec/ccoremapd
in reply to XNX • • •I believe they're planning to change that into something like "Sign in with your ATmosphere account." (hopefully)
I could be wrong, but the term "ATmosphere" has been used widely by non-technical users.
XNX
in reply to /usr/libexec/ccoremapd • • •Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to XNX • • •Jo Miran
in reply to tengkuizdihar • • •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.
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PeriodicallyPedantic
in reply to tengkuizdihar • • •That's a wild interpretation of what they said.
Dude described a branding problem, not a technical problem.
tengkuizdihar
in reply to tengkuizdihar • • •Blaze
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to Blaze • • •no problem, friend.
I always worry if my long winded answers make sense to neurotypical people as I'm ADHD and slightly autistic.π
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
Drunemeton
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •like this
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BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to Drunemeton • • •you're welcome, and thank you for the reassurance, friend.π«‘
@fediverse
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mark
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •like this
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BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to mark • • •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
α΄α΄α΄α΄Κα΄Κ εΈ
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •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.
blue_berry
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •Thanks for the explanation. Didn't realize Bluesky/AT is more like a fedi-washed version of ActivityPub rather than a real alternative ...
I'm not sure; on the one hand, I think the fact that federation has become a unique selling point in micro-blogging is indicating a positive trend; so even if people join Bluesky its good for the Fediverse. On the other hand, if federated just becomes another buzz word that means nothing at all, while places where the real innovation is happening are drowned out, the window of opportunity could just close.
BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to blue_berry • • •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
XNX
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •like this
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BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to XNX • • •yes! I mistyped.π«£
It's frontpage.fyi
Sorry!π
@fediverse
timconspicuous
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •A number I've seen quoted multiple times now is ~$150 per month to host a relay (Source). Which explains why Whitewind, Smokesignal and Frontpage don't host one, they are mostly still small projects by individual talented devs, but imo if that number is true, it really doesn't seem too outlandish that someone might go for it.
Blaze
in reply to timconspicuous • • •poVoq
in reply to Blaze • • •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.
Blaze
in reply to poVoq • • •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.
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.
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to BeAware :fediverse: • • •Yeah, so it's not a bad explanation, maybe a bit biased ;)
The key is that the architecture is very different, and there isn't a direct equivalent of instances. There are PDSes, but they do much less than Fedi instances, and they also don't directly talk to (federate with) each other. The data flows from PDSes to relay(s) to AppView(s) and to clients.
BeAware :fediverse:
in reply to Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦ • • •that's what I said, no? just in more words.π€·ββοΈ
And yeah, my opinion is mixed in, but I figured that should be obvious. Maybe I should put *opinion* somewhere in there?π€
Most of it is true, with my opinion in 2 or 3 sentences.
Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦
in reply to Kuba Suder β’ @mackuba.eu on π¦ • • •There's a small number of self-hosted personal PDSes (blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdseβ¦), 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).
aaaaace
in reply to Blaze • • •Thank you for all the info! Been wondering about various things.
Zooming back, it feels like both the fedi and bluesky aren't fully resolved yet and might influence each other and a possible further replacement.
For example, I like the PDS/repository idea and think it would help make migrating easier in the fedi. But I would like more granular control over what is shared to relays as opposed to everything.
Boris Mann
in reply to Blaze • • •$150-$300 per month is what a relay costs for the entire 10M account network. That is extremely efficient.
Itβs also not necessary. Smoke Signal the events on ATProtoo connects to user PDS directly.
Blaze
in reply to Boris Mann • • •So what would happen if a billionaire buys out Bluesky and starts spreading right wing propaganda all over it?
Completely hypothetical scenario