At a fundamental level the intended meaning of “federate” is that disparate communities and softwares can “connect” seamlessly, a bridge by definition is a tool used to connect things that are not connected or seamless.
A federated landscape of interconnected trails is the structural antithesis to a landscape of bridges each laboriously muscled out of the headache inducing process of connecting two disparate systems with a third system specific to that bridge and that bridge only that must be endlessly revised and rebuilt to keep everything from collapsing in a heap.
A bridge, by definition, is a composite of parts that are existentially vital to the sucessful conveyance of what passes over them, it only takes one section failing to break the entire bridge and it only takes one troll to block everything. A bridge, again by its very definition, is the most brittle architecture as every bridge is ultimately only a temporarily open door that must be continously be maintained and eventually rebuilt at the expense of great effort.
“Never” is a strong word. API translation is a technical hurdle, but rarely an insurmountable one. If Blue Sky wanted to add an ActivityPub interface to their platform, they probably could.
This issue isn’t technical per se; it’s a matter of priorities. Blue Sky doesn’t want to federate with Mastodon/Threads, because they want users to switch to their platform.
Oh, well that’s good anyway. Is it true that they only have like one major server? Because I’ve heard that, but I haven’t looked much into them, so I’m not sure if it’s still the case or not. To my understanding, they are meant to be a federated network, but really only have the one server.
Of course it is, why would people throw millions at investing in a product and then decentralize it to the point that there weren’t any bottlenecks to apply pressure and extract a profit back out of it? It makes no sense and would be a ridiculous business strategy.
What is a good business strategy is associating your product with visions of decentralization while never truly intending to get there in practice.
Yeah this is still true as far as I know. Honestly this is probably what allowed BS to gain a foothold; I like mastodon too but asking new users to pick a server was always going to be a source of adoption friction.
Has an aggressively unpleasant user base and nowhere near the blocking functionality that Bluesky has, which is essentially mandatory now for minorities on the internet. Not to mention an onboarding process that can confuse the tech literate, much less the average person.
This comment is not an invitation to talk about how actually it’s very simple and intuitive if you follow a 20 step process that relies on detailed knowledge of how federation works.
Don’t forget the disproportionate control individual mods have over the network due to the shared defederation lists. I was on a general purpose instance which found itself defederated from a large part of the network because a mastodon.art admin had disagreement with a mod on the one I was on.
Putting aside control and anecdotes, neither of which would be fair to comment on without more context and a lengthier discussion, this breaks the email metaphor a bit, doesn’t it?
The Fediverse is just like email, where we all talk to each other, except Outlook blocked Gmail because MS and Google had a fight during a meeting so you’re gonna have to migrate to Yahoo or learn to self-host.
That’s not necessarily a criticism, I just find it funny.
You dont need to explain email so federation does not seem to be the issue here IMO. The problem is money which FLOSS projects usually don’t have. The successful ones have perhaps enough so that the devs can put food on their table, but not much else. Most of the apps are after Dayjob hobby projects. It’s hard to compete with those who have teams of paid staff.
Those people will either learn one day or they will end up in the same vicious cycle over and over again for the rest of their lives until they do learn the lesson or die. The only reason the blue sky process is better is because, at least currently, they only have the one server. If it ever actually federates, like it’s supposed to, then that point is completely moot. Because then they won’t know how to sign up for blue sky either.
Oh no, not the same thing I’ve been doing since the mid 90s! I might die if I migrate sites again! Or something.
Making a social network only usable by around 5% of the population and then complaining when only 5% of the population shows up is a pretty indicative attitude of why so many FOSS projects struggle to get widespread adoption. You don’t get to choose how tech literate the population is. You either make it more useable or you accept a limited audience.
Mastodon
Bsky federates. I follow several people from my Mastodon profile.
Edit: I should add a caveat here. Federation doesn’t work as smoothly as Threads yet. You have to use a bridge service: https://fed.brid.gy/
The bridge is necessary because BlueSky and Mastodon cannot federate, and they never will be able to. ActivityPub and ATProto are different protocols.
At a fundamental level the intended meaning of “federate” is that disparate communities and softwares can “connect” seamlessly, a bridge by definition is a tool used to connect things that are not connected or seamless.
A federated landscape of interconnected trails is the structural antithesis to a landscape of bridges each laboriously muscled out of the headache inducing process of connecting two disparate systems with a third system specific to that bridge and that bridge only that must be endlessly revised and rebuilt to keep everything from collapsing in a heap.
A bridge, by definition, is a composite of parts that are existentially vital to the sucessful conveyance of what passes over them, it only takes one section failing to break the entire bridge and it only takes one troll to block everything. A bridge, again by its very definition, is the most brittle architecture as every bridge is ultimately only a temporarily open door that must be continously be maintained and eventually rebuilt at the expense of great effort.
“Never” is a strong word. API translation is a technical hurdle, but rarely an insurmountable one. If Blue Sky wanted to add an ActivityPub interface to their platform, they probably could.
This issue isn’t technical per se; it’s a matter of priorities. Blue Sky doesn’t want to federate with Mastodon/Threads, because they want users to switch to their platform.
Oh, well that’s good anyway. Is it true that they only have like one major server? Because I’ve heard that, but I haven’t looked much into them, so I’m not sure if it’s still the case or not. To my understanding, they are meant to be a federated network, but really only have the one server.
Of course it is, why would people throw millions at investing in a product and then decentralize it to the point that there weren’t any bottlenecks to apply pressure and extract a profit back out of it? It makes no sense and would be a ridiculous business strategy.
What is a good business strategy is associating your product with visions of decentralization while never truly intending to get there in practice.
Fair point. They will just grow their user base and then go all walled garden just like all the rest of the platforms. Protocols not platforms.
Yeah this is still true as far as I know. Honestly this is probably what allowed BS to gain a foothold; I like mastodon too but asking new users to pick a server was always going to be a source of adoption friction.
AFAIK that’s still the case, yes. I don’t have a Bluesky (or Threads) account so I can’t confirm.
Has an aggressively unpleasant user base and nowhere near the blocking functionality that Bluesky has, which is essentially mandatory now for minorities on the internet. Not to mention an onboarding process that can confuse the tech literate, much less the average person.
This comment is not an invitation to talk about how actually it’s very simple and intuitive if you follow a 20 step process that relies on detailed knowledge of how federation works.
Don’t forget the disproportionate control individual mods have over the network due to the shared defederation lists. I was on a general purpose instance which found itself defederated from a large part of the network because a mastodon.art admin had disagreement with a mod on the one I was on.
Putting aside control and anecdotes, neither of which would be fair to comment on without more context and a lengthier discussion, this breaks the email metaphor a bit, doesn’t it?
The Fediverse is just like email, where we all talk to each other, except Outlook blocked Gmail because MS and Google had a fight during a meeting so you’re gonna have to migrate to Yahoo or learn to self-host.
That’s not necessarily a criticism, I just find it funny.
You dont need to explain email so federation does not seem to be the issue here IMO. The problem is money which FLOSS projects usually don’t have. The successful ones have perhaps enough so that the devs can put food on their table, but not much else. Most of the apps are after Dayjob hobby projects. It’s hard to compete with those who have teams of paid staff.
Those people will either learn one day or they will end up in the same vicious cycle over and over again for the rest of their lives until they do learn the lesson or die. The only reason the blue sky process is better is because, at least currently, they only have the one server. If it ever actually federates, like it’s supposed to, then that point is completely moot. Because then they won’t know how to sign up for blue sky either.
Oh no, not the same thing I’ve been doing since the mid 90s! I might die if I migrate sites again! Or something.
Making a social network only usable by around 5% of the population and then complaining when only 5% of the population shows up is a pretty indicative attitude of why so many FOSS projects struggle to get widespread adoption. You don’t get to choose how tech literate the population is. You either make it more useable or you accept a limited audience.
Clown take. “People should just get smart!”
95% of all American adults cannot use search functions in email.