Centralization eventually ends up with a single entity in charge of everything, which eventually does (or doesn't do) something that causes it's value to collapse.
The real solution here is federalization: A bunch of independent self-govening entities that co-operate with other entities to assist each other in moderation.
A good non-social network example here would be adblockers.
- Each adblocker uses at least one ad tracking list, with most adblockers allowing for multiple lists to be used and a sensible default for their own users to use.
- Each list has it's own moderators that add/update/remove entries on their list based on their own values.
- Adblockers (and their users) can collaborate on requesting changes to lists, resulting in faster reactions to advertising changes on the web, and in turn faster updates passed down to users of those adblockers who participate.
- If an adblocker can't do their job anymore (e.g. their owners/workers can't do their job anymore, the owner sells out, etc...) users can switch to (or create) a new adblocker.
- If a list fails, adblockers can switch to other lists (or create a new one).
No adblocker and no list holds all the power. Adblocking as a whole is strengthened by always having viable alternatives that can be switched to, and methods to quickly create new alternatives if the need arises.
That's the power of federation: the strengths of centralization without the weaknesses.
The social media version of a federated twitter is mastodon. A whole bunch of groups running their own mastodon servers that can interact with each-other as if they were a centralized mastodon website, with similarly aligned servers sharing co-operatively maintained bad-actor lists.
The founder has been posting through it, Elon-style and with as much cringe.
It's disappointing because I've mostly been able to replicate my Twitter experience there. It's better actually, because more funny people moved and fewer journalists so it's less of a doomscroll.
> However, as time has gone by, Bluesky’s traffic has declined (X’s has as well) and some of its users have become increasingly upset at its moderation decisions, including allowing U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and anti-trans writer Jesse Singal to remain as users of the platform.
The problem, if you can call it that, is Singal hasn't broken any of their TOS or guidelines.
Right now, AFAICT this is a people with pitchforks problem, who are asking for something which they don't have any business asking.
Sure, if you want to stick your fingers in your ears, block Singal. There are widely used block lists for people who even merely follow Singal. Asking for his ban from a public use platform is too much without more than "He wrote some articles for the NY Times, The Atlantic, and NY Magazine, I didn't personally enjoy."
I don't understand how you can "ban" anyone from distributed social media. The idea seems... outdated?
I mean, I get "ignoring" someone so they don't show up when you log into whatever instance you're in, whether it's the AT Protocol or ActivityPub, but like... if someone somehow decides to do work on top of one of these protocols and extend it to allow people to basically comment on things that a victim user doesn't want to allow an antagonist to take part in, I mean, aren't you just like effectively putting fingers in your ears while someone in another room talks about you?
I don't see how, without centralization, you can say to the world, "Hey, here's my content, interact with it," and then also say, "Oh you, over there, you can't participate in this thing that I am doing."
Like, depending on the shape of the graph, that doesn't make any sense. You effectively cannot do that without just creating a bunch of silos that are non-cooperative.
Bam, you've reinvented centralization with extra steps.
> However, as time has gone by, Bluesky’s traffic has declined (X’s has as well) and some of its users have become increasingly upset at its moderation decisions, including allowing U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and anti-trans writer Jesse Singal to remain as users of the platform.
So the expectation is that the vice president of the United States should be banned because he says stuff people don't like? What's the benefit of ignoring reality like this? He's not going to magically disappear if Bluesky bans him - indeed he'll remain VP with all the power that entails.
This is worse than performative activism, it's like some kind of political denialism. You can't change reality by pretending it doesn't exist.
I hate to be the one to say it, but...this is why we can't have nice things.
At a certain scale, social media tilts humanity in one direction. We can't seem to escape the trajectory of our very nature; it will outcompete any complex system we devise to outwit it.
I much prefer Bluesky to X but have had a hunch this was coming due to everything I've read about the practicality of running a Bluesky protocol service.
I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience.
Nostr appeals to me technically but every time I'm on it seems swamped completely by discussion of cryptocurrency.
I guess to me it feels like one of these catch 22 (necessary but not sufficient?) problems where you have to have the right technical base for a platform, which seems doable, but even then you have to have the right userbase also.
> Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos
I'm not sure that's true. It's important to note that these bans are from the Bluesky App View (one component of the infra), and that these users can continue to post under their identity (if they own it, which they can), and users on App Views that haven't banned these users could continue to follow them.
None of that works with Mastodon. An admin bans you from the instance, and you can no longer post, use your identity, interact on the platform, etc. You have to start from scratch.
In short, Mastodon reduces the blast radius, but the "blast" is the same as on any private platform. Bluesky/AT Proto changes the impact to a different, strictly lesser type.
Seems like the hard truth is all these alternate platforms that offer their technology as the reason to get on it ... it's just not a great selling point for someone who wants to post "woah watch out driving tonight, it's slippery out there" or cat pics. I think that's a lot of users.
The content of the posts and some level of moderation is the selling point.
Personally that's kinda a bummer, because IMO my biggest disappointment is that its just Twitter but little different. Same pithy posts and petty bickering:(
> I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience.
There's more servers on Mastodon, yes, so in that way it is decentralized more. But as a user, I have a lot more sovereignty over my data on Bluesky than I get having my account on a Mastodon / fediverse. I can set up my own PDS quite easily, or move to another, or back to BlueSky hosting very easy. I appreciate this decentralization a lot.
And I have a much better chance of being able to analyze system behavior, understand propoganda networks on atproto/bluesky. Mastodon servers heavily discourage trying to view & understand the network, but Bluesky really lets everyday folks run and analyze the whole firehose, very very cheaply. Which is an incredible decentralization, a very powerful syndication that it's protocols enable, that's simply unmatched. Still, research is being done on both networks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566
This is not a general problem with moderation there, centralized or decentralized. This particular issue is specific to a large group of people that don't like Jesse Singal and have been trying to get him removed from Bluesky. It hasn't worked and that group is trying all kinds of way to reframe the narrative to get leverage. All the padding this post adds around that is neotechnical jargon slop.
> But not everyone is looking forward to the idea: “I’d go back to Usenet before I went back to Mastodon,” wrote Bluesky user Count Von Horse Knuckler. “I do not need people yelling at me for not putting cat pictures behind trigger warnings or unwanted Linux advice.”
Cat pictures need a trigger warning? Wonder what the triggering effect is there?
The technology powering Bluesky is “inspired by” but never interoperable with existing standards or similar reference architectures. This is one’s first queue that the direction is not being open.
And beyond the technical details, how can a corporation commit to transparency and non-bias when their very funding depends on it? Google already provided us with the most popular example of how this is not possible (“don’t be evil” by an ad company).
You know what they say, when you're explaining that you don't really wish death upon the CEO of the niche social network platform on which you depend, you're losing.
From the article I got the impression Singal was some far right loon, but after looking it up.. nope, he is a liberal that said something mildly out of sync with trans activists opinions...
Reddit is forum as a service. discord is chat as a service, fandom is wiki as a service. They all share the common goal of centralizing something that should probably not be centralized.
This reminds me of when some NFTs were stolen and OpenSea delisted them. Like yeah, they still exist out there on the blockchain, but when a central authority can gatekeep peoples' ability to view them, how decentralized are they actually?
Moxie Marlinspike wrote a good essay [1] about "Web3" that highlighted a few of these kinds of issues, and I think it applies to anything like Bluesky claiming to be "decentralized" when it's prohibitively difficult to access it any way other than the biggest central service.
How can people laugh and make meme at someone else murder ? Like the guy, hate him, but there is something that used to be shared amongst humans, it's that you respect the dead.
That's just empathy. Seems like it's gone to the toilet in some part of the usa or maybe it's just weirdos on internet. Either case it's despicable.
Mastodon is the right model. I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most. It's the right model because it's essentially the same model as email. Yes, there is TONS of "human" work to be done to change people's minds on this, but STRUCTURALLY it's the only one that can handle things correctly.
I always found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to keep your everything permanent."
That's EXACTLY what brings MORE danger to centralization. I get that losing an identity on a thing sucks BUT WE'VE ALREADY DEALT WITH THIS WITH EMAIL, and more over the ability to lose/destroy/start over -- like with email -- is a FEATURE as much as it is a bug.
> I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most.
Well I read your explanation, and it's still not obvious. Nor do I appreciate the implication that anyone who disagrees with you is missing something obvious. Not the best choice, rhetorically.
> I always found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to keep your everything permanent."
Not only that, but also having a globally (eventually) consistent view of every conversation from every server. Unlike the "message passing" model used by email and ActivityPub, this means that every server has to carry all the traffic of the whole network (i.e., to be prepared to be a centralized service for the whole world). This is the main reason ATProto is mostly centralized - every alternative server has to be global scale, and who wants to bother with that just to show exactly the same content that Bluesky Inc does?
I definitely have my concerns over the decreasing DAUs on the platform and the crabby, toxic community that has come to really define Bluesky these days but I don't think the tech is the problem. For folks who keep pointing at Mastodon, remember that ActivityPub's predecessor OStatus originates from 2012 and Mastodon itself was kicked off in 2016. Mastodon is 9 years old at this point. Bluesky is only a few years old.
In AP land, for better or for worse microblogging is dominated by the ad-hoc set of standards that Mastodon pioneered, and too much of the community just treats AP as "HTTP+REST JSON APIs for social" and ignores the semantic components that AP can use to interoperate.
I do wish there was a community that encouraged thoughtful positivity over negativity (granted I would not "ban" it) and some level of limited posting ... or something like that.
It's a pipe dream I know, but on the surface social media could be really cool.
They cover the possibility of people potentially migrating to Mastodon with this gem:
> But not everyone is looking forward to the idea: “I’d go back to Usenet before I went back to Mastodon,” wrote Bluesky user Count Von Horse Knuckler. “I do not need people yelling at me for not putting cat pictures behind trigger warnings or unwanted Linux advice.”
But I'm suspicious because:
1. That doesn't appear to be a valid Bluesky handle and,
2. Even if it's a pseudonym-- which is understandable-- how could there possibly be a former usenet graybeard who didn't love trafficking in unwanted Linux advice?
59 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 68.8 ms ] threadCentralization eventually ends up with a single entity in charge of everything, which eventually does (or doesn't do) something that causes it's value to collapse.
The real solution here is federalization: A bunch of independent self-govening entities that co-operate with other entities to assist each other in moderation.
A good non-social network example here would be adblockers.
- Each adblocker uses at least one ad tracking list, with most adblockers allowing for multiple lists to be used and a sensible default for their own users to use.
- Each list has it's own moderators that add/update/remove entries on their list based on their own values.
- Adblockers (and their users) can collaborate on requesting changes to lists, resulting in faster reactions to advertising changes on the web, and in turn faster updates passed down to users of those adblockers who participate.
- If an adblocker can't do their job anymore (e.g. their owners/workers can't do their job anymore, the owner sells out, etc...) users can switch to (or create) a new adblocker.
- If a list fails, adblockers can switch to other lists (or create a new one).
No adblocker and no list holds all the power. Adblocking as a whole is strengthened by always having viable alternatives that can be switched to, and methods to quickly create new alternatives if the need arises.
That's the power of federation: the strengths of centralization without the weaknesses.
The social media version of a federated twitter is mastodon. A whole bunch of groups running their own mastodon servers that can interact with each-other as if they were a centralized mastodon website, with similarly aligned servers sharing co-operatively maintained bad-actor lists.
It's disappointing because I've mostly been able to replicate my Twitter experience there. It's better actually, because more funny people moved and fewer journalists so it's less of a doomscroll.
The problem, if you can call it that, is Singal hasn't broken any of their TOS or guidelines.
Right now, AFAICT this is a people with pitchforks problem, who are asking for something which they don't have any business asking.
Sure, if you want to stick your fingers in your ears, block Singal. There are widely used block lists for people who even merely follow Singal. Asking for his ban from a public use platform is too much without more than "He wrote some articles for the NY Times, The Atlantic, and NY Magazine, I didn't personally enjoy."
I mean, I get "ignoring" someone so they don't show up when you log into whatever instance you're in, whether it's the AT Protocol or ActivityPub, but like... if someone somehow decides to do work on top of one of these protocols and extend it to allow people to basically comment on things that a victim user doesn't want to allow an antagonist to take part in, I mean, aren't you just like effectively putting fingers in your ears while someone in another room talks about you?
I don't see how, without centralization, you can say to the world, "Hey, here's my content, interact with it," and then also say, "Oh you, over there, you can't participate in this thing that I am doing."
Like, depending on the shape of the graph, that doesn't make any sense. You effectively cannot do that without just creating a bunch of silos that are non-cooperative.
Bam, you've reinvented centralization with extra steps.
So the expectation is that the vice president of the United States should be banned because he says stuff people don't like? What's the benefit of ignoring reality like this? He's not going to magically disappear if Bluesky bans him - indeed he'll remain VP with all the power that entails.
This is worse than performative activism, it's like some kind of political denialism. You can't change reality by pretending it doesn't exist.
Decreasing the reach of his propaganda. And reality isn't ignored since posts about him and his words/actions aren't removed
At a certain scale, social media tilts humanity in one direction. We can't seem to escape the trajectory of our very nature; it will outcompete any complex system we devise to outwit it.
I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience.
Nostr appeals to me technically but every time I'm on it seems swamped completely by discussion of cryptocurrency.
I guess to me it feels like one of these catch 22 (necessary but not sufficient?) problems where you have to have the right technical base for a platform, which seems doable, but even then you have to have the right userbase also.
I'm not sure that's true. It's important to note that these bans are from the Bluesky App View (one component of the infra), and that these users can continue to post under their identity (if they own it, which they can), and users on App Views that haven't banned these users could continue to follow them.
None of that works with Mastodon. An admin bans you from the instance, and you can no longer post, use your identity, interact on the platform, etc. You have to start from scratch.
In short, Mastodon reduces the blast radius, but the "blast" is the same as on any private platform. Bluesky/AT Proto changes the impact to a different, strictly lesser type.
The content of the posts and some level of moderation is the selling point.
Personally that's kinda a bummer, because IMO my biggest disappointment is that its just Twitter but little different. Same pithy posts and petty bickering:(
There's more servers on Mastodon, yes, so in that way it is decentralized more. But as a user, I have a lot more sovereignty over my data on Bluesky than I get having my account on a Mastodon / fediverse. I can set up my own PDS quite easily, or move to another, or back to BlueSky hosting very easy. I appreciate this decentralization a lot.
And I have a much better chance of being able to analyze system behavior, understand propoganda networks on atproto/bluesky. Mastodon servers heavily discourage trying to view & understand the network, but Bluesky really lets everyday folks run and analyze the whole firehose, very very cheaply. Which is an incredible decentralization, a very powerful syndication that it's protocols enable, that's simply unmatched. Still, research is being done on both networks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566
I think this is what a lot of social media has become, particularly as people isolate themselves to only those sources and feeds they agree with.
Cat pictures need a trigger warning? Wonder what the triggering effect is there?
I can see Linux advice though: kill, mount, etc.
And beyond the technical details, how can a corporation commit to transparency and non-bias when their very funding depends on it? Google already provided us with the most popular example of how this is not possible (“don’t be evil” by an ad company).
Are we decentralized yet? (arewedecentralizedyet.online)
492 points by Bogdanp 38 days ago | 283 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45077291
Moxie Marlinspike wrote a good essay [1] about "Web3" that highlighted a few of these kinds of issues, and I think it applies to anything like Bluesky claiming to be "decentralized" when it's prohibitively difficult to access it any way other than the biggest central service.
1: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
That's just empathy. Seems like it's gone to the toilet in some part of the usa or maybe it's just weirdos on internet. Either case it's despicable.
If a platform doesn't ban someone: short it as people say they are cancelling
If a platform does ban someone: also short it as people say they are cancelling
requires a publicly traded platform like Netflix or Disney+ as significant pieces of the parent company's revenue
I always found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to keep your everything permanent."
That's EXACTLY what brings MORE danger to centralization. I get that losing an identity on a thing sucks BUT WE'VE ALREADY DEALT WITH THIS WITH EMAIL, and more over the ability to lose/destroy/start over -- like with email -- is a FEATURE as much as it is a bug.
Well I read your explanation, and it's still not obvious. Nor do I appreciate the implication that anyone who disagrees with you is missing something obvious. Not the best choice, rhetorically.
Not only that, but also having a globally (eventually) consistent view of every conversation from every server. Unlike the "message passing" model used by email and ActivityPub, this means that every server has to carry all the traffic of the whole network (i.e., to be prepared to be a centralized service for the whole world). This is the main reason ATProto is mostly centralized - every alternative server has to be global scale, and who wants to bother with that just to show exactly the same content that Bluesky Inc does?
In AP land, for better or for worse microblogging is dominated by the ad-hoc set of standards that Mastodon pioneered, and too much of the community just treats AP as "HTTP+REST JSON APIs for social" and ignores the semantic components that AP can use to interoperate.
It's a pipe dream I know, but on the surface social media could be really cool.
> But not everyone is looking forward to the idea: “I’d go back to Usenet before I went back to Mastodon,” wrote Bluesky user Count Von Horse Knuckler. “I do not need people yelling at me for not putting cat pictures behind trigger warnings or unwanted Linux advice.”
But I'm suspicious because:
1. That doesn't appear to be a valid Bluesky handle and,
2. Even if it's a pseudonym-- which is understandable-- how could there possibly be a former usenet graybeard who didn't love trafficking in unwanted Linux advice?
Edit: clarifications