> However, I disagree with some of the analysis, and have a couple specific points to correct.

[damon@social.wedistribute.org]

@[email protected] Agreed as long as people stop conflating federated and decentralised

[cwebber@social.coop]

For tonight, I need to unwind, I need to put a label on a mailbox, I need to eat dinner, I need to drive across the state, I need to sleep.

Maybe I appear ridiculous. I get it. I go pretty hardcore on this stuff. If you know me you know I tend to go all in.

[darius@friend.camp]

@cwebber thank you for contextualizing the Baran 1964 citations btw.

[cwebber@social.coop]

I am signing off for the night. Tomorrow we will analyze whether or not my assertion that "ATProto has explosive behavior as it approaches decentralization" problems.

I'm not going to read notifications until I finish this. Maybe someone will prove me wrong before I get it done.

I'll be oblivious.

[cwebber@social.coop]

We will also analyze values, which maybe I care about more than anything. And there will be more secret goblins, hidden among the posts.

For tonight, it's rest time. It's time for a

=== NO MORE LOOKING AT MY COMPUTER BREAK ===

[semitones@tiny.tilde.website]

@cwebber I thought the comparison to libera.chat was especially interesting because they've got one "credible exit" behind them! Back when we were all on freenode, but had to suddenly move to libera to deal with the hostile takeover. Freenode was centralized but the network was able to recreate itself in a way I haven't really seen elsewhere because IRC clients could point to a different server and carry on.

[django@social.coop]

@cwebber If ATproto describes its design (imho inaccurately) as “adversarial interop”…

Maybe ActivityPub could be described as: laissez-faire interop

[flancian@social.coop]

@cwebber this is literally in [[decentralized]] in the Agora (the social knowledge graph I'm developing) but I didn't know where it was from, thanks for finding the source!

It should of course also be linked at [[distributed]] for completeness

[damon@social.wedistribute.org]

@[email protected] @[email protected] Find from what perspective? Christine’s definitions have touched upon price, practicalities etc
I don’t think “fine” is the correct term. Mastodon nonprofit two instances make up 30% of the active MAU, if they shut down it would not be “fine”. I’ve seen plenty of people say mastodon.social is too big to block, that doesn’t reinforce what you’re saying nor several of Christine’s points. The factors are largely what’s practical meaning what’s been adopted by the masses. Idk about you but cutting off 30% wouldn’t qualify as fine in many cases

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@cwebber was it at least good hummus

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@cwebber Would it be helpful to use the terms “strong” and “weak” decentralization to refer to your and Baran’s / Nottingham’s definitions respectively?

EDIT: No we shouldn’t. See self reply

At least in my head, that seems to work.

[slothrop@chaos.social]

Ahaha I should have read to the end of the section.

We already have perfectly appropriate words for the distinction I’m trying to make, from Paul Baran himself.

They’re “distributed” and “decentralized”.

I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut until the smart people have finished talking.

@cwebber

[gert@social.coop]

@cwebber Also on how it could have ended up in implementation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25

VC may be established using X.121 addresses. The X.121 address consists of a three-digit data country code (DCC) plus a network digit, together forming the four-digit data network identification code (DNIC), followed by the national terminal number (NTN) of at most ten digits.

[mcneely@indieweb.social]

@cwebber
First off thank you, these threads have been very enlightening. For those of us without the formal CS background is there a portion of something we missed in our learning. I'm just wondering how and where you learned all of this. Is it covered in a traditional CS degree (something I don't have) or more something you've learned over the years of doing standards work yourself?

[cwebber@social.coop]

Hello! I am back at my computer. Today we are going to talk about how ATProto does in terms of scaling. Yes, we know it scales up, and has done an impressive job of doing so!

But what about scaling towards decentralization? Does it scale down? And does it scale wide? Let's look.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Before we get deep into that, when we left last night I was extremely tired and had been working at my computer for over 14 hours. I then said I was going to drive two hours across the state that evening.

Thankfully thanks to the support of people who love me, I did not do that foolish thing!

[cwebber@social.coop]

So anyway, I am better rested, and also I woke up to the surprise that our fundraiser is doing a lot better, like by a lot, than it was yesterday, which is nice because I was extremely stressed out https://spritely.institute/donate/

So I am feeling much better and alive and today I remembered to eat lunch

[cwebber@social.coop]

But you probably aren't here to hear about my lunch choices or how much sleep I got or whether or not I forgot to bring my ADHD medication with me (I did so now I am drinking a bunch of caffeine instead), you are probably here to hear the rest of the analysis about decentralization and Bluesky etc

[cwebber@social.coop]

So let us get to it, let's talk about whether or not Bluesky can scale *down* in a meaningful way.

In my last essay I made assertions that this was important for decentralization and said ATProto wasn't great for this, and this was one thing people challenged me on

So let's take a look!

[cwebber@social.coop]

When I say "scale down", what I generally mean is "small instances can generally participate on the network". (We'll talk about "scale wide" later.) But another useful possibility which has come up is "can you make a smaller, more isolated use-case and use the same protocol for it"