Three weeks ago I wrote "How decentralized is Bluesky really?" https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

[cwebber@social.coop]

This ended up turning out to be an interesting metric, one I was too lazy to *formally* measure, but I guess someone else could

Friends I gotta tell you people loved the eggs in both places but the fediverse did way better on collecting the eggs

Congratulations fediverse, you beat gender ganon

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@cwebber @bnewbold It's cool to see this kind of reasoned back-and-forth on design, with the various intentions, requirements, non-requirements, and engineering compromises run through. I really appreciate reading it, and hopefully this helps at least some folks come to the realization that there are many ways to come at complex systems and how changes in requirements (or sometimes seemingly random small choices) can make large differences in the design you ultimately end up with.

[cwebber@social.coop]

But one way or another people did, after all, seem to actually read deep in the blogpost and especially deep in the thread, which leads to a question, why am I doing this to myself, why am I re-articulating what's already a long-ass blogpost into a long-ass thread?

WHY AM I DOING IT AGAIN

[iyashikei_kris@mstdn.social]

@cwebber

It is written, only fedilink can defeat gender ganon

[cwebber@social.coop]

Well the last blogpost was 24 pages printed and took me 8 hours to summarize and this one is definitely shorter, it's only..

oh shit it's 20 pages oh fuck

okay I've been awake since 4am and getting this post ready since 5am working 12 hour days lately haha it's no problem

I'm gonna need more tea.

[cwebber@social.coop]

One more meta thing before we get into it. I want to say up front: working on and building systems is deeply personal, and deeply emotional.

We are talking about systems people pour their lives into. Trust me I know.

It's worth doing a critique, but it's also worth acknowledging the human aspect.

[cwebber@social.coop]

So anyway. We are going to get into it. And the further we go, the more serious my critiques are going to get. Just because I'm being nice doesn't mean my analysis won't be harsh at points.

Nonetheless let's try to be decent to each other. We all deserve that. Thanks.

[nemobis@mamot.fr]

@cwebber "But seriously though, could open source orgs have some of that fighter jet wing money?"

That's what MIT is for, no?

[cwebber@social.coop]

If you can't tell, my narration style buries the lede quite a bit. So lemme tell you what you can expect up front:

- Some fluffier bits I thought were good framing
- A dive-into-literature analysis of the terminology "decentralization" and "federation" and whether Bluesky is either

(cotd...)

[cwebber@social.coop]

- A defense and analysis of my claim that Bluesky's approach explodes unsustainably ("quadratically") as you try to decentralize it
- "Actually what I'm worried about portable identity isn't what you may think"
- Public content vs community expectations on Bluesky

(cotd ...)

[cwebber@social.coop]

- A comparison of Bluesky, ActivityPub, and @spritely's values and design goals (invited by @bnewbold specifically in his post! good idea)
- Stepping back and concluding: "Where to from here?"

So yeah. That's a lot to get through. Let's get going.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Oh yeah and just like last time I WILL NOT BE READING NOTIFICATIONS until I get through this

Sorry, it's impossible. I'll never get through it otherwise. So see your comments on the other side!

[cwebber@social.coop]

So yes, definitely burying the lede, we are now at "Interesting notes and helpful acknowledgements"

Bear with me, we'll get to the deeper analysis, but this does help frame things I promise

[cwebber@social.coop]

So first of all, @bnewbold was very nice:

> I am so *happy* and grateful that Christine took the time to write up her thoughts and put them out in public. Her writing sheds light on substantive differences between protocols and projects, and raises the bar on analysis in this space.

Aw thx

[cwebber@social.coop]

WHOOPS I FRAGMENTED MY THREAD CONTINUE HERE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/113647312428959527

[bnewbold@social.coop]

@cwebber thanks for the reply!

really happy for use to have these back-and-forth blog posts as an artifact. it sounds like it took a lot of time on your end, and I know it did on mine as well, but doing it "in the thick of things" made it real and memorable.

I read the whole blog reply, but likely won't read the full summary thread (different media!).

I'm not planning to do a full-length blog reply, but will post a couple quick comments here. and do hope to "be in conversation" going forward.

[bnewbold@social.coop]

@cwebber some other comments from atproto thread are bridged here:

social.coop

(social.coop)

[eliot_l@social.coop]

@cwebber Thanks for another great write-up. I chose to read this in blog format again. So I don't think I have any easter eggs to prove I finished it, you'll have to take my word for it.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@nemobis is it?

could MIT get us some of the jet wing money