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

[cwebber@social.coop]

At any rate, the problem with "scaling down" is much clearer when it comes to the problem of "scaling wide".

Or let me put it a different way: ATProto *explodes in complexity* when you try to scale it towards meaningful decentralization

[cwebber@social.coop]

Yes that's right we're getting to the spicy part of this conversation. We did the warm-up, now it's time to talk about the real thing, whether or not decentralization in the way I believe people *think* that term means is reasonably possible with ATProto as it's currently designed

[cwebber@social.coop]

But before we do that, I need to stretch and run to the bathroom

So for those of you following along, if you found this, Secret Goblin #3, let me know: ""

Oops wait actually we gotta talk about that one for a sec there's a reason I left it in scare quotes

[cwebber@social.coop]

Why on earth is the textual descriptor for Unicode U+1F47A "JAPANESE GOBLIN", does anyone know?

It's a Tengu, right?

Despite being the only actually named "goblin" emoji, I feel awkward about this one because is it correct to call it a "JAPANESE GOBLIN" instead of just "TENGU"?!?!

I don't know!

[cwebber@social.coop]

If you have knowledge or OPINIONS about "", its name choice in unicode, or, for that matter, a white person just dropping it in the middle of a group chat WITHOUT putting it in quotes (I did tho), feel free to derail the comment thread

Otherwise it's time for a

=== STRETCH BREAK ===

[cwebber@social.coop]

I'm back. It's time to talk about it: does Bluesky/ATProto suffer a "quadratic explosion" as we move from centralization towards *meaningful* decentralization?

I claimed it did, but I was challenged on this. What did I mean? Am I right or wrong?

It's time to find out!

[cwebber@social.coop]

In the previous blogpost I said the following:

> If this sounds infeasible to do in our metaphorical domestic environment, that's because it is. A world of full self-hosting is not possible with Bluesky.

(cotd)

[cwebber@social.coop]

Decentralized ATProto is quadratic quote, cotd:

> In fact, it is worse than the storage requirements, because the message delivery requirements become quadratic at the scale of full decentralization: to send a message to one user is to send a message to all. Rather than writing one letter, a copy of that letter must be made and delivered to every person on earth.

[cwebber@social.coop]

This was probably the thing I got the hardest pushback on from a team member of Bluesky, that it is not quadratic as we scale towards decentralization.

Truth be told, I don't have a degree in CS. Most of what I know I learned from studying independently and community resources. Was I wrong?

[cwebber@social.coop]

Just as a quick aside, regarding that comment about "agency", maximizing the agency of everyone (and more importantly, minimizing subjection!) sits at the heart of my ethical framework https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html

So I don't disagree on that part, but that's an aside!

[cwebber@social.coop]

Now, I said I won't read replies until I am done summarizing things, and that's true, so maybe someone has gone out of their way and proven that I am wrong, that the claims in my article are factually incorrect and so on and so forth. I wouldn't know yet.

But... I don't think I'm wrong.

[cwebber@social.coop]

As said I'm very self-conscious about these things because I *don't* have formal CS training. But I do a lot of research and so I've tried to become knowledgeable about these things and this *seemed* like the correct analysis to me

Because of that, I turned to people who actually knew more than me

[cwebber@social.coop]

For one thing I derailed the entire Spritely morning standup by walking everyone through the scenario. I gave the story example, which I'll detail later.

But @dthompson didn't find the story helpful, too much narrative detail. "I need to work through this example independently." So he did.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@dthompson came back and laid it out in more formal terms and said I was right.

But I was still nervous, so I called up one of my old MIT AI Lab type friends and rambled about it to them on a call. What did they think?

[cwebber@social.coop]

"I think it's pretty clear immediately that it's quadratic. This is basic engineering considerations, the first thing you do when you start designing a system," they said.

Well that's a relief, why isn't it clear to everyone else, I asked?

So they suggested I lay it out to you as I did to them.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Let's start with the following:

- ATProto has positioned itself as "no compromises on centralized use cases". Well, in that case, let's say it can't do *worse* than eg ActivityPub. This includes with replies. You can't do *worse* than ActivityPub on replies and mentioning someone, etc.

[cwebber@social.coop]

- We will interpret the most centralized system as one where there's only one provider for storage and distribution of all messages: the least amount of user participation
- The flip side of the spectrum of maximum decentralization is the *most* amount of participation: every user self-hosts.

[cwebber@social.coop]

- Just as blogging is decentralized but Google (and Google Reader) are not, it is not enough to have just PDS'es in Bluesky be self-hosted. When we say self-hosted, we really mean self-hosted: users are participating in the distribution of their content.

[cwebber@social.coop]

- We will consider this a gradient. We can analyze the system from the greatest extreme of centralization which can "scale towards" the greatest degree of decentralization.

[cwebber@social.coop]

- Finally, we will analyze both in terms of the load of a single participant on the network but also in terms of the amount of network traffic as a whole.

Okay. That is the structure we will use for our analysis. Let's compare "message passing" vs ATProto-style "global public shared heap".