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

[cwebber@social.coop]

Now, could we handle a million self hosted users? Is it possible? No problem in message passing. EXPLOSIVE with atproto.

What if we had a million users and added just 5 more? How many more messages must the network bear?

5 new messages in message passing.
*10,000,025* new messages sent in atproto!

[cwebber@social.coop]

"Christine that's ridiculous, we're not expecting a million self-hosted users"

Well I think it would be nice!

But regardless, ActivityPub has 27,000 servers on it, all meaningfully participating in the network.

ATProto, in its current design, would be crushed to DEATH

[cwebber@social.coop]

"But Christine", you may say, "I heard gossip might fix this!"

No. It cannot.

In fact, I was being more generous than a gossip network, and assumed you only *received* a message once.

With gossip you might *receive* more than once.

But you need to receive a message to know it.

[darius@friend.camp]

@cwebber I am as you know on your side in all this but there are people I disagree with who argue that having an incomplete view of all messages globally on ActivityPub is not "meaningfully participating" and I have trouble articulating my position with these people. Feels like a dead end where persuasion is highly unlikely

[cwebber@social.coop]

ATProto was designed for a "big world" view. That's fine! But I'm trying to show seriously what happens if it was actually, really decentralized.

*Every* fully participating node added to the network makes the network explosively more expensive.

ATProto doesn't scale towards decentralization.

[cwebber@social.coop]

In other words, the public god's-eye-view allows for a pantheon, but not a civilization. You can only have so many gods who see all.

An important characteristic of a decentralized system is scoping what you *don't* need to know.

This wasn't in the design goals of ATProto, and it has effects.

[blort@social.tchncs.de]

@cwebber

To me the *ideal* is for *everyone* who uses social media to either self host or to be hosted by someone they know and trust personally. Even a tiny fraction of this would be far, far more than a million users!

Will we get there? Who knows? Few would have predicted that we would even get to where we are now, and numbers are only growing...

#Fediverse #SelfHosting #SocialMedia

[cwebber@social.coop]

I may be coming across as some academic computer science nerd. It's actually the opposite. I'm a humanities nerd who cares about the agency of users so much I've twisted myself into a shape where I can do a computer science thing.

But architecture matters. It affects the worlds we can have.

[cwebber@social.coop]

This is what I say when I say that Bluesky's goals of "credible exit" may be reasonable, but it's not decentralized. There is no getting around the fact that the system, as designed, is designed for a few large players. Small players can play on the *periphery*, but they can't play the big game.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Now, you might think, maybe ATProto could fix this!

And it can.

And the solution, ultimately, will end up looking... a lot like ActivityPub.

[cwebber@social.coop]

The point is that nearly everyone knows at this point that "sure, Bluesky is centralized today, in practice!" But a lot of the responses I see are "but decentralization is just around the corner thanks to ATProto!"

So that's why I'm writing this out.

[fleeky@prsm.space]

@cwebber one thing I am surprised no one has mentioned.. the very philosophy of a gods eye view is inherently a centralizing one ?

[cwebber@social.coop]

Well, that's it. We've reached as far as we're going tonight.

There's still a bit left, a bit of reframing about what I am and am not concerned about with decentralized identity, and then a bigger topic about Bluesky's design goals vs community expectations. Then we'll talk talk about values.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Those last two, expectations and values, are really important to me. And I think they'll maybe be the most thoughtful part of all of this.

Of course, they're probably not what most people care about from me, about this. Probably what I've said is all many care to hear from me and that's fine.

[cwebber@social.coop]

For those who care about such things, tune in tomorrow, where hopefully we'll wrap this up. For those who were just hoping to hear the decentralization analysis, hope you found it useful.

Regardless, I wish you a very happy

=== REST OF TODAY BREAK ===

[gert@social.coop]

@cwebber We need symmetry and Big Tech will never ever give it to us even if they promise.

[ulrikehahn@fediscience.org]

@darius would one answer be to point out that on that perspective humans in real life would only ever ‘meaningfully participate’ in exceptional circumstances (i.e., when there is a wholly closed conversation for which all participants are present)

[semitones@tiny.tilde.website]

@darius @cwebber it seems like if your friends want to see every reply, then they may never agree that anything less than that is meaningful.

[darius@friend.camp]

@semitones right. Seems intractable

[dynamic@hub.netzgemeinde.eu]

@Semitones @Darius Kazemi @Christine Lemmer-Webber

If the issue were simply wanting to be able to see every *reply*, one viable approach for decentralized social media would be to give the OP ownership of replies, and then people (who are given permission by the OP to reply) decide whether or not to reply based on how they feel about the OP's moderation policies.  I do not know how technically challenging that is or isn't in ActivityPub in particular, but there are certainly solutions that don't require Bluesky's centralized approach.  

On the other hand, if people insist that they ought to be able to see every *message* on the network, then, yeah, that is indeed (as Darius says) intractable.