How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really?

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

Not only are the implications of the BS shared heap architecture easily overlooked and consequences come later, this has been the de-facto approach for any decentralized web technology thus far, including AP. Where hard-tech mindset and focus dominates.

And yes, the complexity warrants all that attention.

Yet there's less thought and attention payed to how DX, UX system / application / solution design should cope in the higher levels of the stack, and esp. in FOSS circles.

2/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Making it extra hard to bridge the technology adoption chasm beyond early adopters, while the decentralized ecosystem suffers protocol decay.

Re:new computing paradigms.

> "local-first p2p social networking at scale"

.. someone said.

That buzzwordy sentence might see us enter a new exciting social web of adventure, if we don't squander the opportunity.

Technical all is once again possible. Martin Kleppmann inspires with generic local-sync protocols, universal back-ends, etc.

3/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

But thinking about exploring technical possibilities is way out of lock-step again, speeding ahead of how one would use this shiny technology to build useful things on top of in the best possible way.

I have difficulty wrapping my head around picturing a local-first social network at scale where CRDT's p2p synchronise application state and data of all actors - people, apps, services - in the social graph between 1,000's of peers. So many options, what approach is even feasible?

4/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Meanwhile there are already hundred or more local-first projects and vendors who are independently building "the right way", in other words fragmenting into indvidual explorations with little cross-pollination and co-creation.

Why isn't there already an IETF local-first working group, or something similar?

Well.. someone should step up to the plate to do that, that's the wait now. Lotta work for volunteers and no funding beyond hard-tech. So this is up to vendors then, I guess.

5/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Unrelated to this thread it occurred to me how much time and energy we waste by endlessly sifting through untangled mess of complexity with different viewpoints and perspectives leading to Babylonian confusion and overlap all the time in discussions.

Bluesky had a big advantage, in that they could forge ahead, highly focused as a close-knit team exploring greenfield technology. They set sail, just tapping the chaotic information stream for collecting stakeholder feedback.

6/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Now if we look at AS/AP ecosystem, there is a problem as the storm of discussion on vNext of the protocol or choosing alternative directions, goes on unabated, and no one seems to be coming to any kind of real consensus.

It almost looks like we once again must leave that to the vendors to sort out, when they enter the 'fedi market' en masse.

Ideally we want to have multiple commons-controlled focused and productive working groups that elaborate various themes of the social web.

7/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Thus I had the idea to write a proposal to start, what I call, a fellowship that runs an open social web laboratory, and is able to separate the general discussion to focused input for working groups to quickly iterate on a theme, in a similar way to how BS operates now.

See for info: https://discuss.coding.social/t/proposal-start-a-fellowship-to-explore-the-social-web/571

The idea is follow-up to "Vision for fedi spec" feedback gathering that @helge initiated, as a means to cope with the broad subject area.

See: https://discuss.coding.social/t/wiki-vision-for-a-fedi-specification/563/24

/end

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber @helge

Tangential, but to add some more spice to this..

We need more fellowships like this, who explore yet other areas together.

Like for object capability social web at scale.

A couple of years ago, when you were still on Spritely Project, you sent out a toot out in which you sighed that once spritely technology would be mature enough for widespread use, it would probably be already too late.

The institute to the rescue, I guess. Valid and prudent choice.

1/..

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber @helge

It is still hard to hook on to spritely unless you have deep technical expertise. That means most others (large group) are in wait-and-see necessarily.

Choice is perfectly valid, because its the foundation team's own initiative.

Is it the best tech introduction strategy? Best technology adoption model to use?

Your community and ecosystem have to catch up, once you say "it's time for fun".

Randy's community pattern language might serve to unlock upper-stack stakeholders now.

Evan Prodromou

@cwebber @bnewbold

Hey, Christine.

Did you consider that it's in Brian's and Bluesky's interest to position the difference between ActivityPub and AT Proto as one of technology and not of governance?

And to get the editor of AP to do it?

Also, did you think about getting your hands dirty with a proprietary protocol that has no patent or other licensing grants?

I intentionally have not done either of these things. I think Brian encouraged you to do this for his and Bluesky's own benefit.

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber @helge

Because that is highly tangential from spritely core technology, fanning out into vast scope, you might offload that to a fellowship that can facilitate multiple independent initiatives at the same time, not just spritely but also see an ecosystem of convergance and increasing alignment, rather than fragmentation as per the norm.

Evan Prodromou

@cwebber @bnewbold I hope Bluesky Inc. made a big donation to the Spritely Institute for this huge amount of work you did.

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@cwebber

Calling @Chartodon

Chartodon

@smallcircles

Your chart is ready, and can be found here:

Things may have changed since I started compiling that, and some things may have been inaccessible.

In particular, the very nature of the fediverse means some toots may never have made it to my instance, in which case I can't see them, and can't include them.

The chart will eventually be deleted, so if you'd like to keep it, make sure you download a copy.

damon

@Gaelan
This is largely how Nostr operates

damon

@cwebber we shouldn’t gloss over the decentralised talk regarding Nostr lol

Gaelan Steele

@damon is nostr any good? I like some of the (very limited) technical stuff I've heard about it but get the impression the people are largely blockchain/free-speech-absolutist types

damon

@cwebber was this answered?

Evan Prodromou

@cwebber omg, I skipped all the way to the end and OBVIOUSLY you look at this situation from every conceivable angle, including governance, because it wouldn't be a Christine Lemmer-Webber post without it.

I appreciate the depth of analysis. I do still think that Bluesky should make a donation to Spritely if @bnewbold asked you to make a 25-page report, though.

Evan Prodromou

@cwebber I also don't share your optimism about cross-pollination. There's a reason that W3C specifications have to only have normative dependencies on specs from recognized standards bodies. Too many minefields unless you have a clear license.

I'm glad that @bnewbold is in the SocialCG and I hope we can find some opportunities to publish reports with some or all parts of the AT Proto stack.