Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@thenexusofprivacy the long and short of it is PDS layer is decentralized, Bluesky as a social network is not, and cannot easily be, due to deeply-baked architectural choices boiling down to relays and identity management.

This has been written about in depth, as you are very aware.

And it serves nobody to keep insisting it is otherwise. It is pretending Bluesky-the-social-network is something it is not. And as I said, I honestly don't get why anyone would still insist on that. ‍️

Jer Warren

@rysiek @thenexusofprivacy I think what a lot of people may be getting hung up on is that ATproto is decentralized, but the thing Bluesky uses it for is not. Very similar overlap to how ActivityPub is decentralized, but Mastodon is a network of centralized instances that federate. What you see as a Mastodon user is all pushed to you from a central point, and is therefore "centralized," in basically exactly the same way that Bluesky's ATProto aggregator is. It's just that Mastodon currently has more than one of those while Bluesky does not

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@nyquildotorg the problem with this is that if one Mastodon instance dies, the rest of the Fediverse continues to happily federate.

If one Bluesky relay dies, as it had in the past, the whole of Bluesky is dead in the water, as it had in the past. Along with all the other AppViews that use it.

There is a single point of control and failure in the center of the whole Bluesky social network, in a way that there is no such single central point of control and failure in fedi.

@thenexusofprivacy

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@nyquildotorg and again, this is an architectural choice that is understandable in the context of what Bluesky's team set out to build. And no, it is not fixable by, say, running more relays, as that's just not how the ATproto system works.

And that's fine and if people want to use it, great, go for it. Moving from Xitter to Bluesky is definitely a good step to take.

But decentralized Bluesky is not, in ways that the Fediverse actually is.

@thenexusofprivacy

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@thenexusofprivacy now to be clear, I am not saying that Blacksky is not a worthwhile project! I am glad it exists, and I am glad it is making headway, as that might help keep Bluesky-the-company honest when the VCs come demanding their payouts.

And at the same time it offers some welcome competition to the Fediverse, which maybe will help nudge this space to become less unwelcoming to Black folks. Because fedi dropped the ball on that one, hard.

The Nexus of Privacy

@rysiek I wouldn't say I'm insisting on it, I explicitly said your mileage may vary. (Also I noted that your cosplaying decentralization article was before Blacksky existed, so there was a very good reason for not mentioning it!.). To me, Blacksky is the most interesting thing about Bluesky, and them running some of their own servers today (and potentially more tomorrow) is a key part of it ... like I said, that sounds decentrailzed to me. But I also agreed that the critques of current power distribution and likely evolution are valid and important, so I understand why people who focus on that prefer to say things like "one layer is decentralized, others aren't and probably won't be, so it's not decentralized."

So If there's a different way to talk about Blacksky in those analyses without considering the inependent infrastructure they're building and their vision as an example of decentralization, great, But what I'm seeing instead is people not talking about it.

In terms of Blacksky providing an alternate relay, it sounds like you're assuming it would be a whole-network relay and that it would archive the data as Bluesky's Relay currently does. Neither of those are required. And in any case, 16TB isn't ridiculously expensive these days.

Laurens Hof

@thenexusofprivacy Great article Jon!

I've recently started classifying news about Blacksky under the ATmosphere category as a small nod towards the idea that Blacksky should be seen as its own entity outside of Bluesky

I feel like Blacksky is pretty close to a state where it could actually survive in case of a catastrophic failure of Bluesky, purely on social reasons, it seems they got strong enough network ties. (tech is an irrelevant sideshow here)

The Nexus of Privacy

@laurenshof thanks, glad you like it! And yeah, agree -- it'd be down for a bit and it might take a while to come up with their own apps (but OpenVibe et al can buffer that).

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@thenexusofprivacy regarding relays, again, a set of independent silos is not a decentralized network. What matters to me in decentralization is the diffusion of power. I don't know if Blacksky can provide that, but I know that today Bluesky cannot.

I am running my own blog on my own server. Doesn't make Google Search, which indexed it, any less centralized though.

All that said, I'll definitely dive into Blacksky more, for sure. It does look super-interesting.

Laurens Hof

@thenexusofprivacy

yeah, hard part is the appview, but in a way a feed gen is sort of a partial appview anyway. so in that hypothetical im not even sure the best direction would even be to replicate the bluesky appview, instead build their own expanded version of the blacksky feed gen instead

def not something you can do instantly, but it seems to me that in case of bluesky failure there is enough social interest from blacksky to keep working on their community

The Nexus of Privacy

@rysiek Blacksy is super-interesting, so it's great that you're diving into it. Maybe I'll tweak the article to highlight that as the key takeaway earlier.

In terms of diffusion of power, is there any Black-led network of people and servers in the ActivityPub Fediverse that has as much current and potential power as Blacksky does within the ATmosphere -- or even within Bluesky? To me, that's an interesting aspect of how power is distributed.

Jer Warren

@rysiek @thenexusofprivacy my only point is that "decentralized" means a lot of different things.

If your mastodon instance goes down, you're dead in the water, too, unless you planned ahead with recent backups, and even then you're going to lose followers.

Even the in-depth architectural apologists aren't calling Bluesky "decentralized," in their big "this is how ATProto actually works" posts, they're calling ATProto that, and they're not any more wrong than the people who say Mastodon is.

Indeed there is only one ATProto "instance" currently, but that was once true of ActivityPub too. I don't have a horse in this fight, and I'm not interested in Bluesky no matter what changes they make; I'm just pointing out that a lot of people are creating their own debate here based on how other people are interpreting "decentralized."

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@nyquildotorg my point is that words have meaning. "Decentralized" has meaning. And Bluesky-the-social-network simply does not meet the criteria to be called that.

If my Mastodon instance goes down, I can set up an account on another one, and reconnect with folks. A bit frustrating, but doable.

If Bluesky's Relay goes down, it doesn't matter which PDS I am on, that social network is dead.

ATproto might be decentralized on the PDS level, but it is not on the relay level.

@thenexusofprivacy

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@nyquildotorg the problem with making analogies between fedi instances and ATproto instances is that these do not map one to another. I don't know what you mean when you say "ATproto instance."

Do you mean "a PDS"? Then there are many of them already.

Do you mean "an actually functional, usable service" the way a single Mastodon instance is? Then you have to include the Relay in that, but additional relays will not make Bluesky any more decentralized than it is. ‍️

@thenexusofprivacy

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@nyquildotorg my "skin in the game" is that we cannot communicate effectively, if we allow terms to be diluted to a point of meaninglessness.

If we want to call Bluesky-the-social-network "decentralized" because some layer of ATproto features it to some extent (namely, PDSes), then we'd have to call Google Search decentralized because we can still self-host websites.

Problem is, a PDS is less directly useful to a person without a Relay than a website is without Google.

@thenexusofprivacy

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@thenexusofprivacy of course there is no "Black-led network of people and servers in the ActivityPub Fediverse that has as much current and potential power as Blacksky does within the ATmosphere" because Bluesky is growing at a rate fedi has never grown, and because fedi sadly pushed a lot of Black folks away a while back.

The Nexus of Privacy

@rysiek there are still Black-led networks of people and servers here -- and Bluesky has also pushed away a lot of Black people. And rapid growth here has in the past diluted the power of marginalized groups (trans and queer people most noticeably), so to the extent the growth on Bluesky is increasing Blacksky's relative power, that highlights a difference in how power is diffused there than here.

If you look at the specific dynanics of the decentralization here, it's always revolved around white dominance. Check out the pic of the invitation-only 2010 Fedierated Web Summit at the start of Before Mastodon: GNU Social and other early fediverses. For the last 6-7 years, ever since Mastodon's embrace-and-extend of ActivityPub, Mastodon gGmbH and SWICG have the instititional power -- organizations which have in practice been unsupportive of Black-led projects and Black people as individuals (which in turn reinforces the dynamics that keep chasing Black people away).

My guess is that most if not all of the people I've seen commenting on the decentralization question would agree would this characterization. But it doesn't show up in their power analyses of decentralization -- like I say In the article, the power analyses of Bluesky's and ActivityPub's different approaches to decentralization I've seen from white people are deracialized.

Khleedril

@thenexusofprivacy I've never heard of it.

The1goit

@nyquildotorg @rysiek @thenexusofprivacy I said it once and I might as well say it again.
Bsky is decentralised like blockchain: it actually relies on a centralised entity to be decentralised. While fedi is decentralised like email: it can't properly be centralised, despite some (gmail or threads as examples for both) trying.

Jer Warren

@rysiek @thenexusofprivacy I think in a way we're saying the same thing, kind of.

I've really struggled the last couple years with the descriptive nature of language, how words evolve the way people use them, making the popular usage of them "correct" despite it absolutely being incorrect.

I guess I'm saying that "decentralized" has already become meaningless, and did well before Bluesky showed up, and that it having done so is actively contributing to debates like this one. But, like with "crypto," me shaking my fist at the sky just makes me feel bad, and — for me at least — it's probably healthier to just stop using it rather than getting mad at it repeatedly.

I'm sorry I chose your thread to finally join in on in order to work out this point. I wasn't trying to argue with you, and agree with your sentiment about diluting meaning. But, because I was having "wait a minute, this isn't really decentralized," discussions about the fediverse, on the fediverse, in 2017, seeing happen again with Bluesky has been interesting to see.

Again, sorry I sounded argumentative rather than trying to contribute to your argument. I'm trying to work on that lol.