While most of this post is about Blacksky, there are a couple of sections that focus on the fediverse – “And yet…” and “A great learning opportunity for the ActivityPub Fediverse”

  • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    independent but still connected (think about Lemmy instances)

    It’s not really connected in the same sense two Lemmy instances are connected. They’re able to pull in the same data as Bluesky as it’s all public and PDSs don’t really have the ability to block a relay from crawling them.

        • thenexusofprivacy@piefed.socialOP
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          3 days ago

          At the app level (blacksky.community / bsky.app on the web) it’s more like TweetDeck/Twitter: different client interfaces to the same underlying network. That’s not a perfect analogy though because Blacksky makes different moderation decisions than Bluesky.

          But also, people using either of these apps can store their data in arbitrary PDSs, so when people migrate their accounts to the Blacksky PDS they can use either of the apps. So there it’s more like Piefed/Lemmy – different implementations of the same protocol. Again though it’s not a perfect analogy because the AT Protocol architecture lets you migrate all your data between PDSs seamlessly, and so far only a few niche ActivityPub implementations support that (Hubzilla et al with nomadic identity, ActivityPods using Solid Pods).

          • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.uk
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            3 days ago

            Oh, I thought blacksky.comnunity used Blacksky’s relay. If it uses Bluesky’s then yeah, disregard what I said.

            That’s not a perfect analogy though because Blacksky makes different moderation decisions than Bluesky.

            I’d hope so given how abysmal Bluesky’s moderation is. The discovery feed is filled with transphobia, but you can’t say Charlie Kirk should rest in piss.

            Again though it’s not a perfect analogy because the AT Protocol architecture lets you migrate all your data between PDSs seamlessly, and so far only a few niche ActivityPub implementations support that (Hubzilla et al with nomadic identity, ActivityPods using Solid Pods).

            I don’t believe Hubzilla’s nomatic identity works with APub though, irrc it uses something called Zot.

            I’ve been thinking about how to add nomatic identity to Lemmy quite a bit and it’s something I’d like to work on after 1.0 is out, but it’s hard a problem for sure.

            • thenexusofprivacy@piefed.socialOP
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              2 days ago

              Yeah, Bluesky’s moderation really is abysmal. Somebody I know got suspended for 24 hours for saying something about Charlie Kirk and when they came back immediately moved their account to Blacksky … and who can blame them!

              Right now blacksky.community is an app that uses Bluesky’s AppView, which in turn uses Bluesky’s Relay. They’re working on their own AppView (which will have the equivalent of local-only posts) and that will use their Relay. I didn’t mean to undercut your point though, they often talk about PDSs as analogous to web pages, so your “different search engines” analogy is very accurate, it’s just not quite there yet.

              And good point about Hubzilla … if I recall correctly either in (((streams))) or Forte (or maybe both) MIke implemented the nomadic identity over ActivityPub as well. It’s really frustrating that AP development in general hasn’t paid more attention to his ideas! If you’re thinking about this kind of stuff for Lemmy, it’s also worth looking at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-ef61-portable-objects/3738

              • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.uk
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                1 day ago

                Right now blacksky.community is an app that uses Bluesky’s AppView, which in turn uses Bluesky’s Relay. They’re working on their own AppView (which will have the equivalent of local-only posts) and that will use their Relay.

                Interesting, from what I understand of ATProto, this would be hard to do on protocol, it’ll be fascinating to see how they do it. Maybe something off protocol like the recent bookmark feature Bluesky got.

                I didn’t mean to undercut your point though, they often talk about PDSs as analogous to web pages, so your “different search engines” analogy is very accurate, it’s just not quite there yet.

                I’d love to take credit for this, but the ATProto docs themselves make this comparison which is where I’m getting this from.

                if I recall correctly either in (((streams))) or Forte (or maybe both) MIke implemented the nomadic identity over ActivityPub as well

                This sent me down a bit a of a rabbit hole. It seems (streams) used an updated version of Zot, Zot/11 but was renamed to just Nomad. I can’t find anything about this, the (streams) repo only contains the spec for Zot/6, so I’m not sure about it’s APub compatibility. Apparently, Nomad had been discontinued in Forte in favour of pure APub, anyway.

                If you’re thinking about this kind of stuff for Lemmy, it’s also worth looking at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-ef61-portable-objects/3738

                Oh, I know about Silverpill’s work, it’s really interesting! I even mentioned it recently. I’m glad we have someone smart like them working on this stuff.

                I do think some kind of separation of user data from servers, like what AT Proto does, is actually quite desirable. I just don’t like that PDSes can have their data harvested by whoever, I think data sharing with a server should be opt-in.

                • Blaze (he/him)@lemmy.zip
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                  1 day ago

                  I do think some kind of separation of user data from servers, like what AT Proto does, is actually quite desirable.

                  Curious as well to see how Blacksky develops, having that split would be useful.

                  I just don’t like that PDSes can have their data harvested by whoever, I think data sharing with a server should be opt-in.

                  Same

                  • thenexusofprivacy@piefed.socialOP
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                    18 hours ago

                    Also agreed that sharing should be opt-in (and here on fedi as well).

                    In terms of Blacksky’s approach to private data, Rudy shared this earlier today https://blog.smokesignal.events/posts/3lvehxge7oo2a-atprotocol-record-hydration-building-privacy-aware-views … the working group on private data is having its first meeting this week, and there are a couple of other proposals as well, so it’ll be interesting to see how things converge. Bluesky has said they’re going to add it to the protocol but the timeframe isn’t clear. My guess is people will go ahead with off-protocil implementations initally and plan to adapt once it’s standardized (famous last words).