Relay (aggregates posts from all PDSs, responsible for federation of PDSs)
App views (generates feeds from the relay)
Bluesky hosts the only relay I’m aware of, because relays are very expensive to host. But afaict anyone can host a relay.
So if we’re to describe it:
PDSs are nations states
Relays are the federation of those nation states
App views are like the ambassadors of the federation.
Except that PDSs can be part of multiple federations, and app views can be ambassadors for multiple federations. Ok not a great analogy.
It’s not Fediverse™ because it’s not activitypub.
But that doesn’t make it not federated
Just because it uses a different mechanism to achieve federation you’re going to say that it doesn’t count as federation? That’s wild.
PDSs get federated by relays.
You can have multiple relays which means you have multiple federations. This is similar to how the Fediverse ends up with pockets completely defederated from each other.
Except that a PDS can be in multiple relays (federations) which the Fediverse can’t do.
You’re right that currently there is no meaningful federation because there is only one relay, and it’s a problem that the cost is so prohibitive. But to say that it isn’t a Fediverse is kinda disingenuous.
Just because it uses a different mechanism to achieve federation you’re going to say that it doesn’t count as federation? That’s wild.
No. I’m going to say it doesn’t count as federation because it doesn’t achieve federation.
Actually, we need some new language to describe what Bluesky is. Federations are geopolitical alliances between equals. But Bluesky instances are centralised, with one relay acting as a truth source for many PDS servers. So to extend the analogy with a hierarchical geopolitical alliance… well that’s an empire. Bluesky is an empire. Bluesky is designed with an imperial mechanism. Bluesky is imperialised. That’s the new word for what Bluesky is.
So, non-federated means one company/organization has full control over some product/service/website (like Twitter, Reddit, etc).
Federated means that individuals can independently run instances of some product/service/website, and all those instances can talk to one another and share/sync data (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc).
Federation means that instead of one central server like Facebook or google, the service relies on several interoperable servers and you can pick which one you want to sign up with and use.
Email and lemmy are federated. If you want to use email, you can sign up for an account on one of many different servers run by other people or you can even host your own email server. No matter which you choose, you can always email another user regardless of where their account it.
The tech stuff is above my pay grade but essentially my understanding is the code is open source and one could start their own server on the platform theoretically but no one does
And yeah, a “federated” (but not in practice) Twitter clone
The non consensual part would be my poor eyes seeing it but I’m not on Bluesky because it’s a corporate imitation of federation
Is it? I thought it was just an imitation of Twitter. In what way does it even pretend to be federated?
You can spin up your own Bluesky instance
…which is still managed by the Bluesky central server and can’t connect to peer instances without that server.
That’s not quite true afact.
There are 3 types of servers:
Bluesky hosts the only relay I’m aware of, because relays are very expensive to host. But afaict anyone can host a relay.
So if we’re to describe it:
PDSs are nations states
Relays are the federation of those nation states App views are like the ambassadors of the federation.
Except that PDSs can be part of multiple federations, and app views can be ambassadors for multiple federations. Ok not a great analogy.
Can two relays communicate with each other?
I don’t think so?
But a single PDSs can talk to multiple relays.
And I think an app view can talk to multiple relays (or at least switch between them)
So Bluesky doesn’t have any federated servers, and couldn’t federate with itself even if there were other servers.
It’s not fediverse.
It’s not Fediverse™ because it’s not activitypub.
But that doesn’t make it not federated
Just because it uses a different mechanism to achieve federation you’re going to say that it doesn’t count as federation? That’s wild.
PDSs get federated by relays.
You can have multiple relays which means you have multiple federations. This is similar to how the Fediverse ends up with pockets completely defederated from each other.
Except that a PDS can be in multiple relays (federations) which the Fediverse can’t do.
You’re right that currently there is no meaningful federation because there is only one relay, and it’s a problem that the cost is so prohibitive. But to say that it isn’t a Fediverse is kinda disingenuous.
No. I’m going to say it doesn’t count as federation because it doesn’t achieve federation.
Actually, we need some new language to describe what Bluesky is. Federations are geopolitical alliances between equals. But Bluesky instances are centralised, with one relay acting as a truth source for many PDS servers. So to extend the analogy with a hierarchical geopolitical alliance… well that’s an empire. Bluesky is an empire. Bluesky is designed with an imperial mechanism. Bluesky is imperialised. That’s the new word for what Bluesky is.
Ah, okay, didn’t know that.
How else would you pretend to be federated besides saying you’re federated when you aren’t?
I’m a little dumb as to these things, what does federated mean ?
So, non-federated means one company/organization has full control over some product/service/website (like Twitter, Reddit, etc).
Federated means that individuals can independently run instances of some product/service/website, and all those instances can talk to one another and share/sync data (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc).
Federation means that instead of one central server like Facebook or google, the service relies on several interoperable servers and you can pick which one you want to sign up with and use.
Email and lemmy are federated. If you want to use email, you can sign up for an account on one of many different servers run by other people or you can even host your own email server. No matter which you choose, you can always email another user regardless of where their account it.
Where did they say that? I’m not claiming they didn’t, I just haven’t heard about it.
The tech stuff is above my pay grade but essentially my understanding is the code is open source and one could start their own server on the platform theoretically but no one does
And yeah, a “federated” (but not in practice) Twitter clone