I liked how urbit did it, just paste s3 bucket credentials into the app settings. A - its pretty cheap even for a terabyte of storage, B - it removes liability from the application not having to host user content, C - it increases decentralization, with many hosts in many jurisdictions able to host content.

EDIT: I went to sign up for a new account and right away I'm given the choice to host content on my own server, neat, I think I'll give this a try [1]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20240831230005/https://bsky.app/...

[1] https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation

Relays actually don't process media; that's up to the applications. We intentionally keep the repo-hosting costs low (and they'll get lower soon) so that self-hosting your data and keypairs remains affordable. Think of the application model as equivalent to a search engine, with the repo-hosts (PDSes) being web servers. That's almost exactly how it works.

The only way decentralization would make a hug of death irrelevant is if the individual nodes weren't processing the full network, in which case you're not getting the global social experience, so.

If I host gifs at bsky.jazzyjackson.xyz, and my posts are indexed by some number of relays, and finally viewed by bsky or an alternate front end app, is that app mirroring my gifs to shoulder the burden, preventing traffic from hitting my $5 VPS?

I always thought {bit,web}torrent would be a good fit for this problem of mirroring content among multiple hosts, but maybe there's a reason no one has gone down that road.

edit: we did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, firehose crashed a couple times, image servers are giving bad load latencies randomly) but we managed to avoid a full outage.

What I really like about it is the ATProto, which while imperfect, seems like the best current design for the next gen of social media built on a federated foundation.

- DID for identity

- PDS for data mobility

- algo feed & moderation choice, you can build your own and anyone on Bluesky can use it (https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...) If you didn't see, they recently added anti-toxicity features and are looking towards community notes

- Bluesky is the twitter like view, but you can build anything on ATProto and leverage the shared infra

I'm personally working on a "reddit" like view of the Bluesky network. Not a reddit clone, but a different way to organize the same information around topics, news events, and/or links. One could also design their own Lexicon and build something very close to reddit. One of the cool things is that all the objects for all apps are stored into a single SQLite database per user. So if you want to move your data to a different host, all of the apps, content, and connections survive that migration.

Most other "interesting protocol" projects are used exclusively by interesting-protocol enthusiasts.

Major news orgs now have accounts too

Will this happen? No clue but it is cool to see someone innovating in this space. Let’s see what people come up with.

Many non-nerds care about having their own TLD and corresponding email address, yet still use Gmail/GSuite, whether via their webapps or IMAP/CalDav/CardDav.

And arguably the most important thing keeping Google accountable for the quality of their products is the threat of users being able to move out on relatively short notice (i.e. without losing all of your historical inbox content and most importantly people being able to reach you via the identifier they know).

Bluesky seems closest to replicating that to the Twitter-like use case. (Mastodon is severely lacking on both portability of identifiers and portability of data across servers; there really needs to be a lightweight middle ground between self-hosting and complete reliance on somebody else's infrastructure).

I have seen them respond with intrigue and support once these things are explained.

One example can be that there is a mass attempt at pushing some viewpoint, it may not stick long term but it sticks for the duration of time the content is viewed by the most amount of people. Kind of like how upvote bots mess with Reddit.

But community notes works well. That's evidence that reasonableness emerges when you boost content that a diversity of people appreciate, regardless of whether people are sound and reasonable.

> What you describe is a flamewar maintenance algorithm.

Are you saying my idea will increase flamewars? I believe it should decrease flamewars, and that's why I want to see it implemented. Again I point to community notes. If a diversity of people like content, it's probably level-headed, and that's why community notes works so well.

Echo chambers aren't intrinsically bad, only when it's about politics and social issues - i. e. stuff that will affect everyone in the end.

Looking forward to login being oauth based, but from what I've vaguely remember skimming these weeks, that's an @proto limitation that is being worked on?!

It is very difficult to take a statement seriously when it includes sweeping politicized generalizations like this.

Now that X got banned in Brazil and to potentially lose over 100M+ users we are starting to see which platforms they are choosing to sign up to.

So far, Bluesky is seeing a surge in user registrations after the invite system was lifted a year ago. I would expect Threads to also see a surge in registrations as well.

Mastodon however appears not to be even considered as a migration path at all yet, but either way it is still early days for all options.

We'll see in the next 6 months after this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471807

Threads has too big of an image problem to overcome. No one wants Instagram for Twitter.

Bluesky is the only platform currently that has a chance, but it’s an under funded, tiny team who can’t ship on time. Bluesky will see a surge in registrations but no change in DAU as they still haven’t supported video, so no one will stay on the site.

PS: Nice to see our resident mastodon hater (OP) is still at it, including the requisite smug "told-you-so"/"i totally predicted this!!~" link :D

I'm looking at one of the Mastodon Users Count bots and it seems like there's a 43% increase in sign-ups per weeks since last week. Of course, I have no idea why and that might be normal noise.

Thread doesn’t stand a chance. I don’t have an Instagram account. So I am not going to create one for Threads. Nope. I know friends and colleagues who detest even the idea of this connection even though they have accounts.

Meta/Fb didn’t create X/Tw competition/alternative. They created an Instagram add-on.

Does bsky stand a chance? Probably? Does ATProto stand a chance? Nope, it doesn’t. Sad, but it doesn’t. It has the same Mastadon problems - not technical but practical.

Twitter/X has 368m MAU. Threads has 200m.

Based on trajectories Threads will be the biggest text-first social network in less than a year.

It's amazing how out of touch people on here about what is popular or not.

Or, perhaps the domains of the content itself is blocked so apps continue to work but fail to load content within certain borders ?

So, not to undermine efforts from Bluesky team - I applaud their SoTA attempt at microblogging architecture and platform so far - but Bluesky definitely has not solved the messy question of legality, ethics, and speech, at theoretical levels. Only hypothetical and/or operational.

> Deleted Post

>> Katie Tightpussy: BLACKTHORNE: We are a moderation service for Bluesky with the goal of improving social media for progressive queer folks and leftists who wholeheartedly enjoy Japanese anime, manga, games, hentai, fan art, and doujin.

MARIKO: The Anjin incorrectly believes that he is an expert on Japanese culture.

>>> Sign in Required

>>> Sign in Required

>>> Yep, the "controversial fiction" thing is such a sad (yet hilarous) cop-out. They KNOW it's wrong so they employ this linguistic obfuscation to try and make people think they aren't pedos.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hslv64eax7d2lwrm7qtg44ud/po...

The reason why you aren't finding anything specific to Bluesky is because it's not a Bluesky specific problem. Every social media that goes big in Japan will have this Japanese pedo flood problem, if you prefer it expressed in that kind of vocabularies. Social media that do not experience this stays irrelevant in Japan, for better or worse(frankly said likely better for profitability).

It happens as a spontaneous flood of 50:50 mix tangentially labeled pedo:nonpedo mixed content stream consuming non-negligible bandwidth, increasing in volume exponentially until Japanese fraction reaches steady state of >50% by content, ~30% by user count, and >50% of top popular accounts. The mixture and fraction metrics show indefinite steady up trend.

Gargron, the Mastodon author and benevolent dictator of the Fediverse, famously gave up and went on to basically race filter Japanese from the European half of the system, which by the way I have no choice but to fully respect given his circumstances, options available, and value to be recovered. Twitter famously deleted trust and safety team, and according to Elon Musk himself with his tongue in cheek, Twitter usage in Japan is "growing", amid its worsening Indo-Arabic spam problem and tanking global popularity. Even literal pornography websites like PornHub had this exact problem, in whose case they were forced to nuke the website to get rid of so-called JAVs using unverified CP as an excuse(lots of JAVs feature easily CP frameable females). And Bluesky created the whole moderation framework and default enforced implementation in response to it.

Anyway, what I'm saying is just, only, Bluesky's whole moderation framework is a post hoc solution to this problem, so while strong resistance against oppressive evil radical totalitarian governments sure is considered as one of ultimate goals, it's definitely not the goal in their initial problem definition.

apps implement views on that data, and may or may not follow the rules, of gov't or users. For example, even though you can block a user, detach a quote post, or hide comments, apps have to implement this behavior, and nothing stops a person from finding that relation.

ATProto is federated, not centralized, and not something gov'ts and regulations have thought thoroughly about. Also, with DID, I believe DNS blocking will be hard because I can change the name and still get to the same content

Not trying to be combative but I find this mode of thinking is likely to backfire, governments don't have to think they can just act - has bsky thought seriously about what their response will be to the same laws that X is suffering from?

It's also worth seeing how it plays out with others, while you are still not on the radar. Part of the reason Xitter is getting harsher treatment is because Musk antagonized. That's not the best way to negotiate, especially since he said he'd abide by local rules, like how he said he'd be better for free speech.

I think Bluesky would get banned.

Users could swap moderation service or swap interfaces

The one thing that could happen is the PDS deleting the record for everyone, everywhere

One thing to separate is Bluesky from ATProto. Bluesky is the default implementation of the 4 core pieces, but one could use alternatives for all of them as well and still have their content show up in the bsky app. Imagine if Twitter was open source and federated

I think that people are are celebrating the ban of X, and moving to decentralized platforms, forgot that the whole point of decentralization is to make censorship difficult.

When you move to bluesky, you just support an even more free version of twitter.

Very different when compared to NOSTR, where are a variety of domains and apps keep popping up everywhere around the globe.

The previous administrator was removed and another wasn't appointed, running foul from the societal laws.

Telegram doesn’t have a local entity and complies with Brazilian law, which is the only thing that is required. There is absolutely no need for local representation of foreign entities in Brazilian law.

Twitter having a local office is simply a commercial decision - easier to conduct business, better relationships with customers, local tax vs duty over importation of services etc.

Now, traffic is going to Bluesky. I wonder if this means that Bluesky has or will be offered the same choice. We might see what the character of that organization is by what choice they make.

Maybe the Supreme Court in Brazil is "wrong" and "corrupt" where legislators in India and Turkey are not, but knowing a fair bit about all three countries, I doubt very much that to be the case. So then it's a business decision -- or more like a "whatever pisses Elon off" decision, which in the end is just as "corrupt" as your typical corrupt dictator who acts on whatever pisses them off.

One thing I’ll mention: after Musk acquired X in 2022, they were engaged in a lawsuit against the government of India in 2023 to fight censorship orders, that they ultimately lost (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66083645). Not that it matters because India ended up passing various regulations (legally) that give their agencies various powers to censor.

Note that in Brazil, no new legislation or constitutional amendment was passed that would give this one Supreme Court justice this power to censor, ban, or arrest. Also note that the orders aren’t from the Supreme Court but one person sitting on it, Alexandre de Moraes.

Moraes does seem to be acting like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is dangerous. But then again Elon acts like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is also dangerous, so I don't really mind that X is getting banned. I'd feel completely differently if it were Mastodon or even some other commercial network over which a single person doesn't have an iron grip.

I have no idea whether you're right or wrong on the topic—actually I don't even know what side you're on, or even what the sides are—but your posts have repeatedly crossed the line into being abusive and that's not cool.

I'm sure you can make your substantive points thoughtfully if you choose to, so please do that instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Crimes like calling the current president a friend of dictators. Which he is. This guy rolled out the red carpet for the Venezuelan dictator months after he was elected. He also defended his recent "reelection".

Crimes like calling the current president a communist/socialist. Which he is. He literally calls himself one. I even have videos.

It's all "fake news" according to the judges.

I don't know if, in this case, it is justified or not, but it seems to be lawful (the same way that the censorship requests in India and Turkey were), as far as I can tell (I assume a judge of the Supreme Court knows a bit more about Brazilian law than you and me).

Given that Musk/Twitter seemingly has no problem complying with lawful censorship demands (or engaging in arbitrary censorship even without lawful censorship demands), it seems clear to me that Musk has no problem with "more censorship in the world". That was my only point.

My personal opinion on whether there is higher or lower need for censorship in the world is rather irrelevant (since I have no power or platforms to censor), but I certainly see no problem in actively censoring terrorists, bots, spammers and scammers (for example).

In this particular case, I do not have enough information to state with certainty whether I think this particular case is legitimate or not, but it does seem to be lawful (which is the criterion that is seemingly important for Twitter/Musk).

I have no particular preference with regards to whether Musk chooses to be consistent or not: that's his decision and he/Twitter is the one that has to endure the consequences of his actions (not me). Since I am not a Twitter user, it does not affect me either way, and I don't see how it will significantly affect Brazilian's capacity to freely communicate (note: there are plenty of other private communication platforms that do comply with Brazilian law... Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc.).

On the other hand, I do think it is hypocritical to claim to be a "defender of free speech", and then both engage in non-state-mandated censorship AND comply with state-mandated censorship (as long as it suits him or Twitter). It's a laughable claim. That was my only point.

This was discussed at length only two days ago. If you disagree with this, just refer to this comment thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387024

My account is rate limited to ~5 posts/hour so I don't plan on recreating that thread here.

Nostr is the actual solution for this dilemma and our best bet to preserve free speech right now.

I'm on Mastodon and Bluesky but rarely visit -- not sure I need that kind of network after all. I don't feel any loss of value after closing my Twitter/X account, and am glad to have the time back.

I've basically narrowed my use down to two networks that I visit regularly:

IG (private account) for photos of friends/family and some interesting strangers. I keep my follow list quite short, and unfollow liberally if I feel I'm not getting anything out of the content anymore. But lately the sponsored and ad content feels like 5-to-1 vs my actual follow content. If my family didn't use it to see pics of my kids then I'd close it.

HN: the only reason HN works is that it's not centered around "following" people (like every other network), which then becomes a race to get more "followers" which becomes some sort of currency. I saw this happening with Quora in its early days where after a promising start and really interesting content/replies by actual experts, it turned into a little attention-seeking groupie club--that's when I closed my account.

That people are also leaving because of twitter being banned in their country isn't relevant to the original claim

That is being FORCED.

This isn't about you and your friends that hate Elon leaving for other platforms.

I also think that anyone, especially someone prone to childish tantrums like Musk, having unquestionable control of a major network on which citizens can air their views, is also very dangerous. Free speech that is free of control is essential.

Plenty of places to share your view. At least, anyone can create a webpage.

Ultimately they are private platforms and as far as I'm concerned they can censor as much or as little as they want, but its a fundamental problem of any algorithmically managed feed of user generated content. There's no easy fix there and you'll always piss of a large chunk of the population.

Its demise had felt sad. Really sad. Hatred for Google hadn’t taken proper shape by then. And it had died before being completely Googlified.

I don't know how anyone can continue to claim this with a straight face when he sued advertisers for not continuing to advertise on the website.

Do you think the Sherman Act is an unreasonable limitation on the free market?

I make no claim as to the nature of claim, the appropriateness of the Sherman act, or if the claims will fail as a matter of law or fact (or neither). I am not a lawyer and am especially clueless on the topic of antitrust law.

I did however, incidentally, see this recently which may be of interest on the topic:

https://verdict.justia.com/2024/08/26/why-elon-musks-and-xs-...

And unless Musk has some extraordinary evidence it will be difficult to provide those advertisers colluded together to better themselves at the expense of other market participants. Especially when they aren't even in the same markets.

Also if you think this situation is akin to a cartel god knows what you think of IMDB or the Michelin guide.

Given Musk's personality, I would not be the tiniest bit surprised if he's suing without any actual evidence, just because he's angry and because he can.

I mean, remember, this is the guy who tried to get out of buying Twitter, and then refused to pay out contractually-obligated packages to many of the former management team he fired. (I'm not the biggest fan in the world of golden parachutes, but this was pretty egregious.)

As far as I am concerned, his contributions to the US, society, and the future via Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, etc., dwarf his various foibles.

P.S. if the pay packages were contractually obligated, then the courts would have forced him to pay them. Courts are generally pretty biased in favor of employees when they sue their employer.

P.P.S if his case has no merit, the advertisers are hardly unable to defend themselves, they are huge corporations. You don't need to feel sorry for them.

Concerning.

It's best if there's no single monolithic "winner" in the exodus from Twitter because that community would descend into the same patterns of stupidity that are unavoidable past a certain community size.

The next phase of social media should be about community affinity and quality, not size.

i’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line the same group of sil val investors started trying to convince us that everyone should want to be in the same place at the same time or it’s somehow a “failure”.

i keep repeating it, but that kind of ridiculous idea wouldn’t ever be fun in the real world and it’s just as ridiculous to suggest it would somehow be different just because it’s “online”.

every city has multiple styles of restaurants, bars, clubs, stores, etc… for obvious reasons. sometimes we want a quiet night out, sometimes we want a loud concert. some people don’t enjoy the same things i enjoy and i don’t enjoy their shit tastes either ;) and that’s totally ok.

i’m very very skeptical of anyone who suggests _everyone_ should have fun being in the same venue at the same time. it’s weird af. the mere suggestion is incredibly shady at worst and plain ridiculous understanding of people at best. it’s one of the quickest ways to make me stop taking someone seriously.

By choosing to frame things like that, it almost sounds like multinational monopolies on social media controlled by murderous fascist regimes and used to push industrial loads of machine-generated propaganda is something that's somehow preferable.

Seems like this is a case of not letting the prisoners talk to each other too much lest they start to have some ideas of their own.

It is the task of the individuals in free societies to discern the lies from the truth, or at least to choose their tools in doing so.

You’re lying to yourself if you believe you can have real human free speech with a system capable of censoring all lies.

Well intentioned, but extremely naive. Something our society will sadly have to relearn every century or so.

Text from the 1st amendment: "or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

You see that part that says "The press"? Thats what a media company is.

Yes, if the government punishes "The press" for its speech, and threatens it with legal action, that is by definition something that effects free speech and is censorship.

Definitionally, I cannot think of something that could be more accurately be described as censorship.

That wasn't the case, the case was "the press" covering criminals. Being the press don't give a company free pass to commit crimes and Xitter is paying for that.

PS: "1st amendment" is an American term that doesn't mean anything outside of american jurisdiction (and maybe not even inside, see Tiktok).

If the government makes it illegal to publish certain things, that would mean that it is both a crime and censorship. So yes, that would be the case and my previous statement applies.

The government making it illegal for the press to publish certain things is definitionally what censorship is. There is literally no more clear example of what censorship is than that.

I think it's half that our governments don't want to give away control, lest the peasants become uppity. And the other half is that that's just how the dice landed when the laws were first created.

Banning a thing that allows “obvious lies” will have knock-on effects that haven’t been realized yet.

I guess we learned how to make faster cars to outrun cops…?

The right to lie is fundamental to the principle of freedom of speech. Also the lies you think are “obvious” are almost certainly not obvious to everyone - they rarely are. And if someone cannot share a different view then you can’t arrive at the truth.

We can. But we don't and never have. Anyone arguing for the freedom to lie without consequence is off the deep end. There has never been a society that doesn't punish lying and fraud. (What constitutes a lie is a deeper question.)

> even if you think something is a ‘truth’, what you perceive as a ‘lie’ must be allowed

Why? Also, where? Ever?

If I go and commit a bunch of fraud, I'd expect--at best--riotious laughter from anyone with more than two brain cells if I offered, as my defence, that I cannot be punished for defrauding everyone because I'm part of the truth-finding process.

> truth that is just unchallenged feels more like propaganda

Propaganda is regularly challenged. A truth that cannot be challenged is an article of faith. This entire debate reeks of arguments from faith on both sides.

One, not true. If a real estate agent sells you a house based on a bunch of lies and somehow forgets to charge a commission, they're still punished.

Two, you're still drawing criteria per which speech is punished.

Let's edit the premise. No sale occurs. The agent spins some yarn, but you catch on and report them to a regulator. Do you expect them to go unpunished simply because it was all talk? Should they?

If there was no house to be sold, and the agent wasn't even an agent, and they had no way of accepting that money, then of course they should not be punished.

As an example, lets say it was a youtuber who did this, and they recorded the video as a funny prank to post on the internet.

This would not be illegal and they would not be punished.