Yeah, it’s somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It’s great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren’t any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There’s certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta’ll happen.

There isn’t direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started

Yep. And also, like I said in https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/

For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn’t have good experiences … so didn’t stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn’t addressed the reasons why.

Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities … So today, BTS ARMY and millions of Brazilians, and everybody else looking for a Twitter alternative are more likely to have a good experience on Bluesky than Mastodon.

Great point. And Jay won the power struggle with Jack, which almost nobody gives her credit for.

Yeah, it’s a great name.

You’re not the only one who sees it that way. Historically the Fediverse was always multi-protocol but some people don’t think it shojld be today. I talked about this view some in https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/

“Anyhow, if Evan and Eugen and SWF and fediverse.party want to choose a definition of Fediverse where history stopped with Mastodon’s 2017 adoption of ActivityPub, erases earlier Fediverse history, and ties the Fediverse’s success to a protocol that has major issues … they can do that. “The Fediverse” means different things to different people. It’s still worth asking why they choose that definition.”

Dorsey’s not involved in Bluesky any more but I agree that there are lots of reasons not to trust them (including Dorsey’s original involvement).

Bluesky’s currently a much better Twitter alternative than Mastodon but I totally agree, there’s a lot more to social networking than that. I talk about ways I see Bulesky as complementary to the ActivityPub section in the last section, “It’s the end of the Fediverse as we know it – and I feel fine”

Thanks very much, fixed now!

Agreed that Bridgy Fed is opt-in … I see consent as a good thing, but not everybody agrees.

And yeah, Bluesky’s just ike any other instance, you have to trust them with privacy. I think the argument that Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, and Wordress.com-hosted blogs shouldn’t be considered part of the Fediverse is intellectually consistent, I just don’t see a lot of people making that argument. But, “the Fedivese” means different things to different people, the followup post Is Bluesky part of today’s Fediverse? goes into a huge amount of detail on that …

For people who want to join a twitter clone there aren’t any good ActivityPub options – Mastodon’s good at other things, but isn’t a good Twitter alternative let along clone. And ActivityPub’s version of “true federation” isn’t the only kind of federation. That said, I agree that AT isn’t an option for people who want to join a federating-in-theActivityPub-sense-of-the-word Twitter clone,

Correct. Dorsey’s early involvement is certainly grounds for concern – the way I think of it, he’s gone now but his stench lingers on – but he’s not influential there going forward.

Yep. And that’s far from the only way it could work out badly. I talk about this a bit in the section on “Bluesky is a useful counterweight to Threads”

Bluesky is far from perfect. They’re venture-funded, so likely to end with an exploitative business model. They’ve got a surveillance-capitalism friendly all-public architecture. It’s great that Jack Dorsey’s no longer on the board but he was.

Agreed that Bluesky’s run by a single corporation so it’s different than today’s ActivityPub Fediverse, but the Fediverse’s historical approach to “open federation” isn’t the only approach. Even in the ActivityPub world we’re seeing more and more experimentation with allow-list federation.

Blueksy’s approach to decentralization is very different from ActivityPub but it’s definitely decentralized. (Also that article’s over a year old, and some things have changed since then.). But, like I say in the article, not everybody is so welcoming!

Bridgy Fed and Friendica already connect Bluesky to the ActivityPub Fediverse.

Thanks, I’ll include something about Hubzilla’s progress … the proof of concept Faircamp integration is interesting, do you know if anybody’s following up on it?