If you've been waiting for Bluesky to ship federation to check it out, it's now live.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-22-2024-open-social-web
It's actually a better federation implementation than Mastodon in at least a couple ways:
1. you can see the whole network even if you are on a single-user instance, so no missing replies!
2. you can actually seamlessly move your account keeping your name and posts!!
Also, custom algorithms are great, and what I had hoped Mastodon would be.
I'm at https://bsky.app/profile/filippo.abyssdomain.expert 🦋
It's kinda sad when a better technical solution doesn't overcome preconceptions and assumptions.
You're much more in control of your data on AT than in ActivityPub, but people think the latter is more federated.
For example, if the previous instance operator doesn't let you, you can't move your Mastodon account to another instance!
Just like the Go module ecosystem is basically the only (major) decentralized one, but people think of it as Google controlled because of the Modules Mirror.
AP/mastodon is so bizzare because its populated by ppl who really DONT want publishing, preferring privacy+control+community-ownership over discoverability.
But PUB is literally in the name!!!! And its in the design, too; it feels like there's a big effort to shoe horn essentially e2ee group chat into something that was absolutely never intended to be used that way.
IMO it might eventually come time to start over w/ a new protocol more like SSB. Separate the server convenience service from the data ownership and authentication.
I think bitcoin wallet ui (electrum) has a lot to teach us about how to make e2ee live up to its security hype without falling into the same usability black hole of gpg
And that doesn't mean everyone *has* to have that level of control/responsibility. Just that its always an option. Can still have a server that owns your privatekey and has "forgot my password".
