Talk about decentralization: I'm quote-boosting a skeet from Bluesky's CEO that federated via #BridgyFed talking about an article where Jack Dorsey talked about #BlueSky and #Nostr. 😱
(It's not peak decentralization yet because not bridging my posts back to Bluesky. If you want to do that, here are the instructions to opt in to Bridgy Fed. On the other hand, if you don't want to see any posts that originated on Bluesky, I'm pretty sure you can just block the domain bsky.brid.gy.)
For our first article on #Nostr, we wrote a crash course guide on the protocol and the network, along with what it is, how it works, and how you can get started.
Post from @rabble on why he's chosen to use #Nostr and not #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse. He makes some compelling points. Personally I am not too worried about the server admin parts of his argument (I have enough control, even if I don't control the server), but I agree that this isn't ideal:
It's basically "Bluesky, but FOSS". You have your account that has more control of moderation for the user.
The difference is that on Nostr nobody can "ban" per se because nobody has control over each other. It's block and mute. That's your moderation and you do it yourself. Nobody does it for you, unlike Fedi or BlueSky.
I gotta say, that's where a lot of you really need to go to have your eyes opened to what the Fediverse is really like for those of us on single user instances and the sheer amount of work unpaid moderators and admins do here to keep these instances as "nasty shit free" as they can.
Awhile back I kept seeing things like "Other platforms have moderation issues, there's CP and all kinds of other nasty stuff there".
There's all that here too, you're just privileged to have people with massive amounts of passion for this place and do the unpaid work to block and remove all that shit.
If you actually had any control in what you're allowed to see or not see, it can end up being the wild west for all things bad. Which is okay for those who don't mind blocking and muting endlessly (What Fediverse unpaid mods and admins do every day), but I'd bet a lot of you won't want to do that because it sounds HARD and potentially gross and traumatic.
So, whenever you think "that other platform is bad because their moderation sucks". Maybe, just maybe, think about if you would want to sit there all day looking at nasty shit like CP and other sexual crimes/hate speech/scams/etc. and have a little sympathy for the actual people who do. Because it sucks and it does exist here, you just don't see it.
All I care about is being able to follow the people I want to follow, from a single account, regardless of whether they're on the #Fediverse or #Threads or #BlueSky or #Nostr or whatever.
I really don't care who does or does not get to see my public posts. The whole point of a public post is that it's (wait for it) PUBLIC. By definition, I want it to be seen by as many people as possible.
If I don't want a post to be public, I'll mark it unlisted or followers-only, or I'll send it as a DM (yes, I know DMs on Mastodon aren't encrypted at rest. That is unfortunate).
There is zero expectation of privacy for posts you make public. Never has been. On any network.
If #BridgyFed comes online, I want all my public posts to be seen by people on #Bluesky and #Nostr and wherever else BF decides to bridge to. And I want people on all those platforms to be able to find and follow me. And I don't want to have to do anything special to make that happen.
But now because of a few irate paranoid people who happened to have a problem with the author's use of the phrase "opt out" (the entire Fediverse is opt-out by default, don't you know), that's probably never going to happen. Now, if I understand correctly, I'll have to explicitly opt-in to be discoverable by BlueSky users, but what's worse, BlueSky users who want me to be able to find them from my Fediverse account have to explicitly opt in too.
Which is a total joke. Most of them don't even know the Fediverse exists, have no knowledge or understanding of this bridge, and/or have no interest in the Fediverse. Or they would've joined the Fediverse-proper by now.
In fact, one of the hopes was that when BS users start getting followed by Fediverse users, they'll see our weird handles, wonder what it's all about, do some research, and maybe by virtue of that, will end up joining us "for realsies":..
So how many BS users do you think are going to opt-in to be discoverable from the Fediverse? Especially the high-profile accounts, the accounts I was most looking forward to being able to follow and interact with?
We Distribute is a CC-licensed open media project. It serves as a people-focused tech publication, with the goal of informing and educating people about three things:
Decentralized Communications
User empowerment
The future of the Internet
Most of what we do involves reporting on the day-to-day developments of the #Fediverse. In fact, our articles are ActivityPub-enabled, and integrate directly into the network.
However, the Social Web / Decentralized Social movement involves far more efforts and technologies that we think are also worth reporting on: #Matrix, #XMPP, #Bluesky, #Nostr, #SecureScuttlebutt, and #Solid all bring interesting pieces to the puzzle.
Our ultimate goal is to showcase the ongoing efforts to change the shape and form of the Internet itself, at a grassroots level. Join us on this exciting journey. #WeDistribute
I rank the social networks like this, in order of being the actual owner of the things you are publishing:
Fedi (self/community-hosted)
Nostr
Fedi (Someone else's server)
Bluesky
Telegram
All the horrible-corproate-fuckbollocks
I rank the private message apps like this, in order of how actually private they are:
Matrix
Signal
Whatsapp (though, yes, the content of the messages you send with your surveillance app are encrypted, but it is still a surveillance app, FFS)
Telegram - This is not even a private message app, this is a public not-encrypted message app. Why is it even on this list? It might as well say "email".
Feel free to avoid the BTC jockeys, I do. You can find me there using https://iris.to/elias
My public key:
npub15et2fl2qhphnld4u7n7j8tad93aql8ercswecj6sx0qekkvqj7gs97vcvu
If there is enough interest I'll stand up an E2E encrypted private message enabled whitelisted relay for only infosec professionals. My servers are centrally located in Dallas, TX, with quadruple redudant power (including the State of TX powergrid) and the fastest network in the USA @ Vultr.
NOTE: There is nothing of value to be gained by running the relay for the operator, only low ping, high priority for users to send to all the other relays. I can setup a opt-in sec eval of the relay for qualified users and would in fact help to make the encryption scheme as robust as possible. Good potential for publication.
"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
"free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally
The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.
Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.
Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!
Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
Emphasize "networked communities"
Support concentric federations of instances and communities
Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)
Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'
Build a sustainable ecosystem
Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light
Reduce the dependency on Mastodon
Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity
Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses
Thank you for the optimistic PoV on the entrance of others to the #DeSoc of the Fediverse. It is an optimism that I share - especially with Matthias' announcement just an hour ago that his team behind the development of the #WordPress ActivityPub plugin has just released version 2.0.0 - considering the enormous footprint of WordPress installations across the entire Internet belonging to both common, everyday individuals and companies alike, of every shape and size, this is HUGE news.
It instantly, overnight, positions common folks and businesses to leap into the freedoms afforded them by the existing, privacy respecting, #FOSS based Fediverse that hitherto was... well, a bit of a leap for them psychologically. But now they have a familiar platform with which to begin a journey through the minefields of the deprecated, privacy mining, monolithic silos; its proprietors programming their masses of #subjugated_chattel into livestock holding pens, where they are weighed, measured, packaged, placed into inventory, and sold.
That does raise the issue of an error in your assertions however. You mentioned, "instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky".
The truth however, the reality, is that each are merely a single instance - One big monolithic silo, as described above, with the same incentives of monetization through privacy mining techniques that have made them the dreadnoughts that they are; at least in the case of #Meta (Threads).
Bluesky is of that vertically scaling market as well, but much smaller than the #Faceplant and #InstaSPAM engines operated by Meta, and now their new spearhead into the DeSoc space occupied by ActivityPub and other decentralized or federated protocol based, horizontally scaling instances.
#Bluesky hasn't actually shown their hand yet to the general public, but already, they've disenfranchised (fired) much of their talent; some, actually principal architects of their monolith who were frustrated and disillusioned with the direction Jay has been taking the company - moving further and further away from the disowned public community they spawned, organized, and abandoned following the initial trials and tests of the open source preview version of what became #ATP protocol (ATX).
Even Jack has moved on and embraced yet another horizontally scaling protocol in the DeSoc space, #nostr, and it's already bridged and interoperating flawlessly with the ActivityPub powered portion of the Fediverse, which in turn interoperates with instances running other protocols such as #Nomad, #OStatus, #Streams, #Diaspora, and #ZOT... all of them part of the Fediverse.
Many of the extant #ActivityPub powered instances in the Fediverse merely need to install these capabilities with a couple of clicks to enable this interoperability, while others bridge the divide through infrastructure developed and deployed over the past year or so.
What will be Meta's use case here for their business product?
That's the main question I think folks need to address - not punish the good people on the so-called evil side of the divide, the hitherto subjugated chattel that populate Marks so-called Metaverse or whatever he thinks he can compel people to adopt and endure. The point is, childish, domain level blocking by juvenile minds operating ActivityPub powered #Fediverse server instances only serves to paint themselves (and the users who have to date trusted those admins with being told what they can and cannot see and do) into a corner where they effectively cancel themselves, and find that their users have migrated to other spaces... maybe WordPress, where they truly control their own destiny in the DeSoc space and can now fully participate and engage with others - but on their own terms, not someone else's.
And that, I believe, is what the whole thing has always been about, going back as far as #AngelFire and #GeoCities :)
I do agree with you that we should indeed embrace these common, everyday individuals who, through their programmed ignorance, are mostly clueless as to exactly what the Fediverse is, and more importantly, has always promised for them. This is an opportunity, like Steve Austin, (the Six Million Dollar Man): "We can rebuild them, we have the technology, we can make them better, stronger, faster..."
One more thing I should correct you on, the Fediverse is an internetwork of networks, on the Internet - there are no fediverses, Fediverse is itself a plurality, but your intent wasn't lost on me.
Great article, I enjoyed the read and most of all, your optimistically tempered intent. Thanks for sharing and I hope to see much more from you in the future!
New: on Mostr, the bridge between #nostr and the #fediverse, that has just gotten an upgrade.
With the bridge, connections between the two networks become easier, and the borders of what the fediverse is become fuzzier. But not everyone might be interested in the connection, however.
Mostr, the bridge that connects Nostr to the fediverse, has gotten some upgrades recently. With the latest update, the homepage of the bridge, Mostr.pub, allows people to enter a fediverse handle, and open the link in their Nostr client of choice. Here is the Nostr page for my Fediverse Report account as a demonstration. Finding people on the fediverse and connect to them from Nostr has become significantly easier with this update.
For some context to this news, Nostr is another social network based on an open-source protocol. I explain a bit more how it works here. In the context of Mostr, two things are important to know: one of the core values of the network is anti-censorship, and there is no intermediary for creating an account.
In a talk (available on PeerTube here) at the Nostr conference Nostrasia, Mostr.pub creator Alex Gleason about his history with Nostr and the fediverse. He explains how he worked on fediverse software Soapbox, and then got hired as the head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social, and now has quit that job to work fulltime on Nostr.
The Mostr bridge has been available for a bit, which allows Gleason to present some interesting statistics about it’s usage: 70% of the usage is from people on Nostr following people on the fediverse, with over 10k unique users across the bridge.
One part of Gleason’s presentation that stands out is his claim that Nostr is now part of the fediverse. I wrote about the multiple definitions of the term fediverse here, talking about how fediverse can be defined by protocol, by culture, or by interoperability. Although people can argue about which definition is correct, and whether or not Nostr should be included, Gleason’s remarks do indicate that Mostr makes the boundaries of what the fediverse is fuzzier, and harder to define.
Gleason also talks about content moderation and blocking, saying: “One thing that has been holding the ActivityPub protocol back from achieving even more, is the blocking culture”. But if Mostr wants to see itself as just another server among many in the fediverse, content moderation happens to it in the same way that it happens to other servers: by simply blocking the server you do not feel like connecting with. Any justification for it is only necessary between the admin and their users, and not anyone beyond that.