loading . . . There is no bsky.social instance: Why Feditips is either ignorant, stupid, or both.
I am going straaaight to name-calling I don't care anymore
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Very recently I had the great displeasure of arguing with FediTips which you may know for creating all kinds of informational content about the Fediverse and surrounding topics on their website, https://fedi.tips/.
That's great and all, if not for all the blatant disinformation regarding...literally any microblogging or even social media platform at all that isn't the Fediverse. Most notably, Bluesky.
FediTips, or rather the person behind it, Fedithings _loves_ spreading plain disinformation regarding Bluesky and completely disregarding proven facts about Bluesky. Facts that are obvious by just reading one or two pages of the spec overview or the Wikipedia page on ATProto.
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On the Fediverse, as I'm sure most of you will know, we use a sort of “message-passing” approach to sharing our posts around the network; We pass our posts directly to those which should see it, and we know who should see it because “oh hey, that guy followed me that one time!”. This is great! Everyone gets their posts no matter where they are, from completely different communities! (unless you deny them, we'll get to that)
These places, communities are often referred to as “Instances”. It's basically just the fancy term for communities though. But it's important to keep that in the back of your head for the rest of this.
Another important detail to keep in mind is how, on the Fediverse, your identity is usually tied to the community you chose. Your handle will quite literally look something like `@[email protected]` (I don't think that's a real instance...I hope lol) and people will see you as being _from that community_
What about Bluesky? Oh boy, _**Completely different model.**_
## Are there even instances?
To get this right out of the way: **No.** At least not how you think.
Whereas in the context of the Fediverse and all our communities we just sort of pass posts around directly, like people sending eachother letters, Bluesky went a different route
There is basically **three important components** :
* Personal Data Servers – This is where the posts are
* Relays – This is what gets the post from A to B
* AppViews – Fancy speak for “the app the posts are in” / “The Bluesky app”
now, Personal Data Servers sort of explain themselves. It's where your posts are. If you or anyone else wants to go right to the source of those memes and shitposts, that's where they'll find them. Right open for everyone to see.
> I'll refer to Personal Data Servers as just “PDS” from here on out.
Relays then take the posts from _every single PDS they can possibly find_ and turns them into one long, always-updating list of all posts in the order they were posted.
And the AppView has the job of, well, letting you actually see those posts and interact with them; Make new posts, like stuff, share stuff. You know the drill
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Notice how I didn't say _what_ data is stored on a PDS? That's actually an important detail to know, so let's compare
So with a Fediverse server, because you're passing posts directly between eachother as if they're letters, you need to hold on to the posts yourself so that you can, well...read them.
This means that you have a copy of not just _your_ posts, but also the posts of everyone you follow and interact with regularly. Anyone that appears on the feed, basically
On Bluesky though? You don't keep the posts of others, _only_ your own are stored. Well, your own and anyone you happen to share space with on the PDS.
## What is “defederation”?
Now we're back to the whole “denying” thing that I hinted at earlier.
Due to the fact that posts are exchanged directly between people, there might be like `superevilcommunity.com` that does nothing but send you like hatred or something else you plain don't like. And blocking those communities is known as “defederation”
Now, this is a stark difference to how Bluesky fundamentally works.
Because everyone gets their posts from the same place, the Relay, one cannot really block the server a post comes from; You're not getting it from there anyways.
But even if they did filter out posts of that kind, there is another issue that makes it near impossible to have this sort of moderation tool.
## Account Portability and Moderation
Bluesky had one arguably good reason to not use the same tech that the Fediverse uses: Fedi's account moving ability is not robust enough.
on the Fediverse, you can move your account to a different server by setting up an “alias” or “redirect”. This will make it so that anyone which follows you will automatically follow the new account, and anyone that searches for your old account will be redirected to the new one.
But for Bluesky, this wasn't enough. Posts weren't moved across, and you had to take up an entirely new identity on that new community. So for their new tech they were developing, they have a new identifier that isn't tied to a server. This is called a DID:PLC identifier.
The important thing here, just so I don't lose myself in technical details, is that even when you were previously at one given server it is **trivial** to move to another one, keeping this identity. Unlike a fediverse identity which is tied to the community it was on.
And _this_ is why “defederation” doesn't work on Bluesky.
## The Point
The things I've discussed here are basically a breakdown of what I talked about with Feditips.
Repeatedly, feditips refused to acknowledge the fact that Bluesky works differently, that it isn't even “federation” per-se, and eventually they pulled the “think of the minorities which are scared for their lives” card.
https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/114710174186729057 (archive)
On a Trans person. They were talking to a trans person. That is one of the minorities which are scared for their life.
At that point, I stopped talking to them and advised them to shut the fuck up
Feditips does this _on the regular_. They frequently spread disinformation about Bluesky in an effort to feed their superiority complex for using a different social media site. They blame those which use Bluesky and see them as below themselves. You can see them posting about _oh how much better the fediverse_ is on the regular.
Preaching to the choir, on the fediverse.
my `{preferred term}` in christ, you don't need to preach to fediverse users how good the fediverse is. Especially when those which ACTUALLY moderate and run communities and those which have been here for MUCH LONGER THAN YOU all agree that no, the Fediverse is not this perfect safe haven. Far from it.
If you come to me screaming about how “think of the minorities” how come I don't see you taking action on transmasc erasure on fedi, or how people of color are treated on fedi? Those are marginalized too, and you say you care so much about safety which is why you redirect everyone there. Why can't they find a home here? Could it be that fedi is...not perfect? That the structure we've built over many years makes it **at best** uncomfortable for those people to be here?
No, it couldn't be. The fediverse is perfect and we are all superior for using it. What's that, Blacksky is a thing and they are running completely independent infrastructure for the black community? No no, you must be hallucinating. What is that, they in large parts feel much safer there? Nope. Can't be. The Fediverse is perfect.
expanding on blacksky a bit... Just to expand on this a little bit, everything I've seen from the blacksky community is genuinely amazing. They are building their community and keeping eachother safe, and it is working much better on there than anything I've seen on fedi. Seriously, these people make their own software completely independent from Bluesky PBLLC, and I've heard some rumours they even want to have their own AppView.
Thank you for reading.
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