How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
dustycloud.org

This is a pretty great, long form post about the structure of Bluesky, and how it’s largely kinda pretending to be decentralized at the moment. I’m not trying to make a dig at it. I’ve enjoyed the platform myself for a while, but it’s good to learn more about how it actually works.

This article was shared on Mastodon via its author here.

  • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    29 days ago

    I do think it matters a lot whether it’s a thing the app offers natively to everybody or something certain users have implemented on their own and that other users can choose to use or not. You don’t blame the contents of a mod on the game itself, do you?

    • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      29 days ago

      If there’s a widely used mod that makes the game worse, that’s a good reason to not play the game. It doesn’t matter who made the mod. Using the mod (e.g. an aim bot in a shooter game) is toxic user behavior and if the game ops tolerate it, they deserve blame too.

      • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        29 days ago

        Is it “widely used”? An aim bot directly affects everybody else, actively making the game worse. This only affects a small number of people who choose to opt-in and trust the labeller’s opinion. I can’t even find that labeller and I learnt about it from you. And again, it’s not BSky that offers the labeller - that IS an important distinction.

        • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          29 days ago

          No I don’t think the distinction matters. Twitter sucks because it’s full of Nazis. It’s irrelevant that Twitter doesn’t supply the Nazis itself. The culture that a platform fosters is part of the platform.

          As for the visibility of the labelling on bsky, idk, I guess I’ll take your word for it. It had sounded like a built in feature that was visible to everyone, but ok, maybe not.

          • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            28 days ago

            And yet, everybody stayed until the Muskrat took over. Because until then it wasn’t the platform telling people to be nazis and nazis were a nuisance but a minority - as are people who falsely accuse scientists of being anti-science on BSky. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

            • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              28 days ago

              If the label appears on your profile for everyone to see without further info then it’s truth value is thrown away. IDK how big a problem it really is on bsky now though. The other guy says it is, you seem to think the opposite, I don’t care enough to look into it further.

              If Twitter went Nazi post-Musk while it’s software stayed about the same, that shows that management really does shoulder blame.

              • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
                1·
                28 days ago

                It doesn’t appear for everyone to see.

                I feel like we’re talking past each other and it’s too exhausting to try and get across what I’m saying. Have a pleasant day.

                • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  28 days ago

                  It doesn’t appear for everyone to see.

                  Every user of the extension then, which is apparently a lot of users, enough to affect the site culture, if the other guy’s report reflects reality.