The sandbox environment has now been launched, which means you can set up your own AT protocol-enabled server.
It's possible that Bluesky will finally start federating by the end of summer. However, knowing how most dev teams work, this launch is not a certainty. It always takes time to iron out bugs.
How successful do you think Bluesky's federation will be? And how will it impact the current userbase using Bluesky?
But I guess that Bluesky itself won't develop its own ActivityPub federation, so everything would have to be done by those projects that desire to federate with Bluesky for one reason or another.
@atomicpoet Pretty sure friendica already had blusky implemented last month but that's because they are the one ring to rule them all even federated with diaspora.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews I’m in Bluesky, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if the user base is unaware of the fact that it will be able to federate in the future: I think most of the user base sees it as a Twitter alternative, not thinking much about the tech, and probably more usable for those of them who had been part of the Nov 2022 #TwitterMigration but found Mastodon boring
@atomicpoet@fediversenews
I expect a small amount of servers. A very small amount of BGS in particular. I wish good luck to anyone who tries to run a BGS because it seems like this particular service is going to be very costly to run.
I also expect a lot of confusion with all the different services and questions about who runs what.
For those who don’t know how AT protocol works, there isn’t a AT server, that’s not a thing. You have a PDS (that holds your account and knows your email/password), a BGS which index ALL posts from the ENTIRE NETWORK, an AppView that specifies what to do with the data (the microblog appview is called bluesky), Search is a different service, moderation and filters is a different service, there are as many servers as there are custom feeds and then there is the "placeholder" DID service (DID for Decentralized ID) which is just one server you cannot run your own.
So I expect a lot of "Hey admin, search seems to be broken − Ha, sorry, I don’t run the search service".
I also can’t see how the BGS are going to be community-run. If bluesky continues to grow, only big companies are going to run BGS servers. Sure it’s going to scale, but not in a very decentralized way.
@matthieu_xyz@atomicpoet@fediversenews 100% agreed. I think the recent post by developer Paul (https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3jypici6ihm2m) was pretty telling, where he explained why bluesky was bothering with federation. His argument was that it was a protection against enshittification from the bluesky organisation. This is all well and good, but reading between the lines, the implication was pretty clear: the bluesky organisation is running the show, and federation is only really relevant in case it truly goes to shit. Its nothing like activitypub where the base assumption is that there are tons of different admins running servers. Theres the theoretical possibility to run a competing service on ATproto, but only if youre wellfunded and really want to take on the bluesky organisation
@atomicpoet
Their federation might work, technically, but I'm not so sure their users are open to communicate with others. After I've tested Bluesky for a while, I sense that people on that platform might appreciate being in their own little environment.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews From a diagram I saw the other day, it's not clear to me that AT will survive the main (aka, Bluesky itself) instance going offline. Is that correct? Although perhaps folks will prefer that, given it affords a true aggregation of likes, etc.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews I'm just excited for a bridge to be built between AT Protocol and ActivityPub. While I've been making a bridge behind the scenes, it operates under the assumption that Bluesky won't federate at all.
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