· Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 21:36:41
Well, even large fedi instances dont have access to the whole network. In general though I agree that there's a parallel to the way AT gives power to large Relays and AppViews and how AP gives power to large instances.
Relays seem like they'll be a lot cheaper to scale than instances, but it's early days so we shall see. There's a lot of experitmentation going on with smaller AppViews leveraging large Relays, again though it's hard to know how it'll work out in practice.
On the other hand when Threads looked at it they decided AP was a better target to exploit than AT, so I wouldn't assume that AP's more resistant to centralization than AT.
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 22:11:02
@thenexusofprivacy @nexus @laurenshof @FediTips @skarnio
It's not so much that AP is more resistant as much as AT is essentially designed with it in mind. Yes, you can have a heavy centralized AP-based network, and you can have AT networks isolated from the BS one, but that's not what either of those is designed and intended for.
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 22:22:21
@oblomov @thenexusofprivacy @skarnio
There's also the question of who is in charge. BS is run by a for-profit funded by VC money, this is a really dangerous combination. VC money almost always leads to enshittification in the long term, because VC-owned companies run out of any other way to grow profits.
Föderation EN Do 05.09.2024 23:01:37
Agreed that Bluesky shouldn't be trusted, they're VC-funded and are likely to go the exploitative and/or enshittification route once there's revenue pressure. In terms of the original question as to whether or not they should be considered part of the fediverse, that puts them in the same category as Wordpress and Flipboard. It's intellectually consistent to say none of them are; it's not intellectually consistent to say Wordpress and Flipboard are but Bluesky isn't for this reason. (Although other reasons for excluding them might be intellectually consistent, for example the Diaspora analogy -- I don't particularly agree with it, but it hangs together, it's just a different conclusion that flows from a different view of whether bridges not implemented by a platform count)
And @oblomov you're right that AP wasn't specifically designed for giving an advantage to large instances. I once asked Evan what scalability analysis had been done as part of the standardization process and he said "none!" Still, it's an obvious consequence of the protocol, nothing's been done to address that over the years, and Threads decided it's a good match for them. So I don't see as much of a difference on that front as you do.
Föderation EN Fr 06.09.2024 00:51:50
@FediTips @oblomov @thenexusofprivacy This, for me, is one of the main criteria for not trusting the AT protocol.
