No, because it's not
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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What counts as apart of the Fediverse then? Is it the protocol of ActivityPub or that it connects all together? As there is a bridge for Bluesky.
Basically yes.. I mean.. you could just look it up and see the sources say the same thing about activitypub
Side note: the fedigram is a WILDLY better logo for the fediverse than the asterism.
Yeah. Some dude came and suggested the asterism iirc. I don't see anyone other than a few on mastodon using it. Looks ugly.
The fact that it needs a bridge is what makes it not federated. Federation allows for interconnection without bridges, because everything talks the same protocol. You can bridge Discord to Matrix, and that doesn't mean Discord is federated.
The reason is because it's just more corporate sloth that has fake federation. If it was even remotely realistic to run a Federated service people would be by the dozens because they have way more users than we do. The only working Federate ironically the activity Pub Bridge
If being able to have a bridge is the qualification for the Fediverse, things like Discord and Telegram would count too
Bluesky isn't a Fediverse player. It's a Jack Dorsey project, currently 'incubating' until it's ready to be sold to an oligarch.
It's not even his anymore. He has moved on LOL. I think he endorses this brazillian crypto bro twitter called nostr. He funded so e of its development.
He also endorses twitter over blusky because apparently bluesky is very centralized...
My eyes have rolled into the side of my skull, and warped into null space.
Don't waste your breath https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dorsey
Ha, I forgot about Nostr. That might actually be a useful application for blockchain.
π―
I'm sure it won't avoid it much longer. But yeah it's just another big platform that will fall.
No, because I canβt see anyoneβs posts outside of Bluesky.
On Lemmy you can't often see anyones posts, there are bluesky posts on the Fediverse but have to use the brid.gy bridge for it.
I meant more like the one instance, rather than the software.
You can't have your own server to connect with other users on Bluesky, it's centralized so I don't consider part of the Fediverse
If it isn't able to federate to other servers and/or services, like kbin to lemmy and such, without 3rd party tools like the bluesky bridge thingamajig, absolutely not.
Technically? No. (ActivityPub)
Culturally? No. (Venture capitalist for-profit and already beginning the resulting enshittification)
I don't see any reason to consider them part of the Fediverse.
It's Twitter in a trenchcoat saying "whats up fellow fediverse apps".
While the Fediverse has traditionally been the network most commonly referred to and used as an example regarding the subject of decentralized social networks, alternatives to it and the accompanying ActivityPub have been developed and deployed. A major protocol in competition with the Fediverse is the AT Protocol, which powers the Bluesky social network and has formed its own separate network dubbed by developers as the Atmosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
So no it is not. Basically Fediverse = activitypub
Bluesky doesnt even properly federate with instance using their own protocol so its not even in any way comparable to the fediverse.
So what about the bridge, users can bridge there accounts across between here and bluesky and the otherway.
Thats exactly what it sounds like, a "bridge". An island doesnt stop being an island because it is connected to mainland with a bridge. You could also bridge twitter or facebook to mastodon, but that wouldnt make them part of the fediverse.
A bridge is just a piece of software that receives data from one protocol and re-formats it into another protocol. You could bridge SMS to bluesky if you wanted.
Okay, but is bluesky at least a setting stone for people to be in a slightly better place than Faceook or Twitter? I don't like Bluesky as the next Fediverse user, especially as they've went out of there way to create a protocol that's unsecure and a platform that is semi-centralised but people are learning about alternatives like us from them what is at least helpful in someway.
It's better in some ways for now. All commercial social media platforms start out by being less bad than the competition. That's how they attract users. When they have enough of a user base for network effects to take hold, that's when they enshittify.
at least a setting stone for people to be in a slightly better place than Faceook or Twitter?
No, not really. It has already started caving to Turkish political censorship requests for example. They are implementing checkmark bullshit and from the start they required you to have an account to view all content.
but people are learning about alternatives like us
99% of bluesky users have never heard of the fediverse or anything like that. They just blindly follow the herd to the next platform like always. In a few years bluesky will turn to complete shit and then they will once again jump to the next garbage platform.
They've already started heading that direction step by step
A bridge is the first step in the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" pattern. A Fediverse only works when no one node can dominate all the others. It's why, even though Meta's Threads platform was/is actually Federated (in that it uses ActivityPub), everyone defederated from them because it's a poison pill for the whole network.
For more info on how that eventually happens, this article gives some past examples.
Not really. You're strongly funnelled down the bluesky owned instance, most uses of ATProto are more or less mere plugins for that main instance. Can I migrate my account to another instance? Unclear.
The VC funding also adds another layer that implies they're going to trap people into their monetisable market share sooner or later. This seems incompatible with fediverse principles.
So while they present themselves as a more technically refined iteration of the fediverse, the whole thing is a big trap. Enjoy it while it lasts would be my advice, but if you've got the sway then try to get those close to you to migrate to mastodon before it goes wrong.
Is it federated? It only works with its own protocol, so it can't be part of the fediverse by definition.
No. They're another Twitter clone that is already starting to show their bullshit. And the people there never learn.
Do you think the people on there will move across to the Fediverse or just go to another shitty clone?
What do you think? Of course the latter.
Each time one of these for profit social media platforms fails or gets cancelled or whatever, some portion of the userbase switches to the Fediverse.
My hope is that eventually we will reach a critical mass where that portion makes up a majority of the transfers, at which point we will have successfully dismantled the industry of walled-garden social media.
In terms of technology? Sure. There's projects that are considered "Fediverse" and don't use ActivityPub.
.... But the more important question isn't if it's "Fediverse". Sure it is. It's a federated network. The important question is is it part of the Indie Web, since the Fediverse started as a smaller part of the bigger indie web movement, and then the answer is a big no, because it's a VC-owned for-profit.
Currently not, because it's not de-facto decentralized. There would need to be multiple relays, managed by different organizations, AND multiple app views, also managed by different orgs, for me to consider it such.
The non-existence of de facto decentralization indicates that the ecosystem doesn't actually promote decentralization, even though it technically allows for it.
Yeah from my understanding they call it decentralized but they put it through a centralized one they control through there protocol to verify content for everyone to see, so not so decentralized in the whole of everything.
Well, you can theoretically make a second app-view "instance", call it "Greenearth" or something, and have different policies than Bluesky on how to verify or select content. But until someone actually does so, it's not really decentralized. I'm not sure what's stopping people from doing so, but it's been a while, so I assume there must be some roadblock.
There's also the issue of how Blueky itself was depicted as the decentralized network - when it's more akin to a single instance, instead.
It's designed so other relays need to handle every message sent on all of bluesky, so server costs would be way too high for most people. Like car prices for minimal bluesky relay setup, and way more if you want to actually store all the messages you're processing.
@underscores @lily33 There have been multiple people testing this just this week, and it's more like ~$200 price level than a car price π
That's monthly right? It's a slight exageration, but that's close to low end used car payments. And from what I understand it'll go up as bluesky gets more popular, and the more relays there are.
I'd say no.
I don't think they federate. Least ways, I don't think I've ever seen a post from a bluesky account, on lemmy or mastodon, and SDF hadn't blocked them server side last I checked.
I think they're a bit like truth social, not federating and off doing their own thing.
Nope. If I create a post on Bluesky, my posts aren't going to appear on other sites unless I or someone else shares them.
No, because I can't use it on entirely third-party infrastructure and interact with BlueSky users. It should be possible in theory, but if it was practical in reality, somebody would be doing it.
Partially, just because there is the ability to bridge it (ex: https://fed.brid.gy/), but I expect them to pull the rug at some point.
The bridge isn't run by them, but yeah I think they will close there system more or just make the experience plane terrible for bridged accounts in the future.
Yes.
Here are some complaints people have.
It doesn't use ActivityPub. So are we demanding that all applications use a specific protocol? Does that mean email, Matrix, the web, Nostr, Frendica, BitTorrent, etc aren't part of the Fediverse? Nostr, AtProtocol, ActivityPub, Diaspora are four popular, open protocols for federated social media - there are many more - and they're all part of a wider Fediverse.
It's owned by a corporation. Great! So if YouTube started to publish all their videos using PeerTube, that wouldn't count? If your local supermarket creates their own Mastodon instance and are active on it, is that a no-no? Does GMail not count as part of email, or Amazon as part of the world wide web for that reason? Are corporations not allowed at all? No-one is asking your opinion of corporate culture here.
It doesn't support federation. Yes, it does. Every part of AtProtocol is open source and free for anyone to implement, allowing you to create your own fully independent instance that fully integrated with both BlueSky and other, independent AtProtocol servers.
It's not open. Yes, it is. Fully open source and permissively licensed. Anyone can implement their own AtProtocol server, reusing as much or as little as they want. But AtProtocol does a lot more than ActivityPub, leading neatly on to:
It's too complicated. I see this complaint a surprising amount. AtProtocol's complexity exists because - let's be honest - ActivityPub doesn't provide any good way of discovering or searching. If you saw a load of fire trucks barreling down the street and wanted to know what was happening, a quick search on any AtProtocol relay will tell you if anyone on any instance has commented; ActivityPub doesn't work like that. Hell, it's hard enough to even find communities without resorting to non-ActivityPub services. AtProtocol's Relay Servers and Firehoses are demanding applications, but that is required for a true Twitter/Facebook/TikTok replacement.
So, yes, BlueSky is part of the Fediverse. Does that make BlueSky a good thing? That's a separate debate. But there are a lot of comments in this thread which amount to "no, because I don't like it" and it's important we don't let our personal hangups override our ability to be rational. Maybe instead of moaning about AtProtocol we should at least give a thought to why it's needed.