Bluesky (AT Protocol) for Hubzilla?

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:07:06 +0100

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

Scott M. Stolz schrieb den folgenden Beitrag Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:07:05 +0100

Bluesky (AT Protocol) for Hubzilla?

Although Bluesky is still in its infancy, being backed by the founder of Twitter means that it will probably gain some traction.

We already have a addon for ActivityPub called Pubcrawl. Would an addon for Bluesky be good too?

The most complicated part would be their use of Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).

https://blueskyweb.org and https://atproto.com

What do you think?

show all 6 comments

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:47:37 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

On the one hand, as you've said, it looks complicated, especially if you want to tie DIDs in with Zot/Nomad's nomadic identity.

Also, Bluesky looks to me like an attempt at a corporate takeover of the Fediverse by displacing all established, free, open-source protocols with something commercial, copyrighted and corporate-owned. If that's the case, the question should be whether it had better be boycotted. That is, Jack Dorsey may just as well be blissfully unaware of Zot/Nomad, maybe even of Diaspora*, Friendica, ActivityPub, Mastodon etc., and firmly believe he's creating something that has never been done before.

So on the other hand, Hubzilla has always tried to federate with everything that's feasible to federate with.

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:15:19 +0100

Malendur

malendur8944@hub.art3mis.de

I agree: let's focus on standard protocols first (and we know there is still lot of work there...)
But if Bluesky team wants to write a Hubzilla addon, we should welcome them.

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:46:03 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@hubzilla.monster

@Jupiter Rowland

Bluesky looks to me like an attempt at a corporate takeover of the Fediverse by displacing all established, free, open-source protocols with something commercial, copyrighted and corporate-owned.

At least the DID part is open source. It is an emerging W3C standard. https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/

Jack Dorsey has said that he regrets making a centralized Twitter, instead of making a federated protocol. So I doubt his intentions are to take over the fediverse. I think his intentions are to fix the mistakes he made with Twitter.

That being said, powerful players might be attracted to Bluesky and they may attempt to dominate the field. On the other hand, the greediest of players will be unlikely to federate because they want a captive audience.

If Hubzilla adopts it as an optional addon, it would allow individuals to install their own instances, short circuiting any big player's intention to be the gatekeepers. I'd want to see the Bluesky integration just for that. It puts the technology into the hands of the people.

And supposedly they did not choose ActivityPub because it does not have the features Hubzilla has, which is nomadic identity (portability). https://atproto.com/guides/faq

It's possible they don't know about Hubzilla or simply choose a different solution. Or it could be that Hubzilla does not have a well-documented protocol and they didn't want to reverse engineer it.

And they didn't like Mastodon's @username@instance format either, and are going with @username.instance instead. I guess they did not like username@instance either, but they never mention that.

Interestingly enough, by creating a new protocol, he might be alienating himself from everyone except key allies.

Big corporate players typically don't like to federate since they want a captive audience.
The people who do want to federate already have open source protocols.
Many big fediverse players don't like portable identity and OpenWebAuth because they want everyone to use their platform, despite being federated. Most prefer to federate with their own platform.

So it should be interesting to see how this works out.

I do think Bluesky is worth pursuing though.

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:52:06 +0100

Alexander Goeres

jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

i wouldn't spend time on this protocol until its developers declare it production ready ...

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 14:21:54 +0100

Scott M. Stolz

scott@hubzilla.monster

@Alexander Goeres

i wouldn't spend time on this protocol until its developers declare it production ready ...

I totally agree. I was just curious what people thought of adopting it as an addon in the future.

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 21:11:31 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Yeah, anything could happen this early.

Maybe Dorsey throws half the current concept overboard when he hears about Zot/Nomad.