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VectorLock 3 days ago

People seem to lark on and on about how it has better "default moderation" than Mastodon.

verdverm 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's not that it is "better" but that the choice is individual, not up to the mastodon server. In Mastodon, you trade Elon for some other group of individuals, so what happens if they make decision on moderation or content you do not agree with?

ATProto is designed around accounts that are independent of data host, application, and moderation, all in the name of giving users individual control over these things. It's like if every Mastodon user ran their own server, but without the overhead

immibis 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You have the opportunity to demonstrate this. I am banned from Bluesky. (They didn't tell me why - just a generic "you violated community guidelines")

Tell me, concretely, how people can choose to continue following me, even though I am banned.

Profile: immibis.bsky.social

verdverm 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Create an account you own instead of having someone else run it. Maybe you can get your data, maybe you can ask Bluesky for a review (there were bugs and scaling issues against bot networks that cause false positives)

I'm not seeing that handle resolve in the normal places. Do you have the DID? You should use a custom domain so that you can control the the reference and lookup.

You can run your own PDS and manage complete account lifecycle

immibis 2 days ago | parent [-]

So after you're banned from Bluesky you create another account on a different server and hope the admins of your original server, which still hosts all the people you want to follow, don't block your new account from interacting with their server?

You said it was different from Mastodon, but how is this different from Mastodon?

verdverm 2 days ago | parent [-]

I have my own domain already attached, I can point it at any server and my identity on the network remains the same.

When you use a *.bsky.social handle, you have not made yourself independent and resilient to arbitrary decision by the org that manages that service

immibis 2 days ago | parent [-]

So that's the same as on Mastodon. What's the difference again?

fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent [-]

To be fair, with ActivityPub your account is always tied to a given server.

However as you have rightly noticed, the person you are responding to here is being disingenuous. Controlling the account doesn't fix the fundamental issue caused by network effects. An account that can't interact with a large portion of the network is no different than Mastoson in practice.

The Mastodon equivalent would be running your own single user instance which gets defederated by one of the big players.

anamexis 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Follow the instructions under "Self-hosting PDS" here: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds

fc417fc802 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you suggesting the "big few" can't largely censor a given account?

I don't see how ATProto is doing noticeably better than the scenario where a large ActivityPub instance blocks your external account.

verdverm 3 days ago | parent [-]

Generally, yes. Currently, because Bluesky requires the use of their labeler if you use their app, this could happen.

Two points of note

1. You can participate in Bluesky without the Bluesky app, so you can remove this requirement by using an alternative app

2. The most blocked account is blocked by around 0.25% of the full network (https://clearsky.app/)

This second point does not account for users banned from Bluesky by Bluesky for breaking the ToS or PDS abuse.

fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent [-]

> does not account for users banned from Bluesky by Bluesky for breaking the ToS or PDS abuse.

Then you are missing the point. I am asking how much censorship power the largest node in the network has.

If being blocked by the largest provider means 95% of users can't see me anymore then the situation is strictly worse than Mastodon vs ActivityPub-at-large.

verdverm 2 days ago | parent [-]

What did you do to get banned? Most people who make this claim are unwilling to share the behavior that led to it. Bans are not arbitrary, nor is anyone obligated to host or show your speech

ATProto is young compared to the alternatives, give the network time to build out an ecosystem and the resilience we need.

fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent [-]

First you made incorrect and misleading statements. Then when I point it out you try to rhetorically shift blame on to me.

To answer your misleading and irrelevant question, I have never been banned by Bluesky. What did you do to get banned on Mastodon? Do you understand that "moderation" and "banned for violating the ToS" are one and the same?

ATProto is not any better than ActivityPub (ie Mastodon) regarding the impact of network effects on moderation. The "big few" retain their outsized influence with both protocols, at least as far as I am aware. If there is a technical misunderstanding about this on my part then do please point it out.

Moreover, the current situation is significantly worse on ATProto because the vast majority of the network currently relies on a single provider.

To be clear, I am not opposed to ATProto. I am only opposed to inaccurate technical comparisons.

verdverm 2 days ago | parent [-]

I was using the indeterminate "you" for a hypothetical question, one that gets asked often

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ATProto moderation is technically and fundamentally different from ActivityPub: https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...

fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent [-]

The question remains misleading and irrelevant whether it was addressed to me or the room at large.

I am well aware that ATProto makes improvements to both account migration and end user moderation. Those are of course good things in my view. As previously stated I have noting against ATProto.

This entire subthread started because I responded to your claim that "It's like if every Mastodon user ran their own server". That is highly misleading at best, outright wrong at worst. It is only equivalent to that scenario if every ATProto user manages their own account as well as every single other required service, at which point you might as well just have run your own Mastodon instance as it likely would have been both simpler and less resource intensive.

The reality is that this is never expected to happen. ATProto is expected to be like Mastodon, with the improvements that you can share a single account between multiple servers and there are tools to apply additional filtering so that you don't have to see (as much of) things you don't like. Those are certainly welcome improvements but they do nothing to address the outsized effects on censorship that large nodes have in federated networks.

Purely in theory, you could simultaneously use a single account with a full set of politically correct ATProto services (such as Bluesky) and a competing set of politically incorrect ones operated by someone else. However, if history is anything to go off of then this will quickly get you banned by either one or both of the operators. Merely interacting with those guilty of wrongthink has always been an easy way to get kicked off of a surprisingly large number of Mastodon servers.

Even supposing that the above doesn't happen to get you banned by either node, the potential still remains that it could. Whether or not a large node chooses to exercise its outsized influence doesn't change the fact that it possesses it. ATProto doesn't fix that.

VectorLock 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>It's like if every Mastodon user ran their own server

No, it's like every Mastodon user used the same server, and all the coordination is done by one server that nobody can replicate.

verdverm 3 days ago | parent [-]

Every user in ATProto gets their own database that amounts to a tar file (technically sqlite with car export format)

This is nothing like having a single server for every user. Perhaps you are confusing Bluesky (one app) with ATProtocol the shared network? There are already independent servers and apps operating separate from Bluesky