You can host your own PDS (making it distributed but not decentralized), there is an ability to host a relay but hosting a relay requires mirroring the entire network instead of just subscribed nodes like AP, making it cost prohibitive for communities to organize their own relays on ATProto.

If bluesky is serious about decentralization then they need to make mirroring the entire network optional, allow relays’ firehoses to only to stream the activity from subscribed accounts from their users and federate with relays that don’t mirror the entire network.

[–] optimant@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Mirroring the entire network is what makes it a friendly experience for newcomers, IMO. In my own Mastodon instance I have to subscribe to a big relay (infosec.social) so that a reasonable proportion of replies from other instances I don’t happen to be happening populates into the feed.

I suppose you could say AP makes this optional, but that seems like a reasonable design choice to diverge on rather than a critical flaw in my opinion.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Mirroring the entire network is what makes it act like Twitter.

I'm not convinced that that's A) something we should want, and B) a fight we can win. Trying to recreate what already exists, using technology that's not really suited for it, feels like an uncanny skeuomorphism to me.

[–] optimant@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 4 days ago

Really good points. I put some thoughts in this comment that I think reflect your concerns too. TL;DR the architectural differences lend suitability to the social differences as well between a Twitter-alike and a more clustered, less homogeneous social feed.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/15918153

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