Twitter's Decentralized, Open-Source Offshoot Releases Its First Code (theverge.com) 27
Bluesky, Twitter's open-source offshoot, has released early code for a decentralized social network protocol. The Verge reports: The system is dubbed the Authenticated Data Experiment (or ADX) and is available on GitHub for developers to test, although Bluesky emphasizes that it's incomplete. It's one of the most substantive windows into Bluesky's workings since the project was conceived in 2019 and formally incorporated in early 2022. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber writes that ADX will be the start of a semi-public development process. "We're going to take a middle path of releasing work before it's complete, but also giving ourselves time to workshop new directions at early stages," Graber says. The GitHub repository includes an overview of ADX's goals and design as well as some experimental code. "Feel free to play around, but don't try to build your next big social app on this yet. Things are missing, and things are going to change," Graber says. The code is available under an open source MIT License.
ADX isn't a single, standalone social network design. It's a protocol built around user-controlled "Personal Data Repositories" that social network developers could choose to support. Among other things, it's supposed to let users transfer social media posts or engagement between networks without eroding the networks' own moderation options. "On the Web, this data lives on the social platform where it was created. In ADX, this data will live in Personal Data Repositories owned by the user," the overview explains. Platforms can choose to only index some of this content -- drawing a distinction between "speech," or the ability to keep data in the repository, and "reach," or being able to see that data on a given platform.
ADX isn't a single, standalone social network design. It's a protocol built around user-controlled "Personal Data Repositories" that social network developers could choose to support. Among other things, it's supposed to let users transfer social media posts or engagement between networks without eroding the networks' own moderation options. "On the Web, this data lives on the social platform where it was created. In ADX, this data will live in Personal Data Repositories owned by the user," the overview explains. Platforms can choose to only index some of this content -- drawing a distinction between "speech," or the ability to keep data in the repository, and "reach," or being able to see that data on a given platform.
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Re:Difference from Mastodon? (Score:5, Informative)
I was wondering about that too.
TFA mentions it implements a new W3C standard called DID - Decentralised Identity. Interesting.
https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core... [w3.org]
They also try to implement moderation by dividing the system into two layers, "Speech" and "Reach". You post things to the Speech layer, which they describe as "distributed, locked, open". Then they have the reach layer on top, which indexes the speech layer, like a search engine. A quote:
"Moderation occurs in multiple layers through the system, including in aggregation algorithms, thresholds based on reputation, and end-user choice. There's no one company that can decide what gets published; instead there is a marketplace of companies deciding what to carry to their audiences."
Does Mastodon have a moderation system?
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The problem with this language/logical model is that it feeds into the bunk narrative that social networks aren't really peer-to-peer carrier networks but are instead platforms communicating with audiences. However it does nothing to change the real model wherein communications are between users and the network at most providing store and forward functions along
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I read it completely opposite to you.
I can say anything I like on my server - the only moderators on there are, well, me. Of course, not many people come to visit my server, so whilst I've got "speech", I don't have much "reach".
You have your own server too. You can pull content from anywhere, and if you like my rants, then you can pull them in to your "feed" (thus giving me "reach"). However, lets say you have a particular phobia about cats. You have such a problem with cats that even seeing a picture of t
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And this is where it all breaks... see you began with a valid model of me (end user) and you (end user) where I decide what I want to say and you decide if you want to sign up for my newsletter. Twitter/FB/etc are the AT&T, Verizon, USPS, etc that common carry the message between us. Pretending they are the publisher is about as valid as AOL pretending it was 'the internet' back in the da
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It is about describing political opposition and their views as 'misinformation' 'disinformation' 'extremism' 'terrorist organizations' and 'extremist movements'
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You realize I was replying to someone labeling opposing views in just such a manner and that people improperly label opposition views as misinformation/disinformation HERE on a daily basis.
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Mastodon, is a Twitter clone with the ability to network Twitter clones.
So technical people can run their own Twitter clone.
ADX Seems to be trying to make it so the data is structured n such a way the user creates it's data in one location, but can move it somewhere else.
Also means: moderation is just a filter on the user's data.
Personally I think Matrix.org already solved most of these issues. Except maybe moderation as a filter. But seems to me this should already be possible to build that way.
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FALSE
Mastadon allows federated, Mastadon hosted "categories" of what are essentially public blog spaces.
BUT each blog space is totally separate from each other blog space.
This is basically nothing like Twitter, where, one way or another you end up seeing the "viral" Posts from Twitter accounts with huge follower bases. You don't have to do anything other than browse the Twitter main page to see posts from every loud-mouth from [https://twitter.com/BarackObama] Barak Obama to [https://twitter.com/justinbiebe
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Having skimmed the document it seems like to scale they are still going to need someone to provide a significant amount of server hardware and bandwidth. Obviously that needs to be paid for somehow, and advertisers tend to steer clear of "uncensored" platforms. As such it may turn out that the popular free servers implement their own forced moderation policies, on top of any user choice.
The only other issue that jumps out is deletions. It seems like there is no way to delete other people's posts, only your
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Whenever Gab gets mentioned it's always in the context that the people that use the service are racist, bigoted, homophobic, etc., etc., etc... When I got a perma-ban from Twatter (Sarah Jeong you're STILL a fucking racist) I made an account on both Parler and Gab. When Parler got 86'd I used Gab exclusively. I've run into some nut-balls on Gab that I wouldn't want to be around in the real world (just like Twatter), but, the vast majority of people there have been friendly, welcoming, and helpful. I partici
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Mastodon, pillofort already got the lead on 'jumping off of twitter'
That said, I don't think any of these services are going to survive more than a year.
The irony (Score:3)
This new product propose everyone speak what they want, then let each decentralized network moderate out what their users don't like in accordance to each one's preference. It sounds neat as different people have different preference and we don't need to stuck together, with some complaining too much censorship while some complain not enough "parental protection".
Then Youtube gives me this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] "The Bubble", a potential future speculation filmed 7 years ago, imagining everyone living in their own online world comfort zone / echo chamber.
Mastodon? (Score:2)
How is this different from mastodon?
Just another wheel reinvented?
Diaspora*, Mastadon, et. al. (Score:2)
Decentralized utopia version 421.68 (Score:4, Informative)
It sounds like this group is trying to re-invent https://solidproject.org/ [solidproject.org]
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Solid [1] is a web decentralization project led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, developed collaboratively at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project "aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy"[2] by developing a platform for linked-data applications that are completely decentralized and fully under users' control rather than controlled by other entities. The ultimate goal of Solid is to allow users to have full control of their own data, including access control and storage location. To that end, Tim Berners-Lee formed a company called Inrupt to help build a commercial ecosystem to fuel Solid.
Decentralization Doesn't Scale (no, really) (Score:4, Interesting)
This seems stupid at first. Of course it does. You just add more servers. But where are those servers? You can't run the services on personal machines. It's a security and technical nightmare. Personal machines get upgraded, break and so on. So, the data has to live somewhere (can't count on local backup) and you are back to a centralized presence that can just add servers.
The best one could hope for is you could have stuff stored by Microsoft, Apple, Google as well as Twitter, Facebook or TikTok and you could move from one to another. Given market forces, best of luck with that. It'd be hard enough to get the needed companies to agree on a ZIP file format for bulk backup/transfer/restore of a social presence.
To use a brand new, decentralized protocol will always just be too much of a stretch with out some really big changes in how networking and computing work.
All I need is "do not suggest nor inject content into my feed for a reasonable fee to offset lost ad dollars" option for Facebook, Instagram and so on.