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I’m literally moving my mastodon instance by car right now
People have containerized (like literal shipping containers that comply with ISO 668 and its successors, not just software like Docker) data centers that can operate wherever they can hook up power. Put some antennas or satellite receivers on the outside, and you might be able to literally have services running from a moving vehicle or ship.
Is this really how it works? Is that per year? Hosted? Or do you own the software and can host it on your own?
There are many types of Bluesky servers. This post is about ATProto Relays, which consolidate all the data across the network into a single location. They are necessary for efficiency, but they are extremely expensive to run. Currently, there is only one ATProto relay, but there is an initiative to launch a third-party relay.
I’m addition, it’s estimated to current cost about $500 a month just to store the contents of a relay server. this doesn’t include network or computer cost. this will only get more expensive and lead to big businesses being the only players. relays, being the “Post office” of bluesky, have the power to suppress whatever they don’t like.
ActivityPub really is “for the people”.
But can ActivityPub scale?
I feel like bluesky is just an attempt by a lot of institutional powers that lost a platform when Elon took over Twitter to make what essentially is a clone of Twitter circa 2018.
What a lot of people forget is that, even before Elon, Twitter had become super toxic. It was basically some pseduo-progressive echo chamber dominated by lazy journalists, virtue signaling politicians, and toxic hot takes divorced from reality. The moderation system was just selectively enforced based on whatever Twitter’s SF HQ thought was relevant that day.
I like the idea of anyone being able to spin up their own server and have a space for discourse. While it can be dangerous, I’d strongly argue that having a centralized private organization deciding what is/isn’t acceptable is a lot more so.
Fun fact:
Bluesky was originally started at Twitter.Kinda - the dev team was external and had already started the project when Twitter offered funding for an open protocol based version of Twitter, and selected the current team to do it (so Jack could avoid moderation duties, lol)
It’s how forums used to be, and it worked just fine. You had to go out of your way to find communities dedicated to bigotry instead of getting forcibly pipelined into them just for joining a funny cat image group.
Fuck. It’s so true to man. I literally grew up on the Internet. I could not imagine that now.
Honestly… Ya, literally any extra steps in signing up or slight bit of confusion is enough to make the average person give up and go back to whatever platform they are comfortable with. I’ve talked to people who dispise twitter but won’t even switch to Bluesky because the extra dot in the user handle is too weird for them.
Yeah honestly they should make cars with one pedal. Two is just way to confusing for the average person.
One-pedal driving is a feature in a number of modern cars.
Wait until I tell you about the cars with three pedals.
Hi I found a 4th pedal on the far left that doesn’t come back up when I press it, and my car makes funny smells now
My bicycle only has two pedals, but the seat smells funny too.
The difference is more like automatic vs manual transmission. If you’ve only ever used automatic, the mere idea of gears to push is enough to scare most people out of learning. It’s the same with servers/instances and social media
Edit: spelling
deleted by creator
Dementia.
Nah it said it timed out so I hit send again and jerboa sent it twice.
Yeah, thats a very common occurance on reddit because the platform is still held together by duct tape and prayers.
We’re not on reddit…
I know, thats why I mentioned it. Only time I saw it happen here.
Does anyone actually say this though? I don’t think anyone who joined Bluesky did so for federation - they joined because it’s not Twitter.
Yeah there’s this really weird group of people on Lemmy who are obsessed with thinking Twitter and blue sky are the exact same thing. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t get why people switch to Blue Sky or if they’re trying to purposely downplay the Nazi stuff on Twitter. I really can’t decide. Strongly leaning toward the latter.
Possible it’s that. Could just be they hate that general format of twitter/bluesky for social media. I lump them together because I’d never use either. No clue on the actual populaces on them.
You forgot, it’s also not mastodon.
I joined because it lets me use my domain as my username without having to host an instance.
Yeah that’s a really cool feature.
Perfection
Mastodon instances keep deactivating my accounts when I don’t post anything for two weeks, so yeah. Bsky it is.
I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is that BlueSky is federated in order to make their corporate infrastructure stronger and easier for them to operate.
ICYMI, someone did run a GoToSocial instance on their car https://masto.doskel.net/@doskel/113884312225881269
And snac2 on a 4G hotspot, https://snac-mifi.vea.st/chloe/p/-1225603012.1737666104
The Internet is just a fad. Wait until everyone logs into a single central server in Virginia. One database is all you need for Earth.
Ah yes, the tragedy of any federation, most people don’t want to pay attention to every little thing in their lives so when one central node becomes “good enough” it’s easiest to relinquish control for as long as it works.
I can think of one very large federation experiment in the world that went the same way.
Hell, lemmy.world is already the defacto way to engage here.
Samsung Smart fridge instance coming soon?
Unless the instance can run in Doom, I’m not interested.
Now I want to see a Mastodon server setup in a camper.
I’ll take three!
What I am unsure about is whether this is a BS or AT thing. There are people expressing interest in using AT to make versions of other popular services (like TikTok, Instagram, etc) but would they face similar costs to run a relay? If so, and it would mean you either need VC or charity backing (millionaires either way), I fail to see the point when we already have everything chugging along here on AP - with an investment of a fraction of that money we could make on-boarding slicker and help iron out other niggles that occur when you are developing on a shoestring.
As I understand it, it’s kind of both.
The Bsky Relay costs are because it’s the primary relay, sure, but any relay aiming to handle a mass amount of people, as well as a variety of AppViews, will likely scale similarly in costs. This is because to try to minimize any fragmentation of experience (as one may see with ActivityPub), AT protocol relays act as a central mirror of all the personal data servers connecting to them.
It’s baked into the architecture for the most part, despite some later developments of lighter pseudo-relays that try to reduce some of the overhead. From the outset they’ve said they only really see there being a few large-scale relays due to the operational costs.
… AT protocol relays act as a central mirror of all the personal data servers connecting to them.
That’s just reddit with extra steps.
Relay costs like 300$/mo to run and there’s a light versions you can sync too. Not exactly a blocker.
I’m interested in running one. any services you can link to that are that cheap?
ATProto is not nearly as mature as ActivityPub. Businesses are only just now launching ATProto services (Graze being among the first notable ones).
There are people expressing interest in using AT to make versions of other popular services (like TikTok, Instagram, etc) but would they face similar costs to run a relay
Most non-Bluesky App Views I know about (WhiteWind, frontpage.fyi, BookHive) just use BlueSky’s.
I fail to see the point when we already have everything chugging along here on AP - with an investment of a fraction of that money we could make on-boarding slicker and help iron out other niggles that occur when you are developing on a shoestring.
You’re failing to consider how this would benefit the shareholders! My portfolio line must go up!
