Paul Frazee ( @pfrazee.com ):
Bluesky didn't use ActivityPub for 2 reasons —
№1:
Because of the identity issue.
Once you make a choice (of server) you are locked in.
You cannot migrate freely.
(Current Fediverse migration not good enough.)
№2:
The culture on the Fediverse at the time.
There was a culture on the Fediverse of being hostile towards global aggregators.
( @reiver note: AFAICT, this is a very small minority of hyper hostile individuals.)
Paul Frazee ( @pfrazee.com ):
Mentioned MLS (Messaging Layer Security).
Paul Frazee ( @pfrazee.com ):
Bluesky practical decentralization:
• cost reduction — cheaper relays
• AppView / self-hosted Bluesky — partial sync based on follow graph — can we reach $100 per month — build smarter sync engine — indiesky
• improve user-experience
• PLC governance — moving to separate legal entity
Paul Frazee ( @pfrazee.com ):
There is a GitHub discussion about ATProto Call For Developer Projects
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/3049
Stuff for others to work on.
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ) on stage.
Presenting about Smoke Signal ( https://smokesignal.events/ ).
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ):
"On Facebook you are the product and the prey."
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ):
ActivityPub and Mastodon are effectively the same thing to most people.
( @reiver note: this seems similar to the phrase "the Mastodon in the room".)
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ):
Mentioned:
https://lexicon.community/
For an organization to create Lexicons.
In JSON-LD talk — this is similar to JSON-LD namespaces.
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ):
https://plc.directory/ needs to be distributed and P2P.
Nick Gerakines ( @ngerakines.me ) and someone in the audience —
Talking about how #Golang interfaces might serve as a good model for how software uses lexicons / namespaces.
Ex: anything that has fields 'A' 'B', etc, just works in the user-interface.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) on stage.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) set up a small fund for Developer Grants.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ):
The Rust programming-language is the hipster thing to do and be interested in.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ):
Social is not like a choice between Linux distributions. Social is something more foundational to human nature.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ):
Every app doesn't need to be a unicorn. [Some can just be useful.]
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ):
Having a shared social protocol is similar to when the railroads became the same and could work with anyone's trains.
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) mentioned a previous talk of his:
"Towards a Humane Network" (2017)
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) mentioned a previous talk of his:
"The Web We Lost, and The Web We Must Build"
https://github.com/pzwang/lostweb
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) mentioned a previous talk of his:
"Every person's attention is zero-sum."
Peter Wang ( https://bsky.app/profile/wang.social ) mentioned a previous talk of his:
He (Peter) is interested in investing in AI.
(Ignore the current AI hype. The useful stuff.)
He wants humane and human-focused AI.
Jay Graber ( @jay.bsky.team ) on stage.
Jay Graber ( @jay.bsky.team ) mentioned:
"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", by John Perry Barlow (of EFF fame)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace
Jay Graber ( @jay.bsky.team ):
"Have you heard of the butterfly-effect."
( @reiver note: you can be the butterfly who can have a large effect.)
I have gone to one of the unrecorded discussion rooms, since the talks are recorded (and I can watch it later).
Topics up to discuss:
• user intents
• AI feed
• classification & moderation
• using social-media content for research
• labeling & AI tags
Talking about ATProto user-intent first.
3 choices for ATProto user-intents:
• opt-out
• undefined
• opt-in
Peter Wang wants gov't regulators to enforce ATProto user-intent.
( @reiver note: I think that would be a very bad idea — a cure that would be worse than the disease.)
The same person (Peter Wang) is talking about licensing — i.e., requiring gov't permission.
( @reiver note: again, I think that would be a very bad idea — a cure that would be worse than the disease.)
Rabble ( @rabble ) talking about how — if you had someone else's PDS user-data on your phone, German regulation would require you to file paperwork every single time you cross a German state line. And, if you don't, the whole social-media is illegal under German GDPR law.
I brought up an issue regarding regulation —
How do you create a law that distinguishes the difference between thr learning that humans do versus learning that AIs do.
(I don't think this is a point that should be ignored — as you could end up with a cure that is worse than the disease.)
Boris Mann ( @boris ) talking about if the community made their ATProto docs CC-NC, then Bluesky company could not contribute.
Oops — unintended consequence.
Conner Ruhl mentioning that regulations is favoring AI companies with lots of money and hurting open-source AI projects that don't have money to deal with regulations.
Conner Ruhl mentioning that ATProto user-intents is giving people a false sense of security.
Bad actor won't care about them.
If you want to be private, you need to actually make your data private!
One person pointing out that an "anti-AI intent" would prevent people from using anti-spam filters, since it is AI.
( @reiver note: I have said similar a number of times elsewhere.)
One person from Flipboard pointing out that, AI is used to look for hate-speech, and look for pornographic images, etc.
An "anti-AI" intent would block that, too.
Conner Ruhl — Bluesky's still sucks a bit in terms of onboarding, because it lacks some of the AI necessary to do that.
One person saying — builders have mostly left Mastodon (and gone to Bluesky), because when developers try to build on Mastodon, they get yelled at, and maybe even receive death threats.
@reiver facts. This is why advocates of Fedi are starting to leave and go back to corporate social media as well.
Imagine being so shitty of a human being that you make open source devs go work for a for-profit company.
@BeAware @reiver I think some of that comes from the fraught feelings of the FB/X that ppl come from.
That -is-not- an excuse for treating anyone bad. Which is weird. We came to the fedi, or just any other social med', to get away from abusive behavior. And here we recreate it to the people making our alternatives.