Christine Lemmer-Webber
Remember the directive that Bluesky was given: develop a decentralized protocol which Twitter can adopt. That informs a lot of things, and has meant that Bluesky was really very ready for this moment!
If you're an ex-X-Twitter user then by god, you're going to be amazed! It's just like Twitter!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
This informs some other things:
- Bluesky's gotta scale BIG and do so FAST (scaling down: not a priority at all)
- It has to be something Twitter can adopt (of course, not anymore, but initially)
- Everything on ATProto is public (yes, everything, including your blocks btw, we'll get to that)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The thing you often get seen thrown around is "it's amazing, I had no idea a decentralized protocol could just work like that! How on earth did they solve that in a decentralized system and so FAST too!"
It's simple: all those things "just work" because Bluesky is centralized.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Actually all these critiques of the fediverse are TRUE, these are known challenges, and actually it's not really so bad, but it could be better, and at any rate, Bluesky made a major decision to simplify a lot for new users, and they have. Things seem to just work for people! Incredible!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
But here's the other thing. People have trouble with the fediverse! All those decentralization decisions get in the way, my god, you've got to choose a server, search doesn't work well (actually it could but it's a cultural thing, different topic), and worst of all:
Sometimes you DON'T SEE REPLIES!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
In every meaningful way from a power dynamics perspective *EXCEPT* the category of "credible exit" (which I am saying and agreeing is a good idea!) Bluesky is centralized.
MAYBE another big corporation could come along and host all this stuff but that's adding a Bing to our Google
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now yes, they are using decentralized techniques. Remember when I said content-addressed storage is a good idea and the fediverse should do it too? IT IS! (And as I also said, it's actually fully possible for the fediverse to do, more on that later.)
But the reality is, it's still *centralized*
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Here's an example of this problem in action
fry69: "The working search box was the second thing that impressed me on Bluesky, I thought that was not possible with a decentralized model"
Sorry fry sixty-nine I regret to inform you the reason search works so well is that it's centralized! THAT'S WHY
Christine Lemmer-Webber
We're getting to the point where we get to why I'm so damn frustrated about this and have been biting my tongue until it nearly comes detached from my mouth: users THINK Bluesky is decentralized because they're TOLD Bluesky is decentralized
AUGH! *That's* what drives me nuts.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Yes, you can host your own PDS. You can also host your own blog. But try hosting your own PDS and NOT hosting a relay or AppView and you can't do much.
Blogs are decentralized, Google is not.
PDS'es are decentralized, Bluesky is not.
Jason Self
@cwebber For sure.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
It is ONE thing to be able to block JK Rowling and for you to see that JK Rowling is blocking you.
It is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING for ANYONE to see who is blocking JK Rowling and who JK Rowling is blocking
This one is shocking to me: this seems like a vector for abusive actors
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Blocking first. Bluesky's decision to have *everything* public means that it is expected that every participating node knows *everything* about who's blocking *everyone*.
"This is consistent with how blocking works on Twitter/X" their paper says
But wait, I'm pretty sure that one's not true though
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Users, clearly, think a lot more of Bluesky is decentralized than it is, and realize less of the consequences than they should. This really worries me. Blocks and DMs are both great examples of this.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
"Oh Christine you're being sensitive"
Maybe, but there are real consequences to this. What if Bluesky/ATProto fails? "Oh well we tried decentralization and that didn't work." If people think something is something that it isn't, then that's a real problem.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
If what your *goal* is to get off Twitter, then Bluesky has solved it. They solved it by building another Twitter, and this time it's open source, which is cool! And it might have this "credible exit" thing.
But god damnit it's not decentralized and it's not federated stop TELLING people that
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now as I have said, this is a *design decision*. And remember: most users of Bluesky really *don't care*. Decentralization is not their focus, they're trying to get the hell off the nazi hellscape that Musk's toxic reign of Twitter has become.
Bluesky's architecture, actually, is great for them.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Look, I know that I've been hitting this nail on the head for a while but: the web is open, blogs are open, but Google isn't open
But you could run your own Google, in theory. You could index the web. So why aren't you?
Ah yeah. Same thing here. That's what I mean, that's why it's centralized
Christine Lemmer-Webber
That's exactly why running a Relay or AppView is expensive: you're building an addition to your house for all the world's mail.
Eeep! That ain't cheap. That's why I'm saying: decentralization also means the ability to *scale down*.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
You can imagine the physical world version of "message passing" already because you already live in this world. Messages come to your house or apartment building or whatever
For Bluesky's "shared heap" architecture, you'd have to build a whole addition to your house for everyone's mail
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The Bluesky approach to the "shared heap" is that *everything* goes into the big, centralized shared heap. Bluesky takes a "god's eye" view: it knows everything, and so knows what all your replies are, and can give you perfect search.
Secure Scuttlebutt / Nostr... well long story. Lossier, I'll say
Christine Lemmer-Webber
There is no "directed delivery" in a "shared heap" system, which means you are stuck with two things: either a "god's eye view" (Bluesky) or "even lossier about replies than ActivityPub" (Secure Scuttlebutt/Nostr)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
If "message passing" is like "mail comes to your house", a "shared heap" system works differently
In a "shared heap" system, all the mail gets dumped at the post office, and in the most naive version, you go over there and read through every single piece of mail to see which one is relevant to you
Christine Lemmer-Webber
So okay, the federation is "message passing" and like email, or physical mail. You have an idea how it works.
Now we need to get to that other thing, a "shared heap" architecture. What on earth does that mean?
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I actually think this is improvable but I mostly don't care because this isn't as big a complaint as people tend to think it is on the fediverse, the other concerns like "what instance do I pick" tend to be bigger and "oh no my server went down"
That can be improved, we'll talk about that later
Christine Lemmer-Webber
It's true that sometimes users click over to a thread and see some replies but not all on their instance's UI. There's things that could be done to improve it, but it's sometimes mildly confusing, but not so bad, and you can click over typically to see whatever else is happening, and people learn to
Christine Lemmer-Webber
On top of that we can build even more abstractions and the net result is that this is how federation works in pretty much every "federated" system I know.
ActivityPub does some extra work to help you see replies on a thread, think "letters to the editor". This is a bit lossy sometimes though
Christine Lemmer-Webber
On top of "message passing" we will build "publish-subscribe" as a second-layer abstraction
"Your ideas are interesting and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter."
You send me a letter saying you'd like to hear the things I have to say, okay, you're part of the reader list. That's how it works.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now I can use message passing to send a message to you *directly* and indeed, that's "like email". For one-to-one correspondence, that's enough.
But it's not enough for a followers/following type mechanism. But we can build it on top! Thank *you* computational abstractions!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
"Message passing" is what ActivityPub uses. It's "like email", people say, and that's true.
Actually it's even a lot like physical mail. You write a letter, you say where it should go, it gets delivered to your house.
Message passing. The world runs on it.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
So let me introduce two models of communication which we can use to analyze these two systems. It's important!
- Fediverse/ActivityPub: "message passing"
- Bluesky/ATProto: "shared heap"
Okay, cool, terms established, let's talk about them and why they matter because they matter A LOT
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Oh god Christine said "the lambda calculus" did you know she's into lisp and functional programming, what's she going to talk about next monads?!?!
I am not going to talk about monads. Not TODAY
But we do need to get a better architectural idea of how these systems work because it matters a lot!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I'll take one more note about federation which is that often time the message passing mechanism of the fediverse is often called "federation", but theoretically another mechanism could exist, but I'm actually not so sure of that.
There's a reason the actor model and the lambda calculus are undying
Christine Lemmer-Webber
ActivityPub, as it turns out, follows the actor model of computation. Okay, many people implementing the fediverse don't know about the actor model aspect of ActivityPub but I am here to tell YOU, dear reader, that it is an important thing, not a detail
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Maybe there is another way to achieve federation, but it's about the power dynamics. It's a technical immersion of power dynamics, the flow and interchange of cooperation between many parts.
So you may say, well, doesn't ATProto have that? After all, messages flow through the different parts!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now historically, federation has been achieved on the fediverse via "message passing". Actually, this is to the degree where I just always associated message passing with federation, but really, federation is about the distribution of power, creating an abstract whole in a sea of autonomy.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Here's my definition of federation:
> Federation: a technical approach to communication architecture which achieves decentralization by many independent nodes cooperating and communicating to be a unified whole, with no node holding more power than the responsibility or communication of its parts.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Okay how about "federation" now because this is a *technical term* that the *fediverse has established* and I'm kinda PO'ed about the goalposts being moved on this one.
A lot of people coming to Bluesky have never heard of "federation" before in a social network so listen up this is important!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
So hold on, let me set some terms for "decentralization" and "federation" that I think are reasonable.
> Decentralization: the result of a system that diffuses power throughout its structure, so that no node holds particular power at the center.
Pretty reasonable. Do you agree? I hope so!
Rocketman
@cwebber found it!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now to be completely fair Bluesky is clear about this *in their blogpost announcing DMs*, but just like this thread, I doubt nearly anyone has read that far (am I talking to the void? I don't know, if you actually have gotten to this message reply with "I found the easter egg" or something)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
You know what, we'll come back to "bidirectional Conway's Law", let's talk about Direct Messages for a minute because I think those are telling
Direct Messages in Bluesky, wait how do they work if ATProto is public?
Did you guess?
DMs are centralized! All DMs flow through Bluesky
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Yes, I may sometimes seem silly over here, SICP-hugging fangirl, come on we're just trying to build things that *work* over here
Look I'm a lisp lady, I know the realities of "Worse Is Better" more than most, I now the right CS designs don't win
But Conway's Law flows in two directions!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Now to be completely fair this is something that Bluesky's devs are interested in potentially changing: there is an open issue to discuss the possibility of private blocks https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/1131
What I am saying is there are architectural consequences to fundamental design abstractions
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The point is that I have *seen in the wild* people saying "Oh yeah Bluesky added DMs to their decentralized protocol" and augh
I know they aren't claiming this but it's very clear to me that people are reading things as being completely different architecture than it is
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The thing that is telling to me about DMs is that we *have* federated direct message protocols like XMPP which have been around for ages; if Bluesky wanted to they could have tacked that on pretty quickly, E2EE or not. It still would have been decentralized at least
Christine Lemmer-Webber
did:plc is centralized, and that bothers me because once again, users think something is more decentralized than it is, because they're being *told* it's decentralized
The particular way in which did:plc is centralized doesn't bug me too much but once again, few users have read into this
Christine Lemmer-Webber
For that matter, where did the term did:plc come from? Early versions of "did:plc" documentation called it the "Placeholder" DID method, that's what it stands for, to motivate changing it later
Well the docs no longer say that, it now says "Public Ledger of Credentials"
Good backronymn, but...
Christine Lemmer-Webber
So did:web is not only useless, it misleads people about the problem domain entirely, but hey it's now the most broadly deployed DID method in the world, congrats everyone!
Speaking of centralized Decentralized Identifiers, did I mention that did:plc is centralized?
Christine Lemmer-Webber
But it's ONLY EXPERTS IN DIDs WHO UNDERSTOOD THIS
Most users hear "Decentralized Identifiers" and they think they know what's being delivered, the distinction between the *spec* being called that and the *mechanism used* being centralized... you have to go digging to find that out
Christine Lemmer-Webber
And of course once the door was open to did:web, the door was open to everything! Decentralization is now no longer a requirement for DIDs. You can make a centralized DID method and call it a "Decentralized Identifier" and you're right because it implements a spec named "Decentralized identifiers"
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Confusion, on its own, is one thing. But the problem is when confusion turns into decentralization-washing.
"This is going to turn into decentralization-washing!"
"It's just to pass the test suite!"
[... time passes ...]
"Actually we like did:web now, it's a DID method everyone can implement!"
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I was kind of exiting that particular area of standards when this happened but colleagues will tell you that I, and some others, were deeply upset and troubled by this
"Sure having a nearly no-op DID to pass the test suite is helpful but it shouldn't be labeled as a DID, people will get confused!"
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Everyone in the DID standards space KNEW that did:web was centralized, so why on earth was a centralized identifier permitted for something named "Decentralized Identifiers"?
The answer is easy. did:web is easy to implement, many DID methods were not.
did:web existed for test suites.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
"Now wait Christine, didn't you say earlier that the web is decentralized and open? So therefore, did:web is decentralized and open"
Yeah but the naming system of the web is CENTRALIZED
We use DNS and ICANN (and then we add another centralization layer with TLS/SSL CAs)!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The reason actually stems from the first centralized DID method that Bluesky supports: did:web.
did:web is centralized, and kinda useless. It just works by a regex rewrite of the DID's name to an https URI and then it's retrieved. Anywhere you use did:web, you could have just used an https: URI
Christine Lemmer-Webber
The other requirement you would expect, based on the name, is that Decentralized Identifiers are *actually decentralized*.
When I got involved in DID work, that was actually the expectation of everyone. Then it was loosened. What? Why on earth?!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Before we get there, let's talk about what the DID spec was and what DIDs are. The core DID spec is an *abstract interface* for key management which provides a way of representing keys (and some other metadata) which can be created, retrieved, and updated/rotated.
So far so good...
Christine Lemmer-Webber
In that sense, I am really glad Bluesky is taking on decentralized identity, as a concept! And DIDs, in a way, are a good signal.
But there are several problems, the first of which is: Bluesky supports two kinds of Decentralized Identifiers and they're both -- you guessed it -- centralized!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Back in 2017 I wrote a whitepaper: "ActivityPub: from decentralized to distributed social networks" and it also suggested using DIDs https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot5-boston/blob/master/final-documents/activitypub-decentralized-distributed.md
I no longer think DIDs are necessary to solve this, but then and now I think *decentralized identity is important*
Christine Lemmer-Webber
A lot of data modeling I did in that time was in the W3C Verifiable Credentials group that was working on Verifiable Credentials, zcap-ld (my spec), and, oh hey, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs, the name is not my fault)
So actually I was pretty excited when I heard that Bluesky was gonna use DIDs!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I am also sad about the US House of Representatives being shitty to trans people who work there and are just trying to make it through the day
I used to do data modeling contracting for the US HoR on our legal system, true story, which sends me back to a time when I did a lot of data modeling
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Okay, I am back and I am back with tea! I made "black tea with ginger" and I put some whipped honey in it. I also made tea for my spouse
I am drinking out of an oversized mug from @baconandcoconut that says "I'm that person who likes to serve on open source program committees", which is not actually accurate but I do anyway
Christine Lemmer-Webber
And so, it is TEA TIME
Go get yourself a hot beverage. Put honey or agave in it, if you like. Dairy, or perhaps, non-dairy, if you prefer.
=== BREAK TIME! Time for tea! ===
Christine Lemmer-Webber
I said we are about halfway through and criminy we're halfway through the afternoon, I need a break to get some tea
We have a few big topics left:
- Decentralized identity, how does it work (magnets too, yes)
- The Org is a Future Adversary
- Christine critiques the fediverse
- Wrap up
Christine Lemmer-Webber
On that note, again, I am not reading the replies right now because I am (a) afraid to and (b) I'm never gonna finish this and we are a bit over HALFWAY THROUGH the analysis but I have this fear that EVERYONE is mad at me, Bluesky fans, fediverse fans
I am trying to be analytical. I am trying!!!
Christine Lemmer-Webber
But to Bluesky's credit, Twitter's DMs aren't decentralized either! And getting and shipping something that works, now for the influx of Twitter users, again... I am sympathetic
Bluesky's team is doing an INCREDIBLE JOB in that way of scaling to meet the incoming stream of Twitter refugees
baconandcoconut
@cwebber I'm so glad that you continue to enjoy that mug. And I'm also grateful that you do serve on open source program committees.
baconandcoconut
@aeva @cwebber I like "open source program committees" as a verb. Also, implies the related, "I'll be online for another hour, bc I'm open source boarding today."
aeva
@cwebber @baconandcoconut vandalize it to say "I'm that person who open source program committees" :3
Rocketman
@cwebber This thread is either a great example of science / technical communication
or one of the most epic rants I’ve ever seen
Or maybe both? 🤓
Clayton Dewey
@cwebber thank you for reminding me that it is TEA TIME!
Took me a minute because my water boiler needed refilling...
Rocketman
@cwebber Good heavens, why is my brain misreading “did:plc” as “dick pic”?
Wait, on second thought, don’t tell me.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@elplatt their paper is a good explainer, whether it's worth reading is up to you https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03239
Edward L Platt
@cwebber I want to be able to speak intelligently enough on the subject, but I only learned enough about Bluesky/ATProto to know that I wasn't interested in using it. Do you think it's worth understanding to be able to explain to people? And/or is there a good brief explainer somewhere?
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@pry yes; usenet, and atproto were called "shared heap" in my document but you could think of them as "tuple spaces"; it's not likely something many readers would know the CS history of to grok though and I already got pretty nerdy
pry
@cwebber do you mean something akin to tuplespaces?
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@aeva activitypub the specification has lisp jokes all over it
aeva
@cwebber it is a well known fact that activitypub and bluesky are both worse because they're not written in lisp 😎
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Josh Simmons
@mlemweb @cwebber Excuse me while I slide in to say you two are the best and I hope you are both having a fine Friday. Also, thank you Christine for this fantastic analysis – extremely helpful for people who care but Don't Quite Get It like me.
Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber
I can confirm, @cwebber is currently making us both tea :)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@aeva it is a phrase that was created to make its audience unsettled and uncomfortable tho https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
feeling uncomfortable with it thus is extremely fitting and a good sign
aeva
@cwebber tangential thought (I'm really tired and my adhd go burr today) the more I think about it the more weird "worse is better" feels to me because while I know it's meant to mean whether software is adopted or not is ultimately a function of the needs of real users, the surface implication of the slogan is that compatibility with user needs is not a valid primary metric for judging whether or not software is good
𐌀𐌌𐌙 :emacs:
@jonbro@friend.camp @cwebber@social.coop Bluesky's credible exit refers to the ability of another organization to host the network, including user data and posts, without needing any special access or OK from the Bluesky foundation (I think). This should be a laudable goal, but its feasibility remains to be seen.
Jonathan
@cwebber hopefully credible exit too? I guess I should just go google it.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@baconandcoconut I love the mug and I use it all the time
ESPECIALLY when I have a mega amount of work to get done in which case I put in two teabags and power through
Andromeda Yelton
@cwebber (this is a great metaphor for me because YIKES the package room in our apartment sometimes)
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@steve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concepts fundamental concepts section on wikipedia summarizes well
Steve Bate
@cwebber I'd like to hear more about AP follows the (Hewitt) Actor Model of Computation, if that's the one you mean. Just having message passing and an inbox and a thing called an "Actor" doesn't make the thing a unit of computation. Given the stated importance to AP, I don't see Hewitt's actor model mentioned in the spec or in any of the WG transcripts, so I'm curious what I'm missing.
llewelly
@cwebber
I misread that line as "Not TODAY, monads." Which is not quite the same thing.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@lutindiscret here I was talking about bluesky's decentralized identity stuff. the fediverse is also using centralized and non-portable identity. I am advocating that decentralized/portable identity is a good thing for the fediverse too. in the process I am analyzing how decentralized bluesky's identity currently is
Lutin Discret
@cwebber I don't get it. You are saying did:web is centralized because it relies upon DNS which is centralized. So Bluesky is centralized. Fair.
But, fediverse instances are hosted to a domain and my AP handle has a DNS too so ActivityPub is centralized too?
Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber
Can confirm (since apparently my job on this thread is corroborating Christine's tea habits)
bhaugen
@serapath @smallcircles @cwebber
> Every used open source repo must be part of supply chains automatically and receive funds to make it sustainable.
Agreed. Better yet, or maybe this is part of what you meant, create the repo as part of an economic network that also provides for its own material and other needs.
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
i'd prefer to burn down all those temples. fuck them tbh. we need to make it work grassroots.
the most recent impactful movement that was successfully torpedoed by microsoft was nodejs and npm growth.
the reason they were successful was money.
The nodejs ecosystem grew up and figured its not sustainable for them.
Every used open source repo must be part of supply chains automatically and receive funds to make it sustainable. Without, any movement will fail again imho
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
I agree. Or rather something is missing.
Right now all the entities that are founded to serve the FOSS community are like arcane and distant temples and mystic shrines that we devs must make pilgrimage to and pray for the right support.
These temples need to come closer to people, come down to earth where they fly aloof, and built bridges too.
This bridgebuilding is part of 2 themes of social coding movement: #SustainableFOSS and #FSDL, Free Software Development lifecycle.
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
IETF and all big standard bodies are the old way of doing things. its the wrong place to look
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
Meanwhile there are already hundred or more local-first projects and vendors who are independently building "the right way", in other words fragmenting into indvidual explorations with little cross-pollination and co-creation.
Why isn't there already an IETF local-first working group, or something similar?
Well.. someone should step up to the plate to do that, that's the wait now. Lotta work for volunteers and no funding beyond hard-tech. So this is up to vendors then, I guess.
5/..
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
But thinking about exploring technical possibilities is way out of lock-step again, speeding ahead of how one would use this shiny technology to build useful things on top of in the best possible way.
I have difficulty wrapping my head around picturing a local-first social network at scale where CRDT's p2p synchronise application state and data of all actors - people, apps, services - in the social graph between 1,000's of peers. So many options, what approach is even feasible?
4/..
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
Making it extra hard to bridge the technology adoption chasm beyond early adopters, while the decentralized ecosystem suffers protocol decay.
Re:new computing paradigms.
> "local-first p2p social networking at scale"
.. someone said.
That buzzwordy sentence might see us enter a new exciting social web of adventure, if we don't squander the opportunity.
Technical all is once again possible. Martin Kleppmann inspires with generic local-sync protocols, universal back-ends, etc.
3/..
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
Not only are the implications of the BS shared heap architecture easily overlooked and consequences come later, this has been the de-facto approach for any decentralized web technology thus far, including AP. Where hard-tech mindset and focus dominates.
And yes, the complexity warrants all that attention.
Yet there's less thought and attention payed to how DX, UX system / application / solution design should cope in the higher levels of the stack, and esp. in FOSS circles.
2/..
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
@cwebber fabulous! Stuff to 👀
You mention "Message passing" vs "shared heap" architectures and it occurred to me how fast this shift to pioneering in "decentralized/distributed solution design" space and entering entire new computing paradigms currently is.
Where once more tech is running way ahead of responsible use. Technically all is possible. Reality is we stumble ahead, no best-practices, impl on-the-fly.
We take as it were big bets on future direction, may overlook externalities.
1/..
bhaugen
@serapath @smallcircles @cwebber
I can think of two ways to approach software that wants to be part of, and supported by, an economic network:
1. find an economic network and create some software that the network will like and use,
or,
2. create an economic network at (roughly) the same time as creating the software.
We're trying both approaches and we'll see which (or both) works for us.
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@bhaugen @smallcircles @cwebber
I agree here as well.
Of course - i wanted to leave open how one might tackle the issue, but I do think that direction is the right direction.
The issue is probalby by starting it in this way, a lot more opinions are baked in, thus - what is the least opinionated way of approaching this? 🙂
That is a tough one
bhaugen
@serapath
> Every such network was at some point started using option (2.) ...but what modalities would you choose when setting it up? what are the options?
Don't know yet. With luck, I may find out.
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@bhaugen @smallcircles @cwebber
Of course, but what are all the modalities you might opt into. How exactly does the support look like?
That's more what i meant - of course, the choices (1.) and (2.) you mention seem obvious. If (1.) exists and you like it, join it. If not, you can only choose (2.) or waiting longer for somebody else to choose (2.)
Every such network was at some point started using option (2.) ...but what modalities would you choose when setting it up? what are the options?
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
The pear runtime is documented at https://docs.pears.com
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
Thanks a lot for these resources. I will have a look! 👍
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
you shpuld try keet messenger.
it has thousands of peers in rooms.
you coupd look at autobase.
its more building material to make it easy to define and design your CRDTs and related mechanisms for your app 🙂
if you ever used nodejs, just use the pear runtime to get started.
`npx pear run pear://runtime`
and follow the tutorial 🙂
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)
This discussion is very interesting. Unfortunately it is lost in fleety, threadrotting in fedi timeline history tomorrow.
To the general vision, I'd say let's make it happen.. gradually and sustainably 😅
I have ideas..
https://discuss.coding.social/t/proposal-start-a-fellowship-to-explore-the-social-web/571
And there is action already:
https://discuss.coding.social/t/wiki-vision-for-a-fedi-specification/563
Hop on, and join the fun, you are invited. 😃
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@smallcircles @bhaugen @cwebber
code is spec.
lets have AI and other smart parsers spit out what it means.
thats the only thing maintainable imho...
...and having english spec first and then implementation is just unnecessary overhead that creates additional barriers to entry
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@smallcircles @bhaugen @cwebber
...all of them are worse than nostr, which isnt yet perfect and truly peer to peer, but it gets us a lot closer and further into that right direction.
fediverse is not needed.
also, i dont believe in that kind of forum of language/spec driven process.
the process you invited me to is the issue imho.
i am all for discussions like the ones we have here. they dont matter apart from inspiring some thoughts and what then matters is what work gets done later
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@smallcircles @bhaugen @cwebber thx. i wont.
btw. i remember the huge effort you did put into dat to improve marketing for quite a while some long time ago.
thanks 🙂
i know that dat was and is an interesting unconventional, some would say difficupt project 😜
in regard to your invitation.
i am ot a fan of fediverse. i am on mastodon because of the ppl and because it was ready at a time when alternatives where needed quickly.
now it is better and worse than bsky, depending on how you look
Christine Lemmer-Webber
@steve yeah I'm well aware that it's not a *pure* actor model system, I have implemented multiple of those
It's still more of an actor model system than most things and that's still one of AP's misunderstood strengths
And re: behavior in AP, it can modify its own internal state and you can implement AP using an actor model system that way, even if the spec doesn't specify "you must modify your own internal state"
Steve Bate
@cwebber Thanks for the response. Both the original paper and Wikipedia state: "Everything is an actor". Not in AP. In response to messages, actors can create other actors and only modify their own *internal* state. Not specified in AP. Another difference is that AP actors can communicate to other actors without actor addresses (using "as:Public"). Interestingly, an "inbox" (or message queue) is not required in the Actor Model of Computation (see paper). Too many differences to list here...
Hyolobrika
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