Jake Gold: Big milestone! ✅ Federated domain handles ✅ Federated feed generators (algorithms) ✅ Federated relays (event firehose) ✅ Federated app views (API service) ✅ Federated data for self-hosters (PDS hosting) ✅ Federated moderation (labeling) 🚧 Federated data for large service providers (coming soon)

Big milestone! ✅ Federated domain handles ✅ Federated feed generators (algorithms) ✅ Federated relays (event firehose) ✅ Federated app views (API service) ✅ Federated data for self-hosters (PDS hosting) ✅ Federated moderation (labeling) 🚧 Federated data for large service providers (coming soon)

Moderation is a crucial aspect of social networks. However, traditional moderation systems leave communities vulnerable to sudden policy changes and mismanagement. To build a better social media ecosystem, it's necessary to try new approaches. docs.bsky.app/blog/bluesky...

Bluesky's Moderation Architecture | Blueskydocs.bsky.app Moderation is a crucial aspect of any social network. However, traditional moderation systems often lack transparency and user control, leaving communities vulnerable to sudden policy changes and pote...

👀 Federated data as in something like IPFS?

What's IPFS‽

Internet Posting File Syndrome. It's when you can't stop posting files onto the internet, a particularly nasty subset of poster's madness.

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a set of composable, peer-to-peer protocols for addressing, routing, and transferring content-addressed data in a decentralized file system. docs.ipfs.tech

IPFS Documentation | IPFS Docsdocs.ipfs.tech The home page for developer documentation for IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System.

Ahh. I must not have heard about it since I'm from Earth.

You need to travel more often 😔

All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now…

As in using your own PDS I think

That's already on there as its own bullet point

"self-hosters" here probably means "only for small PDSes" (i.e. with the allowlist and harsh limits)

☝️

yeah this is just removing the PDS whitelist probably

You need to federate some vacation time!

Planned!

Look at you, revolutionizing the social media landscape one amazing feature after the other.

I now get why @mmasnick.bsky.social was so excited about Bluesky and AT Proto.

ooh what exactly is that last under construction bullet point?

Support for large PDS hosts (with many users).

Gosh darn 🥵

What is “federated data for large service providers”?

I’d love to know as well.. 🤔

Our Relay service isn't *quite* ready for super large PDS hosts (with millions of users).

Right on, BlueSky, Right on.

are there any other relays and app views currently in operation Right Now that aren't the Bluesky one?

no one's running one yet, though I know some people have WIPs in general it's tough to justify unless you've got your own application (which I'm hoping we'll see more of now that the federated features are approaching a more stable state?) or you've got cash to throw away towards decentralization

It works! bsky.app/profile/ygal...

Ah I see it now!

What does federated even mean 😭

Simplified, it just means Bluesky works like the web does. It's an open and shared network that no one company or person can own and control.

Oh...hey, that's pretty cool!

Much in the same way that the United States is a federation, right? Think it means pretty much the same thing in both cases. A collection of self determining parties that form a greater whole.

We're all still trying to figure that out here...

It's been great to see how far the implementation has come. Are there any estimates/goals around when it will be reasonably safe to move our primary accounts to a self hosted PDS?

Don’t have an ETA yet so best I can say is soon.

That's good enough for me! Exciting times.

How do I find out the Data Controller for all the federated services you are passing my data onto?

When you create data like posts and likes, you're publishing to the public atproto network. Only your PDS host (in most cases, Bluesky Social, PBC) has private data and there's not much of it (email, mutes, subscribed labelers and not much else).

GDPR talks in terms of "personal" data, not private and public. The official GDPR website specifically mentions An internet user name, such as a name used to post to an online discussion forum. Any social networking data, such as a person’s friend list and login information. as personal info.

www.gdpreu.org/the-regulati...

It could be any number of services owned by different unrelated entities - right now Relay & AppView are owned by Bluesky, but there can be other Relays someday which will also read from your PDS and pass the data elsewhere. There are also 3rd party services reading from Relay, like feed generators.

This slide gives doubt: no Relay in the picture? Makes labellers app-local, doesn't it? bsky.app/profile/atpr...

The AT Protocol is an open network of services that anyone can provide. We separate moderation into a dedicated service called the Labeler. Labelers produce "labels" associated with user-generated content, which clients can read to decide what to hide, blur, or drop.

(I wasn't paying close attention when I replied earlier) Actually the Relay doesn't consume labels from Labelers, it's on AppViews to do that, at least now (and maybe always). The reason is that labels are not repo data on a PDS but a separate kind of data entirely.

But the Relay does rebroadcast `app.bsky.labeler.service` records emitted by PDS hosts, and that's how any AppView can discover them.

So labels are exactly like ♥️likes. My labels/likes to your posts live in my PDS, and get broadcasted, where AppView picks them and indexes/layers them on the target posts. Then clients query AppView to see those same label/like records projected over the original records.

Likes are stored in PDS repo data so different in that sense. Labels just get streamed from a Labeler to an AppView and are kind of standalone little objects.

Important distinction, thank you. So likes are persistent and remain in PDS and have their footprint in CBOR file you can download. But labels are just in a moment, right? Lucky if you saw them at the time of issuance, but if you've missed there is no going back. Is it?

Awesome job

Thanks for sharing this, Jake. Not necessarily related to Bluesky, but: Let's have federated art selection somehow. Don't know what this looks like, but I think AI-generated art is weird and unsettling.

Awesome run! Any chance we'll see the pin post option on Bluesky soon?

Not sure about that but it's common request!