{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://jack.is/posts/on-bluesky/",
  "description": "Some random thoughts on Bluesky (and Mastodon)",
  "path": "/posts/on-bluesky/",
  "publishedAt": "2024-11-16T05:29:26.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:cwdkf4xxjpznceembuuspt3d/site.standard.publication/3mdrpafzz7c2m",
  "tags": [
    "atproto",
    "social"
  ],
  "textContent": "So, Bluesky is now a thing. I mean it was a thing before today, but the past\nweek or so seems to have been the \"screw it i'm outta here\" moment for a lot of\nfolks on ~~X, the everything app~~ Twitter[^1]. I made my account long before\nthis Eternal September, but I think I might spend more time on there than I had\nbeen previously. Here's some random-ish thoughts on how I feel about Bluesky,\nATProto, and how I feel about Mastodon / ActivityPub as a consequence.\n\nThe Vibes\n\nTwitter, and I mean Twitter before it turned to hell in a handbasket, had vibes\nfrom various circles. You had Tech Twitter, you had Weird Twitter[^2], etc. Even\nwith all of that though, the vibes and memes were still often in sync because\neveryone was using the same app, and had at least some of the same trending\ntopics they were aware of. Milkshake Duck, bean dad. There was always a main\ncharacter, and often you didn't really want to be the main character.\n\nFor better or for worse, Mastodon doesn't always have those vibes in my opinion.\nIt's often a little bit stuffy. I've found Tech Twitter there in many ways, but\nWeird Twitter never seemed to migrate there, even when it was first popping off\nbefore Bluesky was a thing.\n\nBluesky though has all your circles, and is picking up at a much faster than\nMastodon ever did. You've got your\ndril, you've got your\ndarth, you've got your\nWeRateDogs. Having one of those on\nMastodon was a challenge, and I don't think there was ever a time even if all\nthree of those accounts had an Mastodon / AP presence at all, were they ever\nposting at the same time.\n\nSo the vibes are there for Bluesky like Old Twitter the way Mastodon just isn't.\nBut what about the tech?\n\nThe Tech\n\nNow I was an avid ActivityPub defender (and still am to some extent) when\nATProto originally launched, and was feeling like Bluesky was too \"corporate\",\nand kind of didn't look into it much, and only begrudgingly joined.\n\nOnly relatively recently did I do a deeper dive into the pros and cons of\nATProto, and I've sort of turned around on how I feel about the two.\n\nI tried to run my own Mastodon server one time, and to be honest it Kinda\nSucked. Mastodon simply doesn't scale well down to one or two users. It's fine\nif you're on a larger server as you can share the load (shoutout\nAdam for omg.lol\nand the associated Mastodon server social.lol), but the effort I had to go to to\neven try to get Mastodon working on a server that already had services on it and\nit was not fun.\n\nMastodon also has some odd protocol design decisions that make life harder for\nsmall web, which seems oddly counter-intuitive. The most obvious one (and one\nthat I've talked about in the past)[^3] is the fact that any rich link previews\nfor any posted link (the OpenGraph info) is fetched by _every_ single\nActivityPub instance that sees that post. In other words, if you're followed by\n1,000 users on 1,000 separate Mastodon / ActivityPub instances, and you post a\nlink to your neat little blog, in the span of a few seconds, you're going to get\n1,000 requests to your website. Is this necessary? Not really, but it's the way\nthe protocol has been designed, and continues to stay that way. There's even a\ncute name for it, a Mastodon stampede[^4]. This just isn't sustainable.\n\nActivityPub is also aggressively chatty when it comes to the actual\ncommunication between servers. Migrating between servers is basically just like\nshoving a HTTP 302 at your followers and hoping for the best. You don't get to\nmove your posts, just your followers and following. Your username doesn't stay\nthe same either.\n\nATProto on the other hand is built on layers of abstraction, so your handle is\njust a reference to a permanent identifier. Change your handle, no problem. Want\nto move your account entirely from one PDS (Personal Data Server) to another? No\nproblem. The protocol has support for it from the beginning. Rather than sending\na bunch of pushes when you post something, your PDS just adds a new post to your\nPDS, and the network aggregates and displays to clients. It just feels cleaner.\nSpinning up a PDS compared to a Mastodon server is like night and day. I was up\nand running with my self-hosted test user in about 10 minutes and that was with\nhaving to tweak the install script slightly to meet my preferences.\n\nThe Summation\n\nSo which one should win? It's not that one can win and the other shouldn't, they\neach have different design goals. However, I've come around on which one is (at\nleast currently), more scalable, and I think it's ATProto. From a social\nperspective, Bluesky seems to be winning the normal user demographic, which\nMastodon always had trouble getting users to adopt.\n\nAs for my self-hosted PDS, I'm still deciding whether or not to move my current\nBluesky hosted account to it. There's currently no import path back to Bluesky\n(not because of protocol reasons, but because of giant account reasons), and\nthat makes me feel like this is a permanent commitment if I do. We'll see I\nguess.\n\n[^1]: considering that you still can't use X as a bank like was promised, lol\n\n[^2]: see dril, et al.\n\n[^3]:\n    have I overused parentheticals yet? since I used another one in the\n    following line, clearly not\n\n[^4]:\n    get it, because mastodons are like elephants and elephants stampede? I'm\n    done with the footnote overuse I promise",
  "title": "On Bluesky"
}