this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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ok, but, does ActivityPub have portable identity and/or content addressability yet, so that when some of those servers (which are often hobbyist-run and/or tenuously funded) inevitably cease operating their users can continue on a different server? ๐
It's a rhetorical question, and the answer is no.
otoh, atproto's PLC DID method is also not really decentralized... but at least the rest of their system is actually substantially more decentralized architecturally than AP is.
To anyone interested in reading a very informative in-depth discussion of this topic, I recommend the blog post How decentralized is Bluesky really? by ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber (followed by this and this).
So like when bluesky starts having to pay back their investors I can portable my identity to.... one of the other blueskies out there?
Yes. That's the idea.
A meaningless "idea". Might as well say BlueSky has "concepts of a plan".
There are already "other Blueskies" out there, and you can already port your identity to them.
However, most users haven't, and most users are not motivated to do so. Thus, OP created a website.
I suppose your girlfriend goes to another school too, right? Just not motivated to visit?
I'm gay.
I'm sorry your credibility is at zero with me
At no point in this conversation did I ever rely on my own credibility to make an argument.
In the blog post you linked, neither the author or myself came to your conclusion:
The blog post also says this:
My comment should have been clearer; what I meant when i said it is more "decentralized architecturally" I was referring to the data model part of the architecture as opposed to the physical server infrastructure currently operating it. The latter is obviously quite centralized still, but the former is designed for resilience against nodes unexpectedly (and permanently) failing.
Okay yes this makes sense. Although, honestly i think I'd prefer the AP method of doing it because BlueSky sends ALL content to all nodes, so it's MUCH less cost effective to join with a private server.
I run my own lemmy instance, so i know the data volume since 2023 has been probably like a terabyte or so. But, with BlueSky I'd have to account for the data volume of all users on the platform as a whole, bringing the data volume way up to tens of terabytes (a guess based almost entirely on nothing).
So it really boils down to yes I agree that AP has problems with data accessibility, but I'd prefer that over unnecessary data redundancy
I think this is a common misconception based on some critics' incorrect assumptions and back-of-the-envelope math. See the atproto overview for the different components involved, and then this post (from a BlueSky employee) "A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month" for some numbers.
If I understand correctly, to run a "full nework relay" does mean to consume all of the text posts from all known servers, but not necessarily all of the media, and not necessarily to keep data you aren't interested in for any long period of time.
Also, you can run your own PDS and/or App Views without running your own relay at all. And, you can also use multiple other people's relays.
Disclaimer: I'm not an atproto expert, and I haven't set any of this up myself.
You can design an appview that crawls PDSes directly, no relay needed.
AppViewLite does that
You can actually do it like mastodon and only take on data from specific users or PDS. Wafrn does this.