To clarify:

Though the group currently calling itself Anonymous that just published all this … derives the aesthetics and what not from stuff that arose on 4chan in the mid/late 00s…

They almost certainly have nothing to do with 4chan going down.

4chan was taken down by a group of people that used to post on a 4chan subboard, which was removed… and then they started their own community ‘Soyjack Party’.

Which, ironically, is a very similar story as to why 4chan even exists: m00t used to post hentai and loli on SomethingAwful, and then that subboard got shut down, m00t and other frequent posters there got banned, and then they made 4chan.

Like… I stopped using 4chan almost two decades ago now, when m00t made a big announcement post, which later disappeared, stating that as a result of increased media scrutiny and a number of high profile crimes that were connected back to 4chan posts… well m00t said that he was cooperating with the authorities.

I can’t prove this, because … two decades ago, and the announcement was only up for … less than 24hrs… but yeah, as the SoyJack Party hack of 4chan has confirmed, it was obvious that 4chan was/is a shitshow joke of an operation held together by ducttape and fishing lines.

For fucks sake, their versions of PHP and MySQL were like 12 years out of date and had numerous, extensively well documented security flaws.

Yes but you also just said ‘Not true’ when I said ‘migating an account to another PDS would complicated.’

I do grant that I … could be interpereted to have overstated the ability of an ActPub user to migrate instsnces… though I did just say ‘it would be complicated’.

It is arguably complicated, so complicated it is impossible.

And I did try to make it clear that getting into that level of features/capabilities of ActPub, I was not sure, and that perhaps a lemmy mod or admin could clarify.

I am not saying you said this, but the whole problem here is that a lot of BlueSky users and fans consistently keep acting like BlueSky has all these different kinds of capabilities and features now, working currently…

… when at best, they are planned future features, and at worst, they are an intentionally misleading early access video game style roadmap, with a bunch of super enthusiastic but low technical knowledge early adopters who basically are just enthralled by buzzwords and hope… and those fanboys/girls will just be strung along by promises the devs don’t actually plan on ever implementing, because they don’t actually have much incentive to… and then years later the early users will either realize they’ve been duped, or become delusional, hardcore uberfans, bereft of logic and perspective.

I don’t even know if such a community exists, or what instance(s) it would be on if it/they do exist… but uh… if one does somewhere, I guess you could submit it?

I am assuming it would follow the basic rule of … you can’t submit your own posts/comments lol.

It is very, very clear, reading your other comments that you are incapable of grasping the concept of a decentralized or distributed network paradigm.

Maybe go look at how torrents work, how I2P works, how a MeshNet works.

Other metaphors would be a guerilla warfare network of cells vs a top down conventional hierarchy where individual units are allowed a degree of autonomy within certain bounds.

The AT Protocol system is not capable of operating in a non centralized manner.

Your only option is to point your PDS at either the official network of Relays… or set up your own system of Relays, and point your PDS at that.

Likewise for an AppView, you can either point yours to sync with the official network of Relays… or another network of Relays.

There is no meshing, where nodes on the mesh control what other nodes they interface with… there is only branching or forking, setting up an entirely parellel structure, that is not capable of synchronizing with the original.

Beyond that, you still have not addressed that you said a blatantly self contradicting statement; that people self host relays, but also they don’t self host relays because that is costly and the self hosted relay code available to the public is experimental and mainly used for reasons tangential to the core function of a production ready relay.

And for the I think third time I have asked this, not of you personally, but in this thread:

Who is hosting a Relay other than BlueSky?

Can you provide evidence any independent person has figured out how to do this and is actually doing it?

I would gladly accept new information and adjust my own understanding accordingly, but all I have seen in this thread so far is multiple people claiming that there are self hosted Relays, and then either providing no evidencd, or showing that they don’t understand the subject and post a link to a guide to, or example of, somehow setting up an AppView or PDS.

I know it isn’t linux, but if anyone ever figures out how to make TempleOS internet capable… and then browse porn on it… I think that might be a candidate for greatest degenerate yet also genius tech nerd of all time

I mean…

⚠️ Warning ⚠️ ️

Account migration is a potentially destructive operation. Part of the operation involves signing away your old PDS’s ability to make updates to your DID. If something goes wrong, you could be permanently locked out of your account, and Bluesky will not be able to help you recover it.

Therefore, we do not recommend migrating your primary account yet. And we specifically recommend against migrating your main account if you do not understand how PLC operations work.

Also, the Bluesky PDS is not currently accepting incoming migrations (it will in the future). Therefore this is currently a one-way street. If you migrate off of bsky.social, you will not be able to return. However, you will be able to migrate between other PDSs.

This is literally the first thing you see on the page you just linked.

And it was last updated 7 months ago.

So I think you mean to say that account migration in BlueSky is currently in development, and is problematic and essentially experimental, and maybe sometime in the future this will change but also maybe not, who knows.

You are right though that is not possible in ActivityPub.

Thank you! I hope your day is pleasant as well =D

… Hopefully the setup process is a bit more streamlined now, lol.

Also, this is KSP 1.

KSP 2 kinda… failed to launch, you might say.

Also… I haven’t messed with the Realism Overhaul in a few years, but uh… you’re gonna need a fairly poweful machine.

God speed, try not to instantly kill Jeb lol.

Ok, noted, you are a fanatic who does not understand that the statement of yours I replied to literally is a logically impossible paradox.

Take a few deep breaths and … maybe try to reformulate your words.

All that has to happen for a ‘Blackwall’ analagous scenario is enough undersea cables get cut/sabotaged.

Then you’re looking at a much more localized internet, where actually having a reliable or high bandwidth connection to a very far away place requires you to either have an insane jerry rigged solution, or a lot of money to pay for an increasing valuable, still existing intercontinental line.

Of course, we very much could also end up with a more intentionally constructed type of widespread firewalling as well… they already exist.

China’s great firewall, tons of other countries that have internet and/or social media killswitches…

… And we are already seeing massive bandwidth from corpo AI scrapers trying to harvest data to train their AIs leading to people making new ways to detect, block, and or trap them in infinite loops, to save their own servers from going down.

… As soon as you find documents from the founding fathers addressing best practices and policies regarding cybersecurity, let me know.

Self hosted relays do exist, they’re just not open to the public (mostly used for archival / development currently)

Blorgbob exists, and people use their own blorgbobs, but also people are not allowed to use blorgbobs, and they are only in archives or experimental development.

… Please tell me you understand you have just said completely self contradictory nonsense.

Leaving the actual truth or falsity of your claim aside… what you have just stated is a logically impossible paradox.

Backfill means that the AppView has to request and download and then be able to present… the entire history of all posts from everyone on BlueSky.

If you are familiar with crypto, its like how you have to download either the entire blockchain, or nowadays, a trimmed down/compressed version of it… before you can interact with it.

If you are familiar with any kind of database like a forum or something… when migrating, you have to actually import a copy of all the preexisting users, posts, forum structure, posts, etc… if you want the new forum to actually contain what the old forum did, before you allow people to start making new posts.

When this rando is setting up his own AppView… he is asking the BlueSky Relays to give his AppView all the older posts, before the AppView is caught up, and can then begin to function in realtime with the rest of the network.

I don’t mean to be rude, but if you genuienly don’t know what ‘backfill’ means in this context, it is very likely you have essentially zero experience with or knowledge of systems that involve large databases … it is a very common and well known term to anyone with basically over a year of doing most kinds of db admin/server admin work.

… I get the jokes, but I really, truly was just trying to use a real world example case to illustrate a functional aspect of the system, and not just … you know, bring up all the drama.

… Yeah, as 73ms already pointed out… that first link is just someone setting up an AppView.

To truly run an independent BlueSky system… you would have to run your own PDS, your own Relay, and your own AppView.

Your second link does actually have code and a rough setup guide to running your own Relay, so I will give you thanks and credit for showing that at least it is possible to theoretically do this…

But you say ‘several people run their own Relays’ and then do not evidence that.

The Relay config here is just… how to host your own Relay that would act as a member of BlueSky’s Relay network.

Basically, that is just how to transfer some of BlueSky’s server hosting costs … to yourself.

If you set up a totally independent Relay… could it even interface with BlueSky’s Relays?

As far as I can tell: No.

It would be totally independent… a parellel network, not a federated one that interfaces with the rest of BlueSky, and is thus not actually able to ‘federate’.

What… you would have to do… is set up your own Relay, connect it to basically all the other preexisting PDSs you want to include, then also run your own PDS, then also run your own AppView, and connect it to your own Relay… or just trust someother person running their own AppView, or just trust the official ones.

(But… I think that to connect your own Relay to preexisting PDSs… that would require those PDSs to… disconnect from the mainline BlueSky Relay system… because they can only point to one Relay system at a time… so that’s kind of a problem.)

That would be the only way to make your own … sort of branch of the BlueSky system, that at least in theory might be resistant to centralized censorship from BlueSky.

And again… I am not aware of anyone who has yet done this, or if it would even work at a technical level.

When dealing with software and tech companies, a good rule of thumb is that a planned or possible feature… doesn’t actually exist untill its been provably demonstrated to exist and work.

Yes, you can host your own PDS server, that is known and stated.

The entire design of a lemmy instance is meant to be more ‘self contained’, as I already mentioned. This is what enables the federation network to organize in a ‘many to many’ connection style, as opposed to a ‘many to one’.

A lemmy instance roughly has many/most of the capabilities of a PDS, Relay, and AppView… all rolled into one.

This is a fundamental difference of a ‘true’ federation model… all the members of the federation are capable of operating independently.

If you are in a federation of unequals, with built in dependencies… your ‘federation’ is much more like a king with vassal states, not a voluntary association.

Yes, migration of a user account from one instance to another would be complicated… but … so would migrating a user from one PDS to another.

I don’t even know how you could fully ‘migrate away from BlueSky servers’… when BlueSky run the only Relays.

Also, many (most?) actual client apps for viewing lemmy, posting on it, etc… they pretty much hold a lot of your particular user customizations, at least as it comes to visual theming, independently, locally, not even related to the actual user account on an instance you are using.

They also support easy switching between different lemmy user/instance accounts…

…

Also also, as far as I am aware… if you have an account on a lemmy instance, you can delete your account and this will wipe out all of that account’s posts and comments across the whole fediverse, aside from modlogs and internet archive web snapshotting type stuff.

I … think you can also export your own data as well?

Not 100% sure on these last two parts, maybe an instance admin or powermod could chime in… but I think this is correct?

Really?

Like, this is genuine news to me, if its true.

https://github.com/itaru2622/bluesky-selfhost-env

I can find tools like this, that help you set up a good number of elements of BlueSky… but the only mention of the relay (apparently also known as BGS, for… BigSky?)… is that you connect to it… not run your own.

Beyond even the price point and required server hosting heft… where, where is an actual ‘here is how to download, configure and run your own BlueSky relay’?

As far as I am aware, all there has been is a mix of vague, noncommital, and hopeful musings of various people suggesting that one day maybe it will be possible to do this, hopefully they’ll support that soon…

… which to me at least, very much reminds me of fanboys/girls of a video game just coping with the fact that their favorite video game with a massive bug or lacking a major advertised feature… will just have it fixed one day… even though the devs have been radio silent about it for a year.

i was asking in good faith, and i can’t thank you enough for providing such a thorough and effective answer.

I just wanted to clarify, as… at least for myself, even here on lemmy, discussions about this have been going on for at least 6 to 9 months, and … a good number of people have not been engaging in those discussions in good faith.

But yes, I am happy to answer, glad you found it helpful!

Apologies for the hilariously simplistic graphics… i literally just drew them on my gas station tier phone haha. But I think they get the point across.

it almost sounds like bluesky is just a baby twitter in the making, and it’ll probably end up the same way. i’m really digging the actual fediverse thing, mainly because it seems to be one of the only places that money and vc bs hasn’t been able to touch.

Yep, it pretty much literally is twitter 2.0 (3.0?), was founded by Jack Dorsey, … its not even a non profit, it is a for profit ‘benefit’ corporation, which basically just means its corporate bylaws claim that it attempts to benefit the public in some way.

IE, literally the corporate / legal version of virtue signalling… it is still ultimately a for profit corporation that will put profit and growth above everything else… and hopefully by now, people understand how that literally always turns out.

Like a toilet bowl, mounted to the ceiling.

As I see it the only advantage is that it is not run by Elon Musk.

And by ‘advantage’ I mean the ‘advantage’ of using a corporate product that, so far, is doing its best to drive people away from an actually censorship resistant Fediverse, using inclusive rainbow capitalist language to lure in the large majority of people who are not tech savvy enough to realize they are basically lying to / misleading them.