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Comment by JourneyToLunar | Hacker News Reader

Is it really decentralised? What server can I sign up to? Apart from bsky.app or am I overlooking something?

https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds You can run your own server if you like

There are also 3rd party algorithms, moderation, and interfaces you can mix and match

Also bsky doesn't suppress links to other sites the way X, TiKTok, Facebook and many other networks do. That's a more basic "federation" practice because it lets you

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-a...

There are also a number of projects that bring comments on ATProto back to the original content

Do you think WhiteWind fits into the POSSE model because your content lives in your ATProto database?

In my mind POSSE is about loose instead of close integration.

If I understand what's going on with WhiteWind it's taking advantage of another dimension of federation which the "fediverse" doesn't address, which is identity. It seems it's a blog service that is linked to my ATProto account that anyone can use so long as they have one.

I'll make the case that the fediverse style of federation has a low level of trust for this sort of things. If I log on to a service that uses Facebook or Bluesky or whatever for identity, there's always the risk that the people who run the service can let somebody else log in. I've got some trust in mastodon.social but plenty of small server administrators in the fediverse have demonstrated that they can't be trusted.

I was thinking more that they have a custom lexicon, so you could create and view WhiteWind records without using their app at all. That your content lives on the ATProto network, and more specifically in your own database which you can migrate and/or run yourself. This would seem to align with your loose coupling line of thinking

https://github.com/whtwnd/whitewind-blog/tree/main/lexicons/...

So if I am a bsky.social user the content gets stored in their database, and if I have a PDS the content gets stored in my PDS?

Yep. If you look at the repo browser for @bnewbold.net, you can see his blogposts: https://atproto-browser.vercel.app/at/did:plc:44ybard66vv44z...

My understanding is that your content gets stored in your database, regardless of PDS host. Bluesky hosts most PDS

I believe each user gets a dedicated sqlite database, or at least a dedicated repo. I recall reading somewhere about the implementation moving to use sqlite

"My" instance of sqlite that they host?

yeah, that is my understanding, if I understand your question correctly.

Of course it is all hidden from view, there is a merkle tree involved, and you probably want to use a higher level client than SQL

This talks about why SQLite and not Postgres

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/2287

Repository spec:

https://atproto.com/specs/repository

Small program to export:

https://github.com/bluesky-social/cookbook/tree/main/go-repo...

Some more interesting breadcrumbs (what does it take to implement a repo)

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/2644

Cool, didn't know that.. PDS sounds interesting.

yup, it seems like it is more mature than last time I looked. Going to be spinning up my own when I get a chance

There is a community ATProto discord to get help if you need it

https://discord.gg/VweB8gn5

It’s not really decentralised. You could run your own server, but everyone is on their server so they can pull the rug anytime they want.

There are over 2700 independent PDSes.

https://github.com/mary-ext/atproto-scraping

The number seems to double every few months. It's about as decentralized as Mastodon with its handful of servers controlling most of the network and a long tail of small and single user independent instances. The only difference is recovering from bluesky's official instance (bsky.app) dying is you would have to connect to a different Bluesky instance or convert your PDS data into a website, or port it to some other social media software like Mastodon. I wouldn't be surprised if there are already projects underway to make it possible.

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