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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon is the right model. I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most. It's the right model because it's essentially the same model as email. Yes, there is TONS of "human" work to be done to change people's minds on this, but STRUCTURALLY it's the only one that can handle things correctly.

I always found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to keep your everything permanent."

That's EXACTLY what brings MORE danger to centralization. I get that losing an identity on a thing sucks BUT WE'VE ALREADY DEALT WITH THIS WITH EMAIL, and more over the ability to lose/destroy/start over -- like with email -- is a FEATURE as much as it is a bug.

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Right, but email is really not all that great, neither on a practical nor technical level. 99.99% of all users doesn't run their own mail server so in practice it is not decentralized. I would guesstimate that 50% or more of all mail traffic is handled by Google, MS, Apple, and a few outer mega corps. And for most people Facebook, Slack, and WhatsApp are way more convenient communication methods than email.

Your criticisms have some validity, but email is in a sense objectively great in that it's the thing that "won."

I believe there's a universe of difference between ONE provider and a few megacorps plus weirdos like me who pay for my own domain; I actually think that would ALSO be a good model for twitter-esque microblogging the way it pretty much works for email.

> I always found what Bluesky was "optimizing" for to be a stupid goal, and inherently a bad idea -- namely "the ability to keep your everything permanent."

Not only that, but also having a globally (eventually) consistent view of every conversation from every server. Unlike the "message passing" model used by email and ActivityPub, this means that every server has to carry all the traffic of the whole network (i.e., to be prepared to be a centralized service for the whole world). This is the main reason ATProto is mostly centralized - every alternative server has to be global scale, and who wants to bother with that just to show exactly the same content that Bluesky Inc does?

Holy. Moly. I had no idea that this was another goal. That's ridiculous to try to do at the protocol level.

What I'm realizing, perhaps as an old timer -- projects like this seem to utterly forget the concept of "layers," despite, you know that being the whole internet, OSI and whatnot.

I remember having the idea that even this exact use case, air-quotes "twitter", could be done by simply layering something over email, e.g. you shoot an email to "posty-instance@myserver" or whatever and then some central-ish thing posts that to a public feed or whatever.

So much unnecessary reinvention.

>Mastodon is the right model. I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most. It's the right model because it's essentially the same model as email. Yes, there is TONS of "human" work to be done to change people's minds on this, but STRUCTURALLY it's the only one that can handle things correctly.

How is this meltdown at Mastadon not the exact same thing as what we're discussing here regarding Bluesky? <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195> As another said here,

>I’d argue that people lose the moment they sign up for an account, deluding themselves into believing that the problem with the last nth iteration of the same thing isn’t them.

Because Bluesky actively sells itself on the whole "take your stuff with you thing?"

At least with Masto, you know the possibility of being shutdown if you don't trust your provider, which is the same as email?

Is there stuff in bluesky that prevents starting over?

> I keep saying this and I keep being surprised that it isn't more obvious to most.

Well I read your explanation, and it's still not obvious. Nor do I appreciate the implication that anyone who disagrees with you is missing something obvious. Not the best choice, rhetorically.

Meh. Handle a little spiciness and participate in the actual topic of discussion, or don't.

Oh I did, did you miss it? You confusingly compared both systems to email, and capitalized a bunch of words which offers a reading experience not unlike walking barefoot on gravel, and failed to explain why email is actually a good thing.

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