A lot of people try and deflect from Bluesky's governance issues by pointing at the fact that you _could_, in theory, self-host it or use another instance to bypass it. In practice though, that's something almost nobody does (unlike with the fediverse), which allows the company behind it to make decisions like this for effectively everyone with no checks whatsoever.
Amazing website, I have seen this earlier and I really enjoyed it
Honestly, I'd like to chime in the fact that I always used to think that web was so just aws,google,microsoft,cloudflare hosting it and there is some truth to it but if someone feels this way, I recommend people to look at some websites like https://serverdeals.cc https://https://vpspricetracker.com/ etc and going on places like lowendtalk and even talking to some people who are vps providers and talking to them etc, it was very fascinating
Another point I'd like to chime in, being more relevant perhaps is that as I have told in other comment, bluesky itself isnt centralizing/asking for id to just use it but they are asking it for the dm functionality which is still centralized/ even unencrypted. They are working on improving it/making it decentralized but although I feel like I dont enjoy bluesky that much because of its shannon index as you showed compared to say fediverse, this message today isnt the issue
Fediverse itself doesnt know how to handle direct messages / most likely they are unencrypted too (atleast of lemmy they are that I know of)
But I am interested how the shannon index of fediverse is so low when threads app has 10s of millions of people, how does that work/not centralized too?
Also I had heard that the creator of pixelfed is working on an encrypted fediverse messaging app but I have been interested in this for so long but I am interested if you know of any such applications right now
> Fediverse itself doesnt know how to handle direct messages
What do you mean by this? Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted, I don't know what you mean by "doesn't know how to handle". Almost every platform with direct messages doesn't have E2E today, that's the same as email, twitter, Discord... basically every other messaging platform on the web besides Signal and Matrix, for better or worse.
Threads is a one way view into the fediverse and opt in too boot. Only Threads users who turn it on are visible to the wider fediverse and many instances on Mastodon de-federate from Threads anyway.
I can follow Hank Green on Threads but the interoperability basically ends there.
"(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — A review of 20 top pornography websites ordered by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost revealed that only one is complying with Ohio’s recently enacted age-verification law."
Also I think this is the reason M$ and Apple offer (or forced in the case of M$) you to use an online account to log into your local machine. I believe this will be used in the future to allow people to legally use the internet or not at all. Would a world like this mean using Linux makes you an outlaw in certain areas?
It's using "Fortnite" as a synecdoche for Epic Games, because "I have to give an age verification company owned by Epic Games my passport to use Bluesky" isn't quite as effective at revving the outrage engines, even if it has the benefit of being true. Personally, I don't think people who are willing to do that are showing themselves to be trustworthy but you might feel differently.
The good faith interpretation is that if the fortnite division had any reason to benefit from that passport info, they would be able to get it. That's not a super stretch.
So it's not fortnite at all. It's something owned by the same company that happens to also own fortnite. That is actually a huge stretch.
Imagine if I said "I have to pilot a 747 just to change the temperature of my house" (because Honeywell makes both passenger jet avionics and thermostats).
These laws were never about protecting the children, and trying to argue it's not protecting children really is just a waste of time. These laws are about knowing who wants access to what, so the government can hold that over you when they eventually decide they don't like you and need an excuse to make your life hell.
> That information breach happened after the UK instituted sweeping new “child safety” laws to protect the kiddos. Because collecting and leaking your identity is surely going to keep them safe, right?
We don't even have to speculate with scare quotes anymore - the UK government has admitted that the purpose was not child safety, but controlling "public discourse": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314642
> Well, even if your data is safeguarded properly
Not very reassuring if it's the government itself you fear.
Hmm.. so the public channel is decentralized but the private channel is not.
There is actually a technical solution to that then. Use the public channel to send/receive private messages. Every could publish a public key. Then everyone could send private messages to everyone by encrypting them with the public key of the receiver and sending them over the public channel.
Shall we try it? My public key:
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAKs9CbOAxSROEdm/+QGyDLdxITTq+YdbmIlOM0jemqKvLXinnBUDeDRSGXOoCnygXLFsm6R31szySqiVunasX/8CAwEAAQ==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
You can send me a private message by encrypting it here:
If you choose to use a centralized frontend to access Bluesky (everyone does this) and that frontend has to follow laws because it's run by a corporation... that's what you get.
Readit News
A lot of people try and deflect from Bluesky's governance issues by pointing at the fact that you _could_, in theory, self-host it or use another instance to bypass it. In practice though, that's something almost nobody does (unlike with the fediverse), which allows the company behind it to make decisions like this for effectively everyone with no checks whatsoever.
Honestly, I'd like to chime in the fact that I always used to think that web was so just aws,google,microsoft,cloudflare hosting it and there is some truth to it but if someone feels this way, I recommend people to look at some websites like https://serverdeals.cc https://https://vpspricetracker.com/ etc and going on places like lowendtalk and even talking to some people who are vps providers and talking to them etc, it was very fascinating
Another point I'd like to chime in, being more relevant perhaps is that as I have told in other comment, bluesky itself isnt centralizing/asking for id to just use it but they are asking it for the dm functionality which is still centralized/ even unencrypted. They are working on improving it/making it decentralized but although I feel like I dont enjoy bluesky that much because of its shannon index as you showed compared to say fediverse, this message today isnt the issue
Fediverse itself doesnt know how to handle direct messages / most likely they are unencrypted too (atleast of lemmy they are that I know of)
But I am interested how the shannon index of fediverse is so low when threads app has 10s of millions of people, how does that work/not centralized too?
Also I had heard that the creator of pixelfed is working on an encrypted fediverse messaging app but I have been interested in this for so long but I am interested if you know of any such applications right now
What do you mean by this? Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted, I don't know what you mean by "doesn't know how to handle". Almost every platform with direct messages doesn't have E2E today, that's the same as email, twitter, Discord... basically every other messaging platform on the web besides Signal and Matrix, for better or worse.
I can follow Hank Green on Threads but the interoperability basically ends there.
https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/Octo...
https://www.kidswebservices.com/
Imagine if I said "I have to pilot a 747 just to change the temperature of my house" (because Honeywell makes both passenger jet avionics and thermostats).
Deleted Comment
Online companies have bent over and stuck their own heads up their own asses ... and they'll call it progress, good UX and security.
Fuck em (generally speaking).
We don't even have to speculate with scare quotes anymore - the UK government has admitted that the purpose was not child safety, but controlling "public discourse": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314642
> Well, even if your data is safeguarded properly
Not very reassuring if it's the government itself you fear.
How can some party lock you out of it?
but the dm (direct message) functionality itself isn't decentralized and bluesky even mentions it/shows it that its unencrypted and centralized iirc
There is actually a technical solution to that then. Use the public channel to send/receive private messages. Every could publish a public key. Then everyone could send private messages to everyone by encrypting them with the public key of the receiver and sending them over the public channel.
Shall we try it? My public key:
You can send me a private message by encrypting it here:https://anycript.com/crypto/rsa
And then pasting the encrypted version into a reply to this comment :)