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@evan Eugen and Mike Masnick going at it was just one example in a long line of things going back over a few months. You've had statements too that were inflammatory towards the AT Protocol community, and they've had statements that were inflammatory to AP.

The letter did not explicitly call out any of these, as to not relitigate them or point fingers. I deliberately wrote the statement to try to avoid pointing fingers or giving fuel to any arguments, that's why if you don't know you might think it's vague.

Lauren's has been doing a great job covering all the different things happening in the community; subscribing to his newsletter will definitely make you more informed if you aren't already subscribed.

@jaz @laurenshof @ben after @evan forced the statement to be moved, I did have a few choice words, but those were never part of the letter that people were signing. They were above the horizontal line before the letter starts, and someone pointed out those words weren't necessarily good, so I adjusted them the next morning.

However, those words were backed up by statements on the mailing list.

@ikuturso @mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @stefan there's plenty of DID methods that have been developed; There are some people using did:web, there's also did:webvh — but there's definitely still more work to do in this space.

I think ActivityPub could theoretically adopt did:web or did:webvh as an alternative to webfinger.

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan there's also NorthSky in Canada that's building on Blacksky's work, and I'm sure there'll be something similar in the EU too

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan this exists in the ATmosphere — https://tektite.cc/

and a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SdmiCRYeZA

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan Blacksky already recently managed a mass migration away from Bluesky hosted PDS's for their community. Similar could happen if needed for other communities.

@tuxwise @nik I had reason to believe it was fine, anyway, it's been taken down and replaced with this statement: https://github.com/swicg/general/blob/master/statements/2025-09-05-activitypub-and-atproto-discourse.md

@fediforum I could certainly run a session on this, as long as I have moderators to help.

@jackwilliambell @j12t I'm not saying that it would be changed to support global authorities (though those already exist arguably), I'm saying that you can continue to have your own server and do whatever you want.

But I'm also saying that your server does not need to be your identity, and that data and identity can be separated from applications.

@ahltorp I never said anything about liking them or not, I said I haven't seen much from them, and consequently they are not representative, especially when there's so many other people doing amazing work within the ATmosphere.

@jackwilliambell @j12t then you literally do not need to. You can choose not to federate with anything "global" (whatever that would mean)

@jackwilliambell @j12t so that's the thing, with the ActivityPub API and you publishing to your outbox, and then that notifying others that you have, it's the same as current, but with your data in your control.

You don't need your PDS / outbox to participate in anything global, but it's certainly possible — you'd also have more control than you currently do with the existing Relays that bounce messages around heavily.

@ahltorp organisations try to raise crazy amounts all the time, especially when they thing there is sufficient hype to do so.

I haven't seen particularly much from anyone at FreeOurFeeds, and I don't think they are representative of the work going on in the ATmosphere.

@nik I'd received multiple people saying yes, and been granted approval to merge. As it's not a specification change, the 14 day CFC did not look like it applied, and it did not need all members to agree or co-sign.

@ahltorp no they don't, it's possible to run a relay for like $30 / month now. PDS's are much cheaper than that to run, and can run on like $5 infrastructure.

You can also move all your data should your PDS shutdown or go rogue, with the Fediverse today, you can only really move your relationships, not your posts, though efforts on that are underway.

@mastodonmigration right, but you've been given factual information that shows that not all of the network is centralised and that there's many efforts outside of Bluesky PBC, yet you keep going on about it.

We could talk about the centralisation of fediverse software implementations, too, because that doesn't necessarily look great either, for example Mastodon accounts for over 70% of the monthly active users within the ActivityPub ecosystem.

(source: https://fedidb.com/software?vi=list&st=active / https://fedidb.com/ )

Many moderators and server operators are really at the mercy of whatever Mastodon does or doesn't want to ship. Is that decentralisation?

We can agree to disagree.

@ahltorp well, snyway, now you have the links, you can educate yourself on how much non-Bluesky PBC work is happening

@ahltorp not sure why you're mentioning multiple completely unrelated projects/companies that aren't even in the social web space.

Bluesky doesn't have lock-in effects, arguably ActivityPub as widely implemented today has more. There are third-party implementation in multiple other languages, for instance Blacksky (blackskyweb.xyz) which is a fairly complete implementation in Rust

@mastodonmigration this erases all the hard work of the Blacksky team, along with all the other independent applications that exist like tangled.sh, smokesignal.events, bridgy fed, etc.

Yes, majority of PDS's are currently on Bluesky's PDS servers, however, that's not the full picture, and over time that picture will change.

Additionally, if we look back at ActivityPub adoption, that was originally quite centralized with Mastodon in many ways, and so many building in the ecosystem try to aim for compatibility with Mastodon.

So really, it's just a matter of time and age accounting for the differences.

@ahltorp sorry, what?! (Wasn't aware of that other usage)

Their website: https://www.blackskyweb.xyz/

Source code: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky

A podcast about it: https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/blacksky-rudy-fraser/