@cwebber remember how Bluesky talked so much about their design goal of avoiding the confusing situation in fedi where you see different parts of the conversation and different like and follower accounts depending on what instance you're on?
hahahahaha ...
https://blacksky.community/profile/jdp23.thenexus.today/post/3mtzhlfafec22
The Blacksky web app fetches all profiles from both it's own AppView and the Bluesky AppView, and uses the follower numbers from the Bluesky result, since the Blacksky one doesn't have a full network view.
Aug 30, 2026, 11:42 AM@ricci wait, hold on.
So are you saying that the poster child project ATmosphere project that supposedly is proving there can be a completely independent BlueSky-compatible service turns out to require both their own infra *and* BlueSky to work in order to work at all, including for folks only on Blacksky?
Aug 30, 2026, 12:14 PM@rysiek @jdp23 @cwebber Agree, I've got nothing bad to say about Blacksky.
The reason they're doing what I documented here is super interesting from a federation point of view though.
AP and the fedi are designed to work pretty damn well with only a partial view of the network. atproto in general, and the way Bluesky and its alternatives are built in particular, are not, because to know, for example, how many followers you have, you have to look at every single account network wide and find the ones that have a record saying they follow you. Blacksky currently doesn't have that full network view, and people are picky about wanting to see accurate follower counts, so that's why they get the counts from another party that does have a full view.
Now, a real question that I don't really have the answer to is *why* the Blacksky AppView doesn't have a full view of the network. In the general design, it "should." What we do know is that they have not fully "backfilled" all accounts that are not on their own PDS. What we (or at least I) don't know is why not. Time-wise they've had plenty of time now to do it, and this kind of syncing is exactly what atproto is built to do. Is it on purpose, possibly for cost reasons? Is there something going wrong? If they've said something about it publicly, I've missed it (entirely possible).
The outcome though, is kinda not great. Not only are things like profiles incomplete (without pulling in data from Bluesky), but some feeds (like Following) act weird too - I *think* for the same reason, but I'm not confident in that. I think what this shows, though, is not a mark against Blacksky, but a mark against the idea that a whole network view is even necessary. People, by and large, seem to be happy on it.
Another fedi thing that the atmosphere is currently experiencing, despite atproto architects asking them to please not, is blocking users by PDS, like folks block whole instances here, and this will likely lead eventually to something that looks like the atmosphere's own version of defederation. The most visible instance of this currently are that Eurosky and W Social are both European and right now have similar user numbers, but have very different user bases, and there is constant complaining, and PDS-wide blocking, between users on each.
Aug 30, 2026, 7:02 PMAgreed, the atproto stack is simple to get going with but very complex in practice -- and evolving very quickly (speaking of which, permissioned data is in alpha, that should be interesting). It also doesn't help that a lot of people used Bluesky's original implementations as a starting point, because they had a lot of implicit dependencies ... there are valid reasons for this all around but it's created a mess (somewhat analogous to how some of Mastodon's early decisions, now seen as suboptimal, have created a mess here for compatibility concerns).
A lot of this was broadly predictable. With the defederationish behavior, for example, I can't remember how many times I've said something like "what happens once there's a NaziSky?" Decentralized systems are hard! And in general it's why I see both of these ecosystems as prototypes -- the work @cwebber's doing at Spritely is much more deeply thought out.
"Require" is too strong there - the behavior I linked to is (a) mostly just cosmetic (b) can be turned off with little consequence (in fact they *might* have done so during the last multi hour Bluesky outage - I know if I were in their shoes I would have)
Maybe the best fedi analogy I can make here is: you know how we're all used to the fact that if you look at a remote account's profile on your own instance, it might be incomplete because your instance may have a stale cache, not have seen all their posts, that kind of thing? And we know (in part cause the Masto interface says so) that you might need to click through to the original server to see the whole thing? Well imagine Masto had a feature where, when you were viewing the profile locally, it quietly also fetched it from m.s and used that data as authoritative for stuff like follower counts. Yes it would mean you're hitting m.s constantly from your client, but it's not actually very important.
@adriano @jdp23 @cwebber There is also the W Social AppView, which seems to be in maybe some kind of alpha state right now. They have made the statement that it "only serves W-verified users" (verified in this context which they mean people who have uploaded their ID to a "third party" which appears not not be a third party, but W itself) - but the main reason I bring that up is that one possible interpretation of this sentence is that only returns accounts, posts, etc. from people that have been verified, and the rest of the atproto network is invisible. If this is correct, well ... I'm just sort of speechless
W Social interacts by default with the rest of the ATmosphere, but aparently there's a browser extension from somebody there that lets you block everybody on a different PDS. 🤣 And there's also a blocklist of "W Social critics" (including @elena's ATmosphere account ... a badge of honor).
The ATmosphere really is a lot more like fedi than people in either ecosystem want to admit.
@jdp23 @elena @adriano @cwebber
When I wrote this I meant it: https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3mtzlqzft7k2m
Yeah totally. I've been thinking about updating https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/ ... this part has held up pretty well!, especially the "(yet)"
"Bluesky does have some very fedi-like aspects. For one thing, there's combination of very visible LGBTQIA2S+ posters and an overall pro-LGBTQIA2S+ vibe with anti-LGBTQIA2S+ bigotry, transmisogyny, transmisogynoir, transmisandry, and tensions within LGBTQIA2S+ communities. Bluesky doesn't have defederation (yet) or FediBlock or shared intsance blocklists but it does have labelers and blocklists for individuals ... and I gotta say, the weeks-long drama surrounding the Aegis labeler's meltdown a few months ago was very fedi. Also there's lots of anti-Blackness on Bluesky, and plenty of reply guys. so Fediverse folks should feel right at home! "
@jdp23 @elena @adriano @cwebber
Apparently this is known app behavior that enables abuse associated with post editing. Despite this, every time post editing comes up (which as you know, it does frequently) the team hems and haws about the potential for abuse. Even though a super pernicious version of abuse is enabled right now, by decisions they have already made.
Aug 29, 2026, 2:55 PM@ricci @jdp23 @elena @adriano These are all things I literally called out as "hey, the reason we're not seeing this yet is they haven't actually decentralized things sufficiently"
I'd call it out again but every time I do I get people yelling at me that I'm creating division. Which I don't think is fair or accurate to the kind of assessments I do but it is tiring
Aug 29, 2026, 2:56 PMAug 29, 2026, 2:57 PM@ricci @jdp23 @elena @adriano Not to mention that ActivityPub does do a *better* job in terms of this kind of thing by having addressing and directed delivery be a key part of the spec. There's also a section in AP that says how the actor of the original thread's server can help participate in distributing replies.
But alas :\
@cwebber @jdp23 @elena @adriano I've made the point that "actually some chaos is a good sign, only monocultures and dead standards don't have different stakeholders or implementation differences to worry about" over there and it's just landed flat
This was reasonably well received though https://blog.ricci.io/what-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-about-at-protocol-and-bluesky-2wjwbg2
Yeah, that's why I tagged you on this 😀
My take at the time has held up pretty darned well if I do say so my self.
"If the Bluesky Relay and Appview went away (or put in unacceptable new policies), Blacksky could almost certainly get their own up and running – by themselves, or working with some of the communities Fraser is already hosting. "
Yep! Blacksky now has an almost-complete stack (everhthing but automated moderation for spam and illegal content), and in fact it was an unacceptable policy decision (Link's suspension) that spurred Blacksky to get their AppView up earlier than they intended to! It still isn't perfectly decoupled, but with the most recent DDoS on Bluesky I wasn't really affected on Blacksky.
"the ActivityPub Fediverse's focus on scoped-visibility complements Bluesky's panoptic all-public architecture, so there's a lot of opportunity for hybrids that combine the Fediverse model of smaller networked communities with Blacksky's innovative approach to community in Bluesky/AT Proto's "big world" flat networks."
Yep! Since then, Blacksky has introduced the equivalent of local-only posts, and the Acorn platform to host additional communities (currently getting used by Latinsky, Medsky, and others). And the AT standard for "permissioned spaces" is in alpha ... we'll see how well it works, but it's definitely a shift away from all-public infrastructure.
"while I agree that today's actually-existing Bluesky and ATmosphere are still largely centralized in some important ways, and that the combination of AT's architecture and Bluesky's initial dominance could well lead to de-facto centralization, my perspective is that focusing only on that ignores the ways that they already are meaningfully decentralized. well lead to de-facto centralization"
Bluesky still has by far the biggest usage, and the most funding, and for microblogging there's still plenty of unexpected de-facto decentralization at the implementation level (as we see whenever there's a DDoS). Then again, there's been a lot of progress here; as well as Blacksky, Latinsky, Medsky, Northsky, Eurosky, Gander, and even W Social (horrible as they are, they're also an example of decentralization), there are a ton of non-microblogging apps that have minimal dependence on Bluesky PBC.