Happy birthday – and thanks to everybody involved, really great progress over the last three years, looking forward to the next chapter!

Great point!

Not necessarily – I didn’t mean to sound defeatist! VPNs are a thing (although they’re talking about restricting them in the UK), and there will always be networks run by admins who risk breaking the laws, and at least in Australia teens seem to be quite good at getting around the age verification for their social media bans so we adults can probably figure out ways around it too. I just meant that fedi’s relatively-small size isn’t a protection, and some point some governments will start to go after fedi instances.

In general though I think we in fedi need to take a much more active role in fighting back against age verification bills and other attempts to surveil and censor the internet, rather than just hoping we can continue to fly below the radar. https://piefed.social/c/fediverse@piefed.social/p/2230542/how-can-fedi-help-fight-bad-internet-bills has some more thoughts on that.

A lot of the laws aren’t limited by the size of the site, or whether or not it’s non-commercial, so instances with users in some places with age verification laws already do; Australia, Mississippi, and the UK (with the Online Safety Act) are three example. I haven’t heard of any examples of instances getting warnings about this yet – although a couple instances with content that might be considered unsuitable for minors have geoblocked the UK to avoid triggering the Online Safety Act – but it’s only a matter of time.

One thing the article leaves out is the timetable for FISA Section 702 reauthorization. The deadline is March 2026 (although in the past there have been short-term 30- or 60-day extensions); there’s a chance they may try to sneak something in as an amendment to the “must-past” NDAA bill over the next month or two, but Mum’s the Word on FISA Section 702 Reauthorization suggests that’s currently unlikely. Whatever the timeframe, FISA reauthorization is a place where grassroots activism can really make a difference, and I’m sure there will be an active campaign here!

Also agreed that sharing should be opt-in (and here on fedi as well).

In terms of Blacksky’s approach to private data, Rudy shared this earlier today https://blog.smokesignal.events/posts/3lvehxge7oo2a-atprotocol-record-hydration-building-privacy-aware-views … the working group on private data is having its first meeting this week, and there are a couple of other proposals as well, so it’ll be interesting to see how things converge. Bluesky has said they’re going to add it to the protocol but the timeframe isn’t clear. My guess is people will go ahead with off-protocil implementations initally and plan to adapt once it’s standardized (famous last words).

Yeah, Bluesky’s moderation really is abysmal. Somebody I know got suspended for 24 hours for saying something about Charlie Kirk and when they came back immediately moved their account to Blacksky … and who can blame them!

Right now blacksky.community is an app that uses Bluesky’s AppView, which in turn uses Bluesky’s Relay. They’re working on their own AppView (which will have the equivalent of local-only posts) and that will use their Relay. I didn’t mean to undercut your point though, they often talk about PDSs as analogous to web pages, so your “different search engines” analogy is very accurate, it’s just not quite there yet.

And good point about Hubzilla … if I recall correctly either in (((streams))) or Forte (or maybe both) MIke implemented the nomadic identity over ActivityPub as well. It’s really frustrating that AP development in general hasn’t paid more attention to his ideas! If you’re thinking about this kind of stuff for Lemmy, it’s also worth looking at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-ef61-portable-objects/3738

At the app level (blacksky.community / bsky.app on the web) it’s more like TweetDeck/Twitter: different client interfaces to the same underlying network. That’s not a perfect analogy though because Blacksky makes different moderation decisions than Bluesky.

But also, people using either of these apps can store their data in arbitrary PDSs, so when people migrate their accounts to the Blacksky PDS they can use either of the apps. So there it’s more like Piefed/Lemmy – different implementations of the same protocol. Again though it’s not a perfect analogy because the AT Protocol architecture lets you migrate all your data between PDSs seamlessly, and so far only a few niche ActivityPub implementations support that (Hubzilla et al with nomadic identity, ActivityPods using Solid Pods).

It’s not a silly question! I’d describe it more as an alternative to Bluesky, not really a competitor; all of the infrastructure and algorithms we’ve designed are fully interoperable with the rest of Bluesky. Rudy Fraser’s 🔭🖤🚀 Social media’s next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable is a good overview, including a description of the approach to decentralization

And no, it’s not only for Black people. That said, as they get farther down the line they’ll have some areas that are Black-only (using an approach that’s based on fedi’s local-only posts).

Spreading false voting information – like the example in the article about fake phone calls saying polling places are closed – is a crime in the US, whether or not it’s online, it’s just hot particularly well enforced.