pardon my ignorance, but how is a de-centralized and de-federated online community bound to such annoyances?
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3lmuz3nr62k26
Email from Bluesky in the screenshot:
Hi there,
We are writing to inform you that we have received a formal request from a legal authority in Turkey regarding the removal of your account associated with the following handle (@carekavga.bsky.social) on Bluesky.
The legal authority has claimed that this content violates local laws in Turkey. As a result, we are required to review the request in accordance with local regulations and Bluesky's policies.
Following a thorough review, we have determined that the content in question violates local laws in Turkey, as outlined in the legal request. In compliance with these legal provisions, we have restricted access to your account for users.
They're still a corporate entity, and they still want access to markets to make money.
i think i'm conflating lemmy with bluesky. can't anyone just host an instance? is it open-source? sorry, i should probably just look into this myself.
I think Mastodon is closer to Lemmy as a Twitter alternative over Bluesky.
However, this does a good job explaining the differences:
thanks - you've got it. i forgot about mastadon. ironic, really, since it's the resource that everyone will be scrambling for in a few days. mark my words: something horrible is going to happen this weekend, and it will change your life forever.
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Bluesky claims to support federation while being designed to make it entirely impractical and is currently entirely centralized.
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For those who don't know, Bluesky isn't really federated. The only way to host a non-Bluesky instance required 1TB of storage in July 2024, and 5 TB of storage in Nov 2024. Could be way more than that now.
You basically have to be a company to federate into the ATProto (Bluesky) ecosystem. You can't just "stand up an instance".
Lots of detail: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
(I know you've already realized that you were conflating Mastodon with Bluesky, I'm putting this here for others who come along so they can get the facts).
That’s not an outlandish amount of storage. You can get more than that for $200.
At the rate it's growing, it's going to get outlandish very quickly.
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Assuming you are serious:
Bluesky is ... arguably 'federated', but it is centralized, not decentralized.
https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20241128-bluesky-decentralization
Their model (AT Protocol) relies on a central, authoritative ... 'Relay', that all 'federated' users and posts on federated PDS (personal data servers) must go through, to actually reach the 'AppView', ie, what all other people/users can actually see.
So, this is not a many to many, tangled spider web of connections, the way lemmy, and other parts of the actual fediverse are.
It is a top down hierarchy, a pyramid.
And Bluesky runs the Relay, the chokepoint.
If Bluesky cuts off the PDS your account is on, everyone on it is now gone.
The actual fediverse, Mastadon, Lemmy, etc, runs on ActivityPub.
In that model... every instance is essentially self contained, and every instance that is federated communicates with every other instance that is federated.
Each instance can decide what other instances they want to federate with... and users on each instance can personally block even more other users, communities, or entire instances if they choose to, but that only effects what that particular user sees.
That is what you call decentralized, approaching, or also having elements of being 'distributed'.
To bring up an example without getting into the drama that led to it:
The 'Tankie Triad' of ml, lemmygrad and hexbear have had a number of other instances defederate from them.
But, there are also a good number of instances that have not done so.
So that means if your account is on hexbear... you can't see or post on an instamce that has blocked your instance.
But, if you (a hexbear...ian?), post on a neutral instance... users on that neutral instance will see the post.
But but, if a user from an instance that has defederated from hexbear goes to to the neutral instance... they will not see the hexbearian's post.
This sounds complicated, and it is, but ... thats the whole point of a decentralized system. It is more complex in the abstract... but the entire system ends up being more robust, more adaptable, more customizable... without a central authority in direct control of the entire system.
i was asking in good faith, and i can't thank you enough for providing such a thorough and effective answer.
it almost sounds like bluesky is just a baby twitter in the making, and it'll probably end up the same way. i'm really digging the actual fediverse thing, mainly because it seems to be one of the only places that money and vc bs hasn't been able to touch.
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You're right that Bluesky isn't federated, but it most definitely is centralized.
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Funny as I got downvoted to oblivion for saying Bluesky was not really decentralized.
A decentralized service like Mastodon will have the same issues when governments are knocking on the door. The turkish government totally can force all those small turkish instance admins to defederate instances who are not reacting to legal threats. And all those small admins don't have the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle against their own government
The flip side of that is that instances large and small outside of the influence of the government can do as they please and people can use other means, like VPNs, to access them.
But they can use some other instance. With centralized platforms the issue is that they want to do business everywhere. Russia threatened to arrest Google employees in Moscow, for instance. Even without such threats, they want to have access to local markets. That isn't a concern for some instance in Ireland that is supported by donations.
That's the entire point, right? Just use an instance that's in a country that's not closely allied with Turkey. Everyone knows that, right? Right?
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Bluesky is a for-profit company that is capitalizing on the Xodus. They may be better for the time being, but the march for more and more profit will end the same as it always does. Enshittification. They are not the good guys, the fediverse is.
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And now you know why corporations and politicians don't use mastodon
Wow, all the bsky lovers are now facing the reality. None of the corpos have user's interest in mind. They only care about numbers: number of active users' data that they can sell to the highest bidder.
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Fake Fediverse is fake.
Fuck Turkey and fuck however they want it spelt.
Re: "(...) fuck however they want it spelt."
As a Turkish person, I'm with you on this.
If the Turkish government wants you to refer to Turkey as Türkiye, then they shouldn't be allowed to call the US "Amerika Birleşik Devletleri": they should be required to pronounce it United States of America.
Let's see how they like it then, lol. "Yunayıted Sıtets af Amerika", hah.
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Don't replace X with Bluesky! Go to Mastodon and other Federalised platforms. That is the only way to escape corporate-sponsored fascism.
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So. When ever I post my families genocide story as Armenians in The Ottoman empire. There’s always a Turk to call me a liar online. Then they get you banned from the sub because they have people injected into mod teams. Pretty disgusting experience. Also happened with Azerbaijani posters to. Interesting how deep they injected themselves in Reddit.
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I can't believe it! Someone who chose to use a centralized platform instead of Nostr was banned?! It's so shocking!
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https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3lmvrdmkdnc2d
Censorship requests from the Turkish government are only being applied in the official bluesky app. Third-party apps continue to show censored posts. Feels like that might be relevant
Did anyone actually expect Bluesky to be different to any other corporate-run social media platform? What was the point of jumping from one to another?
Just more proof that FOSS and proper decentralisation (yes I know that Bluesky is technically federated but this halfway house shit they’re doing is not proper decentralisation) that are the only things that will save us.
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If only there was a decentralised alternative, that was more or less immune to this… LOL
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But it's a decentralized service! /s
I've been on the fence about joining Bluesky but I think I am not going to bother.
The relevant question here is if you are in Turkey because if you aren't this is a much bigger deal than if you are.
Also, does "restricted access to your account for users" mean for all users or just for those in Turkey?
Even if it’s a Turkey-specific restriction for users based in the country, it nonetheless shows that Bluesky is willing to comply with government requests.
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Watching how quickly all these companies crumble, it really is astonishing the Obama and Clinton didn't take on Fox News for all it's bullshit.
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Because they are a company and a board of ethical leaders to ensure it doesn't turn to shit is no guarantee it doesn't turn to shit. BlueSky is something a corporate mindset person creates because that's the only thing they know. Have a problem to solve? Needs company + board.
I believe there are laws in the EU that would be violated by many rightwing posts (such as glorifying nazis in Germany). The litmus test would be if a complaint about these violations would cause an account to be banned.
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How much you wanna bet the trump regime will force them to start removing people too ?
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What's the point of Bluesky if they're just going to bow before authoritarianism?
There isn’t one as far as I’m concerned. People moved from one corpo social media platform to another corpo social media platform thinking that the person running the former platform was the problem, when the entire model is designed to prioritise profit over human expression.
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For some reason people expect things from Bluesky but people forget Bluesky is basicly just new Twitter. There's really no reason to expect "better" from this new platform.
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