As I see it the only advantage is that it is not run by Elon Musk.
And by ‘advantage’ I mean the ‘advantage’ of using a corporate product that, so far, is doing its best to drive people away from an actually censorship resistant Fediverse, using inclusive rainbow capitalist language to lure in the large majority of people who are not tech savvy enough to realize they are basically lying to / misleading them.
That is literally how I read it as well, BlueSky is farming out server load to enthusiastic and dedicated users, while also just going ham on the PR / propoganda / marketing making themselves appear to be something they are not.
Unless I missed something and BlueSky is actually letting people run and custom configure their own relays at least semi independently… yeah, they’re basically being quite shady and misleading.
I was oversimplifying a bit such that it wouldn’t be overwhelming to a self-described uninformed person asking for an explanation.
Yes, there are multiple actual relays but they functionally constitute a single layer or class of components in a birds eye view of the whole system.
As far as I am aware, no one other than BlueSky runs the relays, or has the code to do so.
If I am wrong about that, I would appreciate a source indicating such.
Does anyone other than BlueSky actually run a relay?
On the bright side, at least our upcoming American cyberpunk dystopia is now more likely to feature a greater prevelance of lone wolf, broke, two bit hackers as a semi-viable lifestyle/‘career path’…
My experience as a person who has a lot of experience working with computer is basically thus:
When you solve a problem for someone, you are a magician.
When you can’t, you are completely full of shit and know nothing about tech and your entire life is a lie.
When you tell someone ‘hey I wouldn’t do that’, your experience and expertise means nothing if what you are suggesting would mildly inconvenience them for 10 minutes, or takes more than 30 seconds to explain why it is a bad idea.
When you tell them ‘hey have you tried this?’ your experience and expertise also means nothing if you cannot do it for them and also make it so it never breaks again, and also they will keep doing the thing that makes it break even though you explained to them how to not do that thing that makes it break.
… I may as well just start an IT flavored Rodney Dangerfield comedy routine, it would be much more fun and less stressful than always being a db admin/data analyst/backend dev/frontend dev/whatever else my job title now apparently includes.
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.
Technically, its complicated, but basically, NHTSA both sets the standards by which a manufacturer should assess whether or not to do a recall… and they also issue recalls themselves.
They do investigations, compile data, and if it looks like a certain make and or model has a serious flaw, they’ll issue a recall if the manufacturer hasn’t.
If they are gutted, specifically as they have been by Musk, well then there are no more people actually investigating self driving capabilities and onboard computers, there are no more updates to any of those policies, and nobody issues a recall for such a category of defective vehicle.
You are thinking of this:
Yep, my first thought on seeing this was … ‘and who will be enforcing this?’
No one, the answer is no one.
While the information about Elon’s history of making false claims, hardware and software details are accurate… there is no official body that has ruled as the title of the article suggests.
A more accurate headline would be ‘should’ not ‘has to’.
There is basically zero chance that this guy’s desire would be effectuated in the US … as the US agency that regulates cars… was recently gutted by Musk’s DOGE idiots.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/car-safety-experts-at-nhtsa-which-regulates-tesla-axed-by-doge/
Maybe the EU or China or other governments could… legally agree with the author, and order a similar command…
But uh yeah, the Trump admin is currently blatantly telling the Supreme Court to go fuck themselves, the law will soon be whatever the hell Trump and his orbiters want it to be, has already told the entire world to go fuck themselves and also beg and grovel at the same time.
Elon would just… continue doing whatever the fuck he wants, even if another country mandated a recall/replacement.
Sorry, but uh yeah, we have a fascist government now, the rule of law is dead, the law is now whatever the fuck the Trump admin says it is.
… Delete… all… IP law?
So… just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie production/consumption… to an optional donation model?
Fuck it, why not.
I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA… and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.
Don’t forget they also spun up their own ‘production studio’, and… it mostly produced basically the anime equivalent of lolcows in terms of their general reception and percieved quality, always overbudget and/or massively missing deadlines, never renewed for another season.
And then that was shut down within 3 years.
Oh right, and the union busting, also very cool.
I agree with all of that.
Maybe … 5 to 10% of Dems, like Federal Congresspeople, State governors… are willing to meaningfully go against pro corporate policies… at least more than half of the time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of psyop used to induce or intensify infighting among younger leftists, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if … there really wasn’t something specifically aimed at doing exactly that.
I know Russia has been very successfully employing the uh, hyperreality tactic, just fund or assist or influence enough people who are bombastic enough in any political persuasion, publish and spread baseless nonsense all across the spectrum to just sow general chaos…
But I do also think a lot of it really is people just adopting a vocabulary generally shared by leftists and then using it to their own, individual ends.
The thing with the CIA’s Simple Sabotage model is that it describes basically every social circle or work environment I’ve ever been in, or hear about from a friend.
General incompetence and … wasting time over petty stupid bullshit … just sounds like the norm in America generally, for pretty much my whole life… but maybe I have just had particularly bad luck with that.
Yep.
It is mostly just revisiting older news from decades before that… as would be reasonable when a newcomer to politics now seems to stand a reasonable chance of becoming President, might want to do a more thorough journalistic background check on the guy.
Leftists critical of Trump, back then, before even his first term, were … you know, kind of worried about Trump having Hitler in his nightstand table, very, very obviously seeing him as a role model and source of inspiration…
And then they said things like … is Trump a Nazi? Is Trump a fascist? This stuff is … quite concerning, along with his bombastic rhetoric and extremely nebulous and fluid ‘policies’, that all seem to converge on a return to past greatness, hypermasculinity, racism, sexism… all very much in line with … a populist, which historically very often leads to fascism…
And then almost every one else in the country dismissed that as hyperbolic nonsense, and ‘everything/one you don’t like is fascist’ was born.
… And now here we are, evidently in the bizzaro clownworld timeline, where Trump is ‘the joker, baby’ all the Republicans are his brainwashed cult of goons, the Democrats almost all as well sane-washed the shit out of Trump untill way after it was too late… and, as is also predictable broadly by history, the leftists, with few exceptions, fought each other over idpol, purity tests and tone policing, effectively negating any coherent opposition.
I mean, makes sense, Hitler is one of Trump’s favorite authors.
No, I am not being hyperbolic.
Trump kept a collection of Hitler’s speechs from the 1930s in his nighstand table, and would read from it before going to bed in the 80s and 90s.
When asked about this,
" ‘Trump hesitated’ and then said, ‘Who told you that?’ "
My only quibble is: Great Depression 2.0, not Great Recession 2.0.
This will be much, much worse than 07 08 09.
Also IMO absolutely yes, Obama should have let the US auto industry collapse if they didn’t accept being completely nationalized.
Play stupid games, win stuoid prizes.
Thats how capitalism works, right, right?
Oh wait no, its actually uh, bribe politicians to subsidize your inefficient and mismanaged business, and then also fund a bunch of PR to convince people that… that isn’t happening, that isn’t your business model.
Instead we got basically this situation where US auto mfctrs are stupendously subsidized by the US gov… yet have no accountability to it in terms of high level, long term business strategy.
That lead to all of C Suite just chasing as much profit as possible by basically just saying… fuck making a reliable cheapish car, everything is now a luxury priced giganto sized pavement princess with horrendous maintenance problems.
If they’d accepted being nationalized, well then at least we would have kept actual ownership domestic, and the GAO could have just done audits on these entire companies and then everyone would know where all the mismanagement was going on. …
Same thing with Boeing. Boeing is massively subsidized, is a near text book perfect example of how to do regulatory capture, and wow what a surprise, it was run in a manner to maximize balance sheets at the loss of fundamental ability to actually deliver a reliable product.
The Gay Gamma Goongasm, according to … Christian Nationalist Physics?
… If you get hit with fast neutrons, does that make you gender neutral or ambigender rofl?
Alpha radiation turns you into a chad?
Beta radiation makes you a soyboy?
fucking goddammit lol.
EDIT: i mean shit, if radiation causes gender/sexual orientation modification, then I guess you could actually construct a ‘gaydar’… oh god my brain hurts.
When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that … this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.
They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn’t real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.
Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content… well, actually even worse conclusions… and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals…
But you’ll still get people saying ‘brainrot isn’t real’… when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies… etc etc…
Like a toilet bowl, mounted to the ceiling.