The Glass Floor of Digital Sovereignty

When many talk about the Fediverse, they mean the "Open Social Web" – an collection of every platform that isn't a walled garden – including Bluesky. The platform – that was published in 2022 and has since then ever grown – has opened itself to Personal Data Servers (PDS) that can either be hosted by an third party or yourself.

That fact gave me an question about if we really want and need the Bluesky kind of federation for the Fediverse or not. My answer – and here a spoiler alert – is a "No". Let me explain this for you.

Unlike the Fediverse wasn't Bluesky build upon the ActivityPub protocol – which is an official recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – but Bluesky (the company) build an own protocol – the "Authenticated Transfer Protocol" or short "AT Protocol" ("ATproto").

Where ActivityPub functions more like E-Mail and SMS do (I explained the exact way in the linked article) does ATproto differentiate. The AT Protocol isn't exactly build to have separate servers but (simplified) three different layers:

1. Personal Data Servers (PDS): These are where your content and digital live in the "ATmosphere" (a term for the ATproto space) lives.
2. Relays: Massive aggregators that crawl every PDS instance to create a "fire hose" of all global content.
3. AppView(s): This is the frontend (or frontends) which you see and use to interact with the ATproto content. It also is responsible to create your feed out of the content that the underlying Relay provides.

This layering is exactly where is see the problem. While the design of ATproto achieves to create identities that can be used for every type of content without having to create multiple accounts does it give control over your digital live to at least one third party that you generally don't know or control. This is most likely the operator of the relay that is connected with your PDS.

While you can easily host an own PDS for cheap and low power does the story change if you want to control and host anything above this layer. To host and maintain an Relay is a massive network infrastructure project which needs the respective hardware specs.

This makes it for home labs and private individuals technically and economically out of reach, not just difficult. Therefor creating a "glass floor" problem for digital sovereignty where you can own and control your data but not the pathways that deliver it as Relay providers can also block you as easy as any commercial media company (e.g. Meta, Google, X).

If I don't like how an Fediverse instance is operated or moderated. Or I just want to be on one with my friends then I just can move to a smaller instance or start an own instance. The style of federation that ActivityPub has ensures that rules of engagement and content are set by people I actually interact with. This isn't the case with how ATproto is designed.

In the "ATmosphere" do the Relays and AppViews become gatekeepers of network visibility. If the operator of the largest Relay – Bluesky (the company) – decides to ban your PDS from their relay you aren't just blocked from one instance but invisible to anyone (the majority of the "ATmosphere") using that Relay to get their content.

The argument for Bluesky and the AT Protocol is often performance. It is fast and handles viral moments better than ActivityPub. That is true but at what cost?

We trade digital sovereignty with technical convenience when we choose the streamlined algorithmic efficiency of ATproto's infrastructure with the sometimes slow and messy server-to-server nature of the Fediverse and ActivityPub. The Fediverse is build on principles similar to Federalism and Subsidiarity.

The fragmentation of the Fediverse – which many criticise – is a feature, not a bug. Especially in context of digital sovereignty. In the ActivityPub based network of instances does the "small world" server-to-server communication mean that there is no single point of failure – technically and/or politically. (Like it was the case with Bluesky)

We don't need fancier versions of commercial media platforms and including Bluesky and ATproto in the Fediverse dilutes the meaning of the decentralisation that the Fediverse stands for. We would be accepting a whole network where the pathways are owned by a few massive entities which don't have to respect our values. Digital sovereignty doesn't just mean to own your data but also to own the means to work with and distribute said data.

My No to the Bluesky kind of federation is not meant to discredit the existence of the platform as a whole and as part of the wider "Open Social Web". It's a fascinating experiment in network and protocol design as well as account portability. However it shouldn't be a blueprint for the future of the Fediverse. (Except for some features like "Starter kits".)

Where the Fediverse is a network of allotments and community gardens is Bluesky a park owned by a corporation that lets us just enter. Both have their place, but only one is truly sovereign.

What do you value more: the lightning-fast speed of a centralized relay, or the messy, resilient freedom of a sovereign instance? Let’s discuss this on the Fediverse.

If you want to hear more from me you can find me in the Fediverse at @gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de (Mastodon) or @gelbphoenix@gram.social (Pixelfed). For more posts like this subscribe to my new newsletter or support me by becoming a member.