Oh, also, one thing people never discuss when talking about hosting your own server: legal liability. This is a very real thing that you absolutely should not neglect.

In Mastodon, everything is lumped onto a single server. You carry every type of legal liability risk. Your server scrapes in CSAM, for example - whoopsie! Your server scrapes in copyrighted music. Your server scrapes in GDPR violations. E.g. while your *users* can cause you problems, problems can just be dropped into your doorstep just by caching. You also are also classed as a Hosting Service or Online Platform under the DSA, and unless you can get a qualified exemption, you have to provide transparent notice-and-action mechanisms, points of contact,and annual moderation reports

This does not happen with a PDS in ATProto. They never download other PDS's content; the only risk is your users. Under DSA, since you have no consumer feed, discovery algorithm, or public facing portal, you're a bare "Hosting Service". You're basically NextCloud. Not subject to Online Platform requirements.

What about the relay? Also no! They're non-archival. They don't download content. No CSAM, no GDPR vio, no copyvio, etc. Classed as a "Mere Conduit" under DSA. Zero issues.

Labelers, also none. Do not host content.

The only thing having any risk is the AppViews. But even still the risk is reduced. For example, if CSAM comes up, you're mediating it, but not hosting it. You do however get subject to the "Online Platform" category.

The FSF picks some weird gripes to focus on. At least they're no longer arguing Bluesky isn't federated. Though this claim is false:

Hosting your own Bluesky "Personal Data Server (PDS)" and relay is technically possible, but generally far more difficult and resource-intensive than spinning up an instance of Mastodon,

This is just not true? ATProto is a much more efficient data transmission means than ActivityPub. Running a Mastodon server (I've done it) means hoovering in and storing massive amounts of data even if you only have a single user, for discoverability. A PDS by contrast is like hosting a website. You ping the relay when there's changes, and it comes by and sweeps up the new data. New relays may periodically come along to spider your content, and old relays might re-spider from time to time, but the load from spidering very low. The frontends in turn query the relay (basically, they ATProto-"google" it), and when they know where/what to fetch, they fetch it from you - again, if you don't have much hugely popular content, you're not serving much either, just like running a local website. And your local stored content size is again very low. Unlike Mastodon.

Running a frontend (AppView) - for example, what a website, an app, or whatnot uses - is also super-lightweight if you're small. You're just "googling" and fetching whatever content you need to display to your users. Little user activity = little server activity.

Now, if you want to run a relay, that's basically like running a web spider. You're probably not going to do that in your bedroom, but it's not expensive. In the old architecture, the cost of a server that could function as a relay for the whole current network was about $150/mo. But after some architectural improvements, it's now more like $35-40/mo. And that's to relay all of Bluesky, but you can also relay just a subset. AppViews can use whatever relays (aka, "search engines") they want to to collect data.

It's a very efficient architecture, particularly for small users. Just think:

ActivityPub (Mastodon): Forums. Everything all in one, each ruled by a Local God administrator who can do whatever they want to you and your data (delete, alter, etc - and you can't move it off their server), that are constantly running data syncs to each other, including the really big servers.

ATProto (BlueSky); The internet. PDS = Website. Relay = Search engine backend. AppView + Site/App = Web browser. You can move all your data to a different "website" (PDS) or switch "search engines" (AppView) at any point. (In the analogy, moderation (labelers) is SpamHaus, just at the data level, not site level - they label the ID of a given piece of data or your account, and any AppView / user that trusts what a given labeler has to say can react to different labels as they choose) (anyone can run a labeler too if they want).

Sorry, I am not as dumb as you. I can spot a cult when I see one. You are already in it and see nothing. And you spout the usual missionary nonsense about the one true belief and how it is all powerful and all unbelievers will suffer.

Please take a few minutes to think about what you just suggested. I am sure you can find a few fatal flaws if you apply yourself.

They probably would. Well. Lets hope things do not turn out as dark.

At the same time, improving technology has biisted productivity. Social Security will be fine for a long time if it captures some of that enhanced productivity rather than letting the 1% put it all in their pockets.

Agreed, this is a real problem. And I have noticed that many people seem to be unable to recognize well-made slop. We also have this large segment of voters that have no fact-checking ability whatsoever and often very problematics morals on top of that.

The problems caused are getting worse and worse.

No argument to any of that. But the discussion was about a purely domestic manufacturing capability, not actually doing it. As in, lets say Russia gets completely isolated, but the war stops. Would they be able to make cars all by themselves? And the answer is likely yes, even if those would be crappy USSR-area cars.

It is already pretty easy for anybody with decent IT experience to hack others. If your point is that all these people will be too incompetent to contain these things, then we will see a lot of people going to prison. You do not need to sue for criminal law to be applied.

Yes. That does not make it "everywhere" in any way. It also does not make it general politics or religion. You must be really dumb if you cannot even make this very simple determination. MAGA moron?

Hence drinking less alcohol would be a good thing. That matches what Science says.

Obviously. I cannot tell whether the people asking that question are really dumb or just being assholes.

Not quite. But a slow reduction to, say, 2-3B will probably be a needed survival factor over the next 100 years or so while food growing gets really hard.

They are obvious, no? No real need to discuss them.