Wafrn (tumblr alternative with fediverse and bluesky support) has started using an alternate relay; this means that they depend on none of bluesky's infrastructure to work.
Bluesky post by @gabboman.at.app.wafrn.net saying: "Thanks a lot to @rudyfraser.com for hosting the blacksky PDS. After confirmating thatis ok, wafrn now uses blacksky's relay! In the next update other wafrns may also use the relay"
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Oh good. One step closer to real federation. With multiple protocols. AP + AT.
Meh, the one and only walking protocol is AT-AT
What do you mean by real federation?
Right now federation between atproto and activitypub is opt in (and not developed by the big platforms such as bluesky and mastodon) with bridgyfed.
not in wafrn, wafrn is bisexual: does both natively
As a non-techy person, I was under the impression from lots of fedi folks that it would either cost a fortune or otherwise be quite impractical to completely divorce ATProto from bluesky itself. However, as a WAFRN enjoyer, Gabbo seems to really know what he's doing, and he actually prefers ATProto over AP... What's the actual deal here?? Is it easier than expected somehow?
A lot of people's research about bluesky is just the "How decentralised is bluesky really?" article by Christine lemmer-webber.
While the article was good at the time, and still has some relevant parts, a lot has changed since then.
Namely, relays got cheaper to run (about $30 a month).
Right now the problem is that everyone uses bluesky's infrastructure (and PDS migration is a bit spotty, but bluesky is working on that).
Also: AP is pain. The spec was rushed and doesn't include a lot of key details. Atproto was better thought out (at least in my opinion).
I saw it mentioned in this Cory Doctorow article a week or two back about some of his issues with bluesky, but he mentions here that the cost has came down from tens of millions a year down to tens of dollars a month
Hadn't heard of wafrn until seeing it on f-droid this morning but I might give it a try, a tumblr-like platform would be nice since tumblr seems to have given up on using ActivityPub.
Pretty cool. I won't get too excited until Bluesky (the company) is less than 90% of ATProto. Even mastodon.social is only like 27% of AP.
I'd be afraid of one company having too much power over the whole network.
Yep it should be spread out as much as possible.
thats... what wafrn does
well I wont get that if YOU dont join
Here's a link https://app.wafrn.net/
oh yeah, probably should have linked it.
Thank you! Is there an android client for it? It looks neat!
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.djara.wafrn_rn