The Nexus of Privacy

This is what solidarity looks like Part 2 of "Decentralization" and Erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

This is what solidarity looks like

thenexusofprivacy.net/what-solidar...

Part 2 of “Decentralization” and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

Here's a thread with some highlights (🧵)

So far, I've been mostly ignoring Bluesky, with the attitude "Wake me up when I can do Bluesky without doing business with Bluesky the company."

@jdp23 just woke me up!
https://thenexusofprivacy.net/what-solidarity-looks-like/

I'm using a private PDS run by a friend, and using it to log into […]

This is what solidarity looks like Part 2 of "Decentralization" and Erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

And if you prefer long-form writing, the full article on the Nexus of Privacy newsletter has these highlights and more ...

thenexusofprivacy.net/what-solidar...

Blacksky - Open Collective An AT Protocol implementation built in Rust and prioritizing the community building efforts of marginalized groups; especially prioritizing Bluesky's community of Black users after which the project i...

Speaking of which ... Blacksky primarily relies on crowdfunding.

Please join me in supporting Blacksky!

opencollective.com/blacksky

As somebody who's believed in the liberatory powers of social networks for decades, I've never been as excited about a project as I am about Blacksky.

And I for one am very much looking forward to what comes next – and looking for ways to help!

An internet of many autonomous communities Making communities a true part of the protocol will encourage others to build things for those communities, start new communities, and hopefully foster models for self-sustainability.

That slide, by the way, is from Rudy's ATmosphereConf presentation, "Beyond Horseless Carriages: Building Communities for the Decentralized Era." blog.rudyfraser.com/an-internet-... has the presentation and some very worthwhile additional thoughts.

A slide with the title "[they] can't stop this 2-3 zone", followed by avatars labeled 1st invites, 3rd most rsky commits, moderation how-tos, created Umoya Fellowship, building SAFEskies

At the end of the day, though, what really matters here is Blacksky's amazing progress.

And while Rudy deserves every bit of the credit he's getting for this success, as he consistently points out it has been very much a team effort -- and they deserve every bit of credit too!

This is what solidarity looks like Part 2 of "Decentralization" and Erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

Still, that's starting to change too. The section on "A great learning opportunity for the ActivityPub Fediverse" discusses that.

privacy.thenexus.today/what-solidar...

Alas, the discourse in much of Mastodon and the ActivityPub fediverse still has a lot of erasure of Blacksky. Oh well.

bsky.app/profile/knot...

Release Alpha Release for PDS Migration Tool · NorthskySocial/pds-migration Added feature list Fixed. support for migrating with an email 2fa

@transrights.northsky.social l is working on a migration tool as well. github.com/NorthskySoci...

As new PDSs come on line, they can leverage and build on all this work.

Solidarity in action!

How to Migrate to Blacksky Given how Bluesky has been handling moderation recently (and not so recently...) I've seen many folks looking for alternatives to Bluesky. This How-To will be geared to the folks specifically in my co...

And just as I was finishing the post, @bisprout.blackskycomra.de published this very useful guide on How to Migrate to Blacksky

leaflet.pub/000b57de-78d...

YouTube video by clinton bowen BlackSky Algorithms - tektite.cc Account Migration Demonstration

Blacksky also has a migration tool, @tektite.cc. Here's @torrho.com's video on how to use it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sdm...

As Rudy says ... bsky.app/profile/rude...

One great example: @baileytownsend.dev's work on PDS Moover has helped hundreds of people move their accounts to Blacsksky. @sharepiepls.com's video has more

bsky.app/profile/shar...

Meanwhile, the developer ecosystem in the ATmosphere (the ecosystem of software built around the AT Protocol, including Blacksky and Bluesky) is thriving with a lot of collaboration and synergies. Northsky Social (in Canada) focusing on the 2SLGBTQIA2S+ community – and is currently testing a PDS migration tool as well. Skylight Social, Streamplace, and Spark (in Brazil) are focusing on video. Gander (also in Canada) is planning on launching this fall. There's a lot of energy behind Eurosky. The AT Protocol dev community, after several successful conferences on multiple continents and both coasts of North America, is starting up a working group on bringing private data to the ATmosphere, a project that Rudy added to Blacksky's roadmap several months ago. Smoke Signal (events), Flashes (an Instagram alternative), Leaflet and Offprint for long-form text ... The list goes on and on and on, and Laurens Hof's weekly ATmosphere report keeps getting longer and longer. That's a good thing!

And ATmosphere development is thriving in general. These projects are learning from each other, building off each others' successes, and working together to improve the platform.

Blacksky is now hosting almost all of their own infrasctructure. Hundreds of people have set up accounts on the blacksky.app and blackskycomra.de PDS (personal data server) – including me. The blacksky.community app has the outstanding Blacksky Moderation service enabled by default, and the also-outstanding Blacksky: Trending as the feed for new users instead of Bluesky's crappy Discover feed). Behind the scenes, the Blacksky feeds use the Blacksky relay at atproto.africa, which extends relay functionality by including a "mod relay" - and other ATmosphere software is starting to use it as well

Blacksky has continued to progress by leaps and bounds in the months since I first wrote "'Decentralization' and erasure last December -- expanding the team and excuting on @rude1.blacksky.team's vision

"Decentralization" and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere Part 3 of Bluesky, the ATmosphere, and the fediverses

And here's part 1 of the series, from last December. The second part stands on its own, so no need to read it, but it's interesting background.

thenexusofprivacy.net/decentraliza...

The title btw is from this post by @sharpiepls.com

bsky.app/profile/shar...

This is what solidarity looks like Part 2 of "Decentralization" and Erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

This is what solidarity looks like

thenexusofprivacy.net/what-solidar...

Part 2 of “Decentralization” and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

Here's a thread with some highlights (🧵)

Accessibility in the ATmosphere? - The Nexus of Privacy Suggestions for resources and tips? Ideas for improvements?

Accessibility in the ATmosphere?

The current state of accessibiilty on Bluesky leaves a lot of room for improvement. So, let's start making things better!

thenexusofprivacy.leaflet.pub/3lxxyg36k5s2t

As a first step, let's focus on gathering information ...

#accessibility. (🧵, 1/N)

Encrypted Form CryptPad: end-to-end encrypted collaboration suite

Oops. The correct link to the cryptpad form is cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/for...

Sorry about that!

Introductions and kick off Hello! It’s time to kick off the Private Data Working Group! The goal of this group is to coordinate on implementations, documentation, interop of private data solutions for AT Proto. This may be off...

OK! Today's the day! Kicking off the home for the #PrivateDataWG in the new @atprotocol.dev hosted Discourse forum

Thanks to @ngerakines.me for spinning up the infra, including login with ATProto powered by AIP

If you're interested in Private Data, login and introduce yourself.

Improving accessibility in the fediverse and the ATmosphere One wonderful feature of many of the communities in the fediverse is that so many many people take the time to put alt-text on their images – so low-vision and blind people can participate much more f...

The post on the Nexus of Privacy, has a slightly longer version of this thread in a single post (and talks about the fediverse as well), and links to out to other places where it's being discussed.

privacy.thenexus.today/improving-ac...

As always, feedback welcome! 🧵 (8/8, at least for now)

I'll collect the results and follow up with a post here, on the Nexus of Privacy newsletter, and on the #accessibility hashtag. If there's interest, I'll also work on scheduling a talk to present the results and discuss next steps. 🧵

Any suggestions for improving accessibility here in the ATmosphere?

These don't have to be limited to software improvements. For example, as new people join, how to encourage them to pay attention to alt-text etc? 🧵

What are accessibility best practices or inspirations from other software we can learn from?

(yes even including evil centralized social networks, because sometimes they do some aspects of accessibility quite well) 🧵

What accessibility problems have you encountered on Bluesky or other ATmosphere software – bugs, missing documentation or functionality, whatever? 🧵

Here's a few specific questions about accessibility ...

What resources and tips have you found useful -- or think might be useful for others? 🧵

Encrypted Form CryptPad: end-to-end encrypted collaboration suite

There are some specific questions about accessibility in the ATmosphere in the replies -- or if you prefer, here's a CryptPad form.

But really, any thoughts or suggestions about accessibility in the ATmosphere are welcome! 🧵

cryptpad.fr/form/#/3/for...

Accessibility in the ATmosphere? - The Nexus of Privacy Suggestions for resources and tips? Ideas for improvements?

Accessibility in the ATmosphere?

The current state of accessibiilty on Bluesky leaves a lot of room for improvement. So, let's start making things better!

thenexusofprivacy.leaflet.pub/3lxxyg36k5s2t

As a first step, let's focus on gathering information ...

#accessibility. (🧵, 1/N)