What do you think about the protocol behind Bluesky, ATproto, and how do you think it compares to ActivityPub?
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I don't use it much, but from what I understand ATproto used to super expensive to self host but now costs have fallen significantly and other instances outside of the main Bluesky instance have emerged. I think now the problem they have to solve is getting the users (who are something like 99 per cent on the main Bluesky instance) over to the other instances.
I don't really know the extent of their independence as there are at least 3 parts to how ATproto works and they can all be hosted independently (so for example, an "independent" instance might still rely on Bluesky for part if it's functionality), however it is true that there's quite a few ATproto services popping up!
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The protocol is basically irrelevant. It's about the user population and their dependence on particular hosts.
This place has federation issues a few times a year. Irrelevant
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I don't really know the extent of their independence as there are at least 3 parts to how ATproto works and they can all be hosted independently (so for example, an "independent" instance might still rely on Bluesky for part if it's functionality), however it is true that there's quite a few ATproto services popping up!
wrote last edited by [email protected]Okay, I didn't know ATproto had many parts that can be independent or dependent on each other. It would be nice if there was an easy way to check the level of independence of an instance
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I recently had a discussion with a friend on Bluesky who knows more about the inner workings of the platform, and it pretty much solidified what I already thought was going on behind the scenes with ATproto, which seems to be a lot more complex than the system behind AP, however it did seem to improve on it to an extent simply by splitting up different parts of the "social media pipeline".
I was curious what people here think of itPs: I really don't mean to proselytize about one or the other!! I think it's good that both exist. Although it does raise me the question of wether protocol diversification is good...
The bluesky system isn't completely without advantages: It's much more convenient if what you're looking for in a social media service is all the data collected neatly in a central location so that it can be used for bulk AI training input or mass sentiment analysis.
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I recently had a discussion with a friend on Bluesky who knows more about the inner workings of the platform, and it pretty much solidified what I already thought was going on behind the scenes with ATproto, which seems to be a lot more complex than the system behind AP, however it did seem to improve on it to an extent simply by splitting up different parts of the "social media pipeline".
I was curious what people here think of itPs: I really don't mean to proselytize about one or the other!! I think it's good that both exist. Although it does raise me the question of wether protocol diversification is good...
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Ok yea I definitely should have asked this over there, sorry about that
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I think nostr has the best protocol, specifically the way they handle identity.
I wish nostr wasn't filled to the brim with cryptobros and ancaps
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I don't really know the extent of their independence as there are at least 3 parts to how ATproto works and they can all be hosted independently (so for example, an "independent" instance might still rely on Bluesky for part if it's functionality), however it is true that there's quite a few ATproto services popping up!
Checked out Leaflet, it's a simple text editor with markdown support that gives you links for sharing it with read-only or read-write permissions. I guess the ATProto is only used for discovery? You can write and edit without being logged in.
Pinksea is just random people doodling there, which can be a fun time killer. You can only interact (make your own doodle, comment on others') logging in with bsky at the moment. The same is true for the other services, only bsky logins work (granted, I don't have a non-bsky account to test)
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Checked out Leaflet, it's a simple text editor with markdown support that gives you links for sharing it with read-only or read-write permissions. I guess the ATProto is only used for discovery? You can write and edit without being logged in.
Pinksea is just random people doodling there, which can be a fun time killer. You can only interact (make your own doodle, comment on others') logging in with bsky at the moment. The same is true for the other services, only bsky logins work (granted, I don't have a non-bsky account to test)
I don't think see why you'd need a bluesky-hosted account for that. I think it's just showing
.bsky.socialas placeholder since statistically, most people have their handle hosted on bluesky and a handle can look like any valid domain.I'll test it out once I figure out how to host my own PDS nwn
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I recently had a discussion with a friend on Bluesky who knows more about the inner workings of the platform, and it pretty much solidified what I already thought was going on behind the scenes with ATproto, which seems to be a lot more complex than the system behind AP, however it did seem to improve on it to an extent simply by splitting up different parts of the "social media pipeline".
I was curious what people here think of itPs: I really don't mean to proselytize about one or the other!! I think it's good that both exist. Although it does raise me the question of wether protocol diversification is good...
AP is a standard for letting servers communicate, while ATP is that and more. You could build what ATP does on top of AP, or make both compatible. What matters is really the communities and ecosystems behind these protocols.
AP is behind the Fediverse. The basic building block of the Fediverse is the instance. Every instance is its own self-contained, centralized social media service, that optionally federates with other instances via ActivityPub. There is nothing about AP that encourages decentralization. To the contrary, the way things work rn encourages centralization (but that's pretty technical).
Case in point, Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon instance that choses not to federate. If it was open for federation, the Fediverse would look quite different. Or perhaps more likely, most other instances would choose to defederate.
I explain this because a few weeks ago, there were some posts pitching the Fediverse as decentralized social media. But the Fediverse is what it is because the people running the servers choose to do things a certain way. This is not a result of technical or legal features.
@Proto is the result of a project to make Twitter decentralized. That is, not a decentralized alternative, but actual Twitter with all its users. We might never have heard much about it if Musk had not taken the wrecking ball to Twitter. The team created Bluesky as a proof of concept.
Current social media companies have monopoly power over their users. @Proto seeks to structure social media in such a way that that is impossible. It is quite sophisticated. Improvements may be possible, but it certainly is good enough to solve the technical aspect of social media monopolies. Of course, the technical part was never the hard part. We will see if the economics work out. But the real challenge is the legal angle.
