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A Social Filesystem

overreacted.io

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Re: A Social Filesystem

#31

Post by jrv »

bee_rider wrote: post #24
jrm4 wrote: post #22

The more I read and consider Bluesky and this protocol, the more pointless -- and perhaps DANGEROUS -- I find the idea. It really feels like no one is addressing the elephant in the room of; okay, someone who makes something like this is interested in "decentralized" or otherwise bottom-up ish levels of control. Good goal. But then, when you build something like this, you're actually helping build a perfect decentral…

This seems like tensions between normal/practical and “opsec” style privacy thinking… Really, we can never be sure anything that gets posted on the internet won’t be captured by somebody outside our control. So, if we want to be full paranoid, we should act like it will be. But practically lots of people have spent a long time posting their opinions carelessly on the internet. Just protected by the fact that nobody r…

Exactly. Anything that's ever been public on the internet is never really gone anyways, and it's unsafe to assume so. This is similar to publishing a website or a blog post. Plus, from a practical (non-opsec) point of view, you can delete items (posts, likes, reposts, etc.) on ATProto, and those items will disappear from whatever ATProto app you are using - usually even live. You need to dive into the protocol layer to still see deleted items.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#32

Post by [deleted] »

iameli wrote: post #25
jrm4 wrote: post #22

The more I read and consider Bluesky and this protocol, the more pointless -- and perhaps DANGEROUS -- I find the idea. It really feels like no one is addressing the elephant in the room of; okay, someone who makes something like this is interested in "decentralized" or otherwise bottom-up ish levels of control. Good goal. But then, when you build something like this, you're actually helping build a perfect decentral…

what if I want to publish something publicly on the internet though

[deleted]

Re: A Social Filesystem

#33

Post by danabramov »

geokon wrote: post #12

This was a nice intro to AT (though I feel it could have been a bit shorter) The whole things seems a bit over engineered with poor separation of concerns. It feels like it'd be smarter to flatten the design and embed everything in the Records. And then other layers can be built on top of that Making every record includes the author's public-key (or signature?). Anything you need to point at you'd either just give it…

I'm not sure I understand your proposal. Do you taking my example (a Twitter post) and showing how it would be stored in your system?

Re: A Social Filesystem

#35

Post by danabramov »

metabagel wrote: post #7

How does this relate to the SOLID project? https://solidproject.org/

I'd say some of the worldview is shared but the architecture and ethos is very different. Some major differences:

- AT tries to solve aggregation of public data first. I.e. it has to be able to express modern social media. Bluesky is a proof that it would work in production. AFAIK, Solid doesn't try to solve aggregation, and is focused on private data first. (AT plans private data support but not now.)

- AT embraces "apps describe on their own formats" (Lexicons). Solid uses RDF which is a very different model. My impression is RDF may be more powerful but is a lot more abstract. Lexicon is more or less like *.d.ts for JSON.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#36

Post by danabramov »

sneak wrote: post #17

Losing private keys is much more common than losing domains.

Yes, which is why by default, key management is done by your hosting. You log into your host with login/password or whatever mechanism your host supports.

Adding your own emergency rotational key in case your hosting goes rogue is supported, but is a separate thing and not required for normal usage. I'd like this to be more ergonomical though.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#37

Post by danabramov »

catapart wrote: post #3

yeah yeah yeah, everyone get on the AT protocol, so that the bluesky org can quickly get all of these filthy users off of their own servers (which costs money) while still maintaining the original, largest, and currently only portal to actually publish the content (which makes money[0]). let them profit from a technical "innovation" that is 6 levels of indirection to mimic activity pub. if they were decent people, th…

>that the bluesky org can quickly get all of these filthy users off of their own servers (which costs money)

That's not correct, actually hosting user data is cheap. Most users' repos are tiny. Bluesky doesn't save anything by having someone move to their own PDS.

What's expensive is stuff like video processing and large scale aggregation. Which has to be done regardless of where the user is hosting their data.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#38

Post by skybrian »

danabramov wrote: post #30
skybrian wrote: post #13

This article goes into a lot of detail, more than is really needed to get the point across. Much of that could have been moved to an appendix? But it's a great metaphor. Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself. I'll add that, like a web server that's just serving up static files, a Bluesky PDS is a public filesystem. Furthermore it's designed to be replicated, like a…

My goal with writing is generally to move things out of my head in the shape that they existed in my head. If it's useful but too long, I trust other people to pick what they find valuable, riff on it, and so on. >Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself. You can skip to the end of the article where I do a few demos: https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/#up-in-t…

Thanks! I saved a link to pdsls. I think there's room for improvement in making the UI user-friendly; maybe I'll try it someday.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#39

Post by danabramov »

skybrian wrote: post #38
danabramov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goal with writing is generally to move things out of my head in the shape that they existed in my head. If it's useful but too long, I trust other people to pick what they find valuable, riff on it, and so on. >Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself. You can skip to the end of the article where I do a few demos: https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/#up-in-t…

Thanks! I saved a link to pdsls. I think there's room for improvement in making the UI user-friendly; maybe I'll try it someday.

The devs are responsive to feedback if you mention @pdsls.dev on Bluesky! I often point out small issues and they get fixed the next day.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#40

Post by motoxpro »

I've always thought walled gardens are the effect of consumer preferences, not the cause.

The effect of the internet (everything open to everyone) was to create smaller pockets around a specific idea or culture. Just like you have group chats with different people, thats what IG and Snap are. Segmentation all the way down.

I am so happy that my IG posts arent available on my HN or that my IG posts arent being easily cross posted to a service I dont want to use like truth social. If you want it to be open, just post it to the web.

I think I don't really understand the benefit of data portability in the situation. It feels like in crypto when people said I want to use my Pokemon in game item in Counterstrike (or any game) like, how and why would that even be valuable without the context? Same with a Snap post on HN or a HN post on some yet-to-be-created service.

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