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There are no instances in ATProto

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Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#31

Post by jrm4 »

timbray wrote: post #17

ATProto is an interesting protocol and there is lots of room to argue about its plus and minuses (and about Fedi/Masto's), but lots of people are already doing that so I won't. My concern isn't technology or culture, it's money. At the moment, ATProto is existentially dependent on Bluesky PBC, a venture-funded startup ($100M from Bain Capital). There are people doing good work to make it more decentralized, more powe…

"Seems to have worked OK for email"

THANK YOU. It seems like far too few in this space really understand the benefits of actual decentralization.

ATProto feels like "centralized, except also we get other people to do the hard work with few of the benefits."

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#32

Post by timbray »

Raed667 wrote: post #3

Semi related post on why the moderation of federated Mastodon instances is a problem: https://blog.raed.dev/posts/mastodon_moderation

To be fair, from 2022. I would argue that moderation in Fedi is holding together reasonably well. There are a few popular instances that lots of people think are overly aggressive/purist in their moderation policies, but the people using them seem to like what they're getting.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#33

Post by danabramov »

RobotToaster wrote: post #18

There's basically only one instance. There's only one PLC directory. There's very few full relays (edit: appviews), none that I'm aware of that don't mirror bluesky censorship/moderation decisions.

- There's no "instances" so I don't know what you mean by this.

- Re: PLC directory, indeed, there is only one of those. I think this is a legit point but it's worth considering the whole point of PLC directory is to be the single minimal stateless open source part that lifts identities out of apps and hostings. PLC governance and maintenance is being spun out into a Swiss organization (https://atproto.com/blog/plc-directory-org). Longer term the idea is for it to have a similar role to ICANN. Here's more on that: https://youtu.be/9z0z-Qu66yM?si=_8Dcw1M3VSKFGZhm&t=493

- Re: full Relays, they're easy/cheap to run, and you can run one yourself if you think the other ones are coordinating with Bluesky and don't trust their decisions. You don't need to depend on something else to do that.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#34

Post by INTPenis »

ATproto sacrifices true decentralization for consistency, Mastodon and AP does the opposite, sacrifices true consistency for more accessible decentralization.

At least that's how I understand it, because running an AP node is much more accessible to regular selfhosters than running one of those content relays in AT.

So all you'll ever "decentralize" in AT is your own data, it's more about owning your data rather than collectively owning a part of the network.

And we've been over this many times before on HN.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#35

Post by danabramov »

timbray wrote: post #17

ATProto is an interesting protocol and there is lots of room to argue about its plus and minuses (and about Fedi/Masto's), but lots of people are already doing that so I won't. My concern isn't technology or culture, it's money. At the moment, ATProto is existentially dependent on Bluesky PBC, a venture-funded startup ($100M from Bain Capital). There are people doing good work to make it more decentralized, more powe…

Yea that's fair. My stubborn point is that Fedi is trying to do the right thing using the wrong technology, and the resulting tradeoffs in user experience are why it will always remain niche. I hope that more resources will eventually flow from Fedi-centered solutions to more independent stuff in the atproto ecosystem.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#36

Post by danabramov »

axus wrote: post #9

So all the censor needs to do is cut off one host? And then you upload everything to different host and connect that?

What kind of censor?

Whoever operates hosting can decide to ban someone from hosting. This isn't different from how Cloudflare would ban you for hosting something illegal.

Whoever operates an app can decided to ban someone from that app. This isn't different from how a forum moderator can ban you for something they don't like.

Whoever operates services in the middle may decide to ban someone for network spam/abuse, same as cloud services may do if you abuse their limits.

You can always try to host your stuff elsewhere, and you can always access the same network from another app whose decisions you prefer.

So it's basically same as usual on the internet, but each role is separate, and you can mix and match what works for you.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#37

Post by skybrian »

An important distinction is that blogs have their own websites and they're not required to publish full articles in their RSS feed.

Bluesky doesn't normally work that way - everything in the PDS gets replicated. They are also encouraging people to put put full blog posts in the PDS for easy replication. So, anyone who wants to index it gets a copy and you have no control over what they do.

You don't have to do it that way, though. You can publish your blog on your own website and just publish links to it on Bluesky.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#38

Post by WorldMaker »

Google Reader feels like an ominous pick for an analogy. Sure, RSS survived the Google Reader shutdown, but not all the communities that used RSS (many that still don't know what RSS is) survived.

It feels almost "Freudian" to claim a thing is decentralized and then by analogy keep pointing to a massive (social) centralization of a decentralized ecosystem as a good thing. But especially one that we already know the ending for. Google Reader united a lot of RSS houses, value added a social graph and social commentary between them, and then at the whims of executives Google Reader fell and nearly killed RSS, but certainly destroyed an impressive social graph.

As an analogy that doesn't give me a lot of confidence in ATProto.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#39

Post by tao_oat »

INTPenis wrote: post #34

ATproto sacrifices true decentralization for consistency, Mastodon and AP does the opposite, sacrifices true consistency for more accessible decentralization. At least that's how I understand it, because running an AP node is much more accessible to regular selfhosters than running one of those content relays in AT. So all you'll ever "decentralize" in AT is your own data, it's more about owning your data rather than…

I'm not sure there is such a thing as "true" decentralization :) In my mind it's more of a buffet of tradeoffs rather than a single sliding scale.

FWIW, in the AP world there are several individuals and small teams running relays/mirrors/caches/AppViews and so on -- but you're right that this could get more expensive as things grow.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#40

Post by danabramov »

jrm4 wrote: post #28

Yes, and this is exactly why ATProto is worse and more dangerous. Instances are safer. precisely because they are more genuinely decentralized. The ability to forever tie your stuff to a person, strongly, is exactly what the surveillance state would want. Mastodon's model gives you plausible deniability. It's safer.

I'd say atproto gives you a clear sense of what's tied to each of your identities — you can go and explore your repo in a browser. There's nothing to say your identity has to be "tied to a person" anymore than your Mastodon account on some server is "tied to a person". It's true atproto has a "scraping is the default, so expect it" vibe, whereas maybe you're arguing Mastodon allows security by obscurity?
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