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There are no instances in ATProto

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Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#251

Post by inigyou »

pfraze wrote: post #108
danabramov wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think you also need to consider what PLC is. It’s an open source implementation of an open source spec. The implementation holds zero private state and exposes a verifiable log of operations for audit. There’s ongoing work on mirrors and replicas. Also, its output itself is cryptographically self-verifying. I get that it’s not ideal but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s not much you can mess up…

I’d also call out that activitypub has the same threat model in the form of ICANN, as it’s also heavily dependent on DNS for identity. I believe these are reasonable trades to make; realistically the alternative is to use a blockchain, which few people are keen to do.

ATProto has both PLC and ICANN

ICANN is a severe risk btw. Current new protocols should be designed to avoid DNS wherever possible.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#252

Post by danabramov »

matt_kantor wrote: post #239
danabramov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being a bit cheeky in the article's tone but I am fairly confident from discussions in the past that "But where are Bluesky instances?" is a common question which usually demonstrates a misunderstanding of the architecture where "having instances of an app" is seen as a measure of decentralization. My article was an attempt to dig at this specific misunderstanding by comparing it to "But where are Google Reader i…

My immediate question while reading your post (as someone who doesn't know much about ATProto) was "but where is the box for Bluesky?". You didn't draw a box for Mastodon either, but my understanding is that it'd encompass all the individual instance boxes in the Mastodon-brained diagram. I think if you were to draw a box for ATmosphere it'd encompass everything in your ATProto diagrams. But what about Bluesky, Euros…

You’re right that this is confusing!

Bluesky is two things. There’s “Bluesky hosting”, and there’s “Bluesky app”. Conceptually and on the network level they have nothing to do with each other. These are different pieces of software running on different stacks and they are agnostic of each other. Bluesky the company happens to run both because it’s kickstarting this whole thing. But you can swap hosting (I just did) while using Bluesky app, or you can keep Bluesky hosting but use other apps in addition (like Tangled) or instead of Bluesky (like Blacksky).

Eurosky is a hosting provider primarily. They happen to also develop an app (Mu Social) but afaik currently that’s just a skin for the Bluesky app (it talks to Bluesky app API). Nothing stops them from removing that dependency (like Blacksky did) though and making it an independent forked app though.

So the answer is — companies and organisations in Atmosphere often provide services for different roles in the system. Some do just hosting, some do apps, some do other kinds of network infrastructure that is used by many apps, and many do multiple things at once.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#253

Post by inigyou »

kajman wrote: post #58
timbray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't used Mastodon, but my experience with Lemmy was a lot of petty fighting about who should be defederated. The OP's reference to warring fiefdoms was very spot-on for that scene. I imagine it's a huge turn off to casual, well-adjusted people exploring the space. But I wouldn't know. There's, of course, another sort of grossness to corporate moderation from above, but at least with ATProto you can take your id…

was that lemmy.world? As you have discovered, some instances are full of drama. Such is the nature of decentralisation. If you don't have some parts of the network full of drama there's probably a central entity suppressing it.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#254

Post by nirui »

Facebook is not just a "evolution of this concept". I would argue they, along with Twitter (currently know as X) and other similar service is completely different from blogs.

The main different is the designs Facebook has employed manipulated their users to adopt this "scroll down" method of reading. Each item of information is only displayed just a few seconds on user's screen, unless user stopped scrolling at the item they really interested in (and then maybe tap to open it).

That's not the same design used by blogs. Think of blogs as mini news sites, it encourages their readers to open the content in a full page to read it without interruptions. And, the readers has to calm their heats down to read long statements, this costs time and demands focus.

If you port the design used by blogs and apply it to display Facebook posts, that will be user-hostile, because user has to click each post only to read a potentially very short content.

The opposite is true too. You can't encourage user to "scroll down" a wall of long texts just to read the next wall of long texts, because that will be exhausting. You can't even create the anticipation that there's more stuff down, because that will just manipulates the user to keep scrolling down and skip.

That's why I think even you technically can aggregate blogs and social media in one app, you should probably be careful about it.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#255

Post by diimdeep »

My uninformed(about this particular enterprise) but educated guess: if tomorrow VC funding evaporates all this network cease to exists. I guess based on feely that 80% of all of these Relays, PDS, Apps including, Bsky are all from few if not one company, meaning centralized behind the curtain, but decentralized evangelism. It is very possible I am completely wrong, and so be it.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#257

Post by LaGrange »

4lx87 wrote: post #87

If it quacks like a duck... An account has a single Personal Data Server (PDS), right? The DID links to a PDS which is the canonical data feed for a user, and where a user's writes go. Data can be replicated but the PDS is treated as canonical. That's much closer to client/server architecture than distributed architecture. There's no P2P database. There's no writes into a DHT or peers. You write to your PDS, then tho…

Frontends and relays are far closer to “quacking like an instance.” That’s where your sysop’s power lives. The PDS itself isn’t very powerful - can’t meaningfully limit who you can talk to, for example.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#259

Post by danabramov »

tptacek wrote: post #213
danabramov wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what you mean by “instances” here. Leaflet ( https://leaflet.pub ) is one of those “blogger on atproto” things — is that what you mean?

Literally just Mastodon servers, like Hachyderm, except for a single user.

My bad, I misread your post as asking about single-user atproto "instances" (which confused me) but you said ActivityPub.

I still don't quite understand your comment.

>If there are advantages to ATProto over ActivityPub in this kind of deployment setting, they don't seem clear enough to offset the weird corporate parentage

The advantage of atproto is that it's literally "the web". Every app can aggregate from entire network, there's no isolation by default. It reduces to the degenerate smallest case just the same — you can have a single-user app that simply displays content from your PDS. But you can also start aggregating things (e.g. comments left by other users, which are stored on their PDS's). The whole big idea of atproto is that every app is effectively a CMS for app-agnostic "model" web.

What is the concrete thing bothering you? AT is already in the IETF process. It's not some weird corporate thing.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#260

Post by danabramov »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #232
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…

That goes to the heart of the issue. Bluesky's dependence on VC money and for-profit structure means it has a conflict of interest with long-term survival and independence of the protocol. But that might be fixable. The mitigation is of course more companies and open source projects getting involved. As far as I understand it, the protocol is pretty well designed, and there is a bunch of open source out there already…

>It seems a lot has happened since I last looked at this stuff a few years ago.

Yes, a lot has happened! The scene still has very much indie vibe, but there's a lot going on in the Atmosphere. Atproto blog has recently started showcasing some community projects so check it out: https://atproto.com/blog

>That still leaves governance of the protocol as a problem. That would ideally need to be untangled from Bluesky as well. But that seems doable as well.

The core part of the protocol is literally going through the IETF process now: https://atproto.com/blog/taking-at-to-the-ietf. It's happening.

Re: other things, it's up to the community to do this. You can get involved. BridgyFed is doing cross-protocol federation and has been doing for a while: https://fed.brid.gy/. I'm sure there are other things that could be done in that space.

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