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Who owns your ATProto identity?

kevinak.se

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Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#31

Post by mdasen »

jacobgold wrote: post #16

One of the core features of AT is the ability to move your repo hosting provider (PDS) at any time. This is the "data portability" problem that ActivityPub never solved. Bluesky Social, PBC runs a PDS service (bsky.social) for free, there are a number of free public alternatives, and thousands of users self-host. Self-hosting your own PDS can be done with Raspberry Pi or $5/mo VM and requires very little work. It run…

You have the ability to move, as long as Bluesky Social PBC allows it.

They hold the keys for your DID. If they don't allow you to move to another PDS, you can't move. The original theory was that you'd hold the private keys, but that's something that would hugely limit adoption so they decided to hold the keys themselves.

In terms of moving your backlog of posts to a new server, part of the issue is liability (not merely legal liability, but reputational as well). When you have a user on your platform and they're posting stuff, you're moderating them in real time. If they turn out to be a horrible troll, you've get the reports. Let's say a horrible troll has been on EvilServer and EvilServer has been ignoring the reports against them. They now want to move to your GoodServer and bring all their post history with them. As an admin of GoodServer, you can't see that everyone has been reporting this troll for years. They're now moving over lots of horrible, inflammatory, potentially illegal posts to your server.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#32

Post by chuckadams »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #20
rbren wrote: post #17

Who owns your domain name? Hint: it’s probably not you. Your hosting provider could take down your domain, or even steal traffic and direct it to their own IPs

But without private keys they can't pretend to be the same you. There is a very big difference here.

Right, if Bluesky ever does do something hinky with your PDS, the operation will be signed with their key and persisted in the operation log which they're unable to touch. You can outright remove Bluesky's key if you want, though I think that only works within some number of days of creating it.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#33

Post by opem »

Both nostr and atp sucks at key management imo. The Farcaster network does a good job here with their chain of trust model and a smart contract on etherium blockchain to recover identities in case of losing access to a private key. Ironically its also the blockchain aspect of Farcaster for which I never tried it.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#34

Post by jacobgold »

opem wrote: post #29
jacobgold wrote: post #16

One of the core features of AT is the ability to move your repo hosting provider (PDS) at any time. This is the "data portability" problem that ActivityPub never solved. Bluesky Social, PBC runs a PDS service (bsky.social) for free, there are a number of free public alternatives, and thousands of users self-host. Self-hosting your own PDS can be done with Raspberry Pi or $5/mo VM and requires very little work. It run…

Except it isn't as straightforward as most people would think. The last time I checked this, I think there were some issues with Bluesky app view and it didn't show accounts from a self hosted PDS

You may have seen a temporary bug.

It's completely straightforward and it works. Tens of thousands of users are doing it successfully.

https://blue.mackuba.eu/stats/

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#35

Post by chuckadams »

mdasen wrote: post #31
jacobgold wrote: post #16

One of the core features of AT is the ability to move your repo hosting provider (PDS) at any time. This is the "data portability" problem that ActivityPub never solved. Bluesky Social, PBC runs a PDS service (bsky.social) for free, there are a number of free public alternatives, and thousands of users self-host. Self-hosting your own PDS can be done with Raspberry Pi or $5/mo VM and requires very little work. It run…

You have the ability to move, as long as Bluesky Social PBC allows it. They hold the keys for your DID. If they don't allow you to move to another PDS, you can't move. The original theory was that you'd hold the private keys, but that's something that would hugely limit adoption so they decided to hold the keys themselves. In terms of moving your backlog of posts to a new server, part of the issue is liability (not m…

You can add your own keys to your DID, and IIRC you can even remove bsky's keys within a given timeframe (days).

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#36

Post by jacobgold »

chuckadams wrote: post #35
mdasen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the ability to move, as long as Bluesky Social PBC allows it. They hold the keys for your DID. If they don't allow you to move to another PDS, you can't move. The original theory was that you'd hold the private keys, but that's something that would hugely limit adoption so they decided to hold the keys themselves. In terms of moving your backlog of posts to a new server, part of the issue is liability (not m…

You can add your own keys to your DID, and IIRC you can even remove bsky's keys within a given timeframe (days).

You can also opt for a did:web identity using your own domain in which case did:plc is irrelevant to you.

https://atproto.com/specs/did

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