31–40 of 157 posts
Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
> Bluesky recently acquired the rights to the trademark for “ATPROTOCOL” and its variants—including “AT Protocol” and “atproto”—from another company that was threatening to take legal action preventing the company and others from using the term. Now that Bluesky owns it, the atproto community’s continued use of the mark can be protected. The policy around usage is shared in the rest of the post but the goal is to mak…
So what about the existing AT protocol modems use?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_AT_command_set [2] https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results/73319703
Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
This has happened with every single federated platform, and it can’t be solved with technology because it’s fundamentally not a technology problem. People want to be where other people are, so once the community reaches a critical mass it inevitably degrades into the same sump of mediocrities and their rules as everything else.
>We plan to transfer that ownership to an appropriate, independent protocol governance organization in the future. I never realized there is no independent governance org that should have registered this. So AT is governed by a single for-profit entity, that also runs the only viable instance?
"Only viable instance" is not really the correct framing - Bluesky doesn't have instances . Anyone using ATProto without Bluesky will still be "on Bluesky". When you go to bsky.app, you're interacting with the Bluesky AppView ; one key feature of ATProto is that any AppView can interact with any (consenting) Personal Data Server (PDS). So you can self-host your PDS but still use bsky.app if you so choose. But critica…
If Wsocial was on ActivityPub or Nostr nothing similar would have happened.
ATProto has serious centralisation problems, baked into the design. And it makes sense, considering it came out of a Twitter R&D experiment to "decentralise" Twitter itself. Pure federation was never part of the initial design.
ActivityPub and Nostr solve the issue already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an IETF Working Group these days https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group Those can't register trademarks, of course. > that also runs the only viable instance? This is false, both in the framing ("instances") and in the viability of running alternative infrastructure.
How do you mean? As in you can run different instances or as in it's a false open protocol?
>We plan to transfer that ownership to an appropriate, independent protocol governance organization in the future. I never realized there is no independent governance org that should have registered this. So AT is governed by a single for-profit entity, that also runs the only viable instance?
"Only viable instance" is not really the correct framing - Bluesky doesn't have instances . Anyone using ATProto without Bluesky will still be "on Bluesky". When you go to bsky.app, you're interacting with the Bluesky AppView ; one key feature of ATProto is that any AppView can interact with any (consenting) Personal Data Server (PDS). So you can self-host your PDS but still use bsky.app if you so choose. But critica…
I can’t imagine being a first time bootstrapped founder running a business without a trademark and not knowing that someone with bad faith would just register a trademark and just sue or order you to change your name. These are the things that most startups account for when raising capital.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
The single point of failure is always the biggest instances or communities, which impose their rules on everyone else under threat of refusing to communicate with them. This has happened with every single federated platform, and it can’t be solved with technology because it’s fundamentally not a technology problem. People want to be where other people are, so once the community reaches a critical mass it inevitably d…
It didn't happen with the internet itself. You still can avoid Facebook and co. and happily discuss things on HN.
And with the email, it is much less serious than people assume. I do not use gmail or MS and practically nobody I talk to does.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, it is possible to join Bluesky without relying on the single point of failure, as Cory Doctorow highlighted here: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/executive-dysfunction/
The single point of failure is always the biggest instances or communities, which impose their rules on everyone else under threat of refusing to communicate with them. This has happened with every single federated platform, and it can’t be solved with technology because it’s fundamentally not a technology problem. People want to be where other people are, so once the community reaches a critical mass it inevitably d…
If you find yourself on the outside, it might just be that you're the village idiot. Before SoMe platforms like twitter, facebook and other places without local moderation the village idiot didn't have much of a voice either.