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Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

atproto.com

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Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#41

Post by anon7000 »

paride5745 wrote: post #35
kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The nightmare of the Wsocial rollout is a testament of the massive control Bluesky has on the ATProto network. 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. Activ…

I think decentralization is just not something users care about generally.

- many people wish they could control what they see and who they talk to. (Eg control the algorithm, avoid censorship from big tech)

- some people care about owning their data so it doesn’t go away when a company fails

- technical people are interested in building more types of social apps that aren’t just twitter posts etc

- nearly everyone just wants a fairly seamless experience without a lot of gotchas or technical problems to solve like self hosting an instance for your friends that falls over if too many people use it and is tricky to network with others.

Bluesky is trying to solve all those kinds of problems, which I think is pretty interesting, and I don’t think the others are quite doing the same thing technically. At the end of the day they are all pretty niche.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#42

Post by anon7000 »

hack1312 wrote: post #18
kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 would be a lot more bullish on ATProto if there was a way to migrate DIDs and retain all your followers and shit. And if there was proper graphical tools for data migration. This is exactly where I’ve landed re: ATProto. If you actually want to self-host everything you lose one of the biggest draws of it, the migratable IDs. I was looking into it to build an alternative to Threads/IG/TikTok for one of my hobby co…

I didn’t fully understand the part of the stack you’re talking about, but it always seemed like one of ATProto’s design goals was to really keep everything on the same distributed system (so to speak) while allowing people to host the bits individually that all contribute to the same connected system. Eg not having fully separate networks that don’t talk to each other

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#43

Post by pjc50 »

paride5745 wrote: post #35
kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The nightmare of the Wsocial rollout is a testament of the massive control Bluesky has on the ATProto network. 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. Activ…

What went wrong with Wsocial?

I don't mind the quasi-central nature of bsky, it's more of a problem that it's so heavily dominated by US politics.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#44

Post by bbg2401 »

Quothling wrote: post #40
p-e-w wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you will find that a lot of people find that to be a feature of the federated networks. It's how society works outside of social networks. You aren't likely to see football fans of different teams sharing pubs here in Europe. You wouldn't see judgemental people be allowed in accepting roleplaying communities and so on. Why would a network of community controlled servers be any different than this? IRC was lik…

The village idiot analogy is misguided and unnecessarily accusatory.

However, I do feel internet communities were better when they were smaller due to being special interest driven and self-policing. People wore different hats according to the community they were engaging with.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#45

Post by mort96 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #10
1shooner wrote: post #3

>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?

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.

Why can't the IETF register trademarks?

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#46

Post by snorremd »

kmeisthax wrote: post #14
1shooner wrote: post #3

>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…

The PLC governance not having been moved yet is my one main gripe against ATProto/Atmosphere now. There is so much being built on top of this protocol, and I truly believe it has the chance to make the social web more decentralized while keeping everything connected. The PLC being controlled by one major commercial entity allows them to pull the plug so to speak. Say someone is sanctioned by the US, what stops Bluesky from pulling the plug on their DID thereby blocking and censoring this person from the network all together.

Half the point of ATProto is that identities are used across a host of apps, and therein lies a big vulnerability. If identities are not truly independent of centralized infrastructure, then you are vulnerable to losing access to a number of apps at once similar to Google services black hole if your Google account is banned (not to mentioned anywhere you've logged in with SSO).

It would be much better if the PLC was somehow decentralized itself. Barring that it should at least be finally spun out as the independent Swiss organization they've talked about for some time now. The organization could form a board with interested parties to set the future of PLC development if needed.

As for PDS migration, there are good options if you are migrating away from Bluesky. There are lots of GUI tools that work well now like https://pdsmoover.com/moover, Eurosky has https://move.eurosky.tech/, etc. It would be cool though if Bluesky actually linked to the other big PDS-providers on the Bluesky sign-up page to actually promote decentralization. But I guess it is hard to vouch for other services.

I still think the future of ATProto is bright, but there are definitely some obstacles before I'm comfortable with the whole setup. The network needs more decentralization in the PDS-layer, and the PLC needs to spin out in the separate governance organization pronto.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#47

Post by fsflover »

zoul wrote: post #22
steveklabnik wrote: post #10

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.

But it’s true in the general idea of Bluesky being highly centralized and dependent on a single for-profit entity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931191

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#48

Post by throawayonthe »

notpushkin wrote: post #30
herrkanin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATProto is closer to how RSS works than ActivityPub. In the same way talking about "RSS instances" makes little sense, the same goes for "ATProto instances".

It makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators”. Especially it makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators that speak a specific vocabulary on top of RSS, host 99% of content using that vocabulary, and if you host your own RSS feed with said vocabulary they’ll show it in their aggregator but can ban it any minute”. Did I just describe Apple Podcasts? Huh. Regardless, yeah, there’s no “ATProto instances” technically, bu…

i guess that's fair, but i've never listened to a podcast from a non-foss app; i'm not really "in" the podcast sphere, but from where i'm sitting it seems podcasting would survive and migrate just fine if apple podcasts had to go away suddenly

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#49

Post by throawayonthe »

snorremd wrote: post #46
kmeisthax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The PLC governance not having been moved yet is my one main gripe against ATProto/Atmosphere now. There is so much being built on top of this protocol, and I truly believe it has the chance to make the social web more decentralized while keeping everything connected. The PLC being controlled by one major commercial entity allows them to pull the plug so to speak. Say someone is sanctioned by the US, what stops Bluesk…

> Say someone is sanctioned by the US, what stops Bluesky from pulling the plug on their DID thereby blocking and censoring this person from the network all together.

How does IANA handle this with domain names? genuine question, i'm not sure. is it enough to have distinct registrars and distinct jurisdictions for some TLDs and so on?

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#50

Post by inigyou »

1shooner wrote: post #3

>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?

Yes. It has never been decentralised.
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