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Who owns your ATProto identity?

kevinak.se

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Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#121

Post by verdverm »

jacobgold wrote: post #119
verdverm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would counterpoint that a non-insignificant number of the accounts are spam/bots. Jaz's stats overestimate because it does not remove certain accounts which have been takedown/deleted, let alone those that remain. I have shared analysis of this on HN, Bluesky, and Discord to avoid making educated guesses. The reality is that a significant chunk (>50%) was Blue MAGA, or turned off by them, and I see little prospect…

Sure, it may overestimate the exact count, but that doesn't change the fact that tens of millions of real people have downloaded Bluesky and signed up. Right now, Bluesky has one large community, which is already great for some people but not most people. Once Bluesky adds Communities, new communities can form, making it interesting to the other 90% of people who were excited initially and then turned off by it being…

I think your association with Blueksy is painting a rosier picture for yourself than reality portends. Do you know how many of those accounts never added a profile picture or even liked a single post? Do you think people are likely to reactivate to something they checked out once and has only shrunk since? Can ActivityPub/Mastodon add some new feature that will reactivate all the people who tried that out and moved on?

If you'd like to crawl the network to get real data, I built this a while ago https://github.com/verdverm/atmunge (it will take a few days to get sufficient data to do analysis, due to rate-limits)

Certainly Bluesky has stats about mobile app installs / usage. If they were good, they would be sharing those instead of the /users/accounts/ number that feels good but hides the reality. The first step (imo) would be to stop trying to deny reality and start asking why it is the reality. Only then can corrections be made. I don't think the core issues are technical, a missing feature, or a social media modality that was supposed to be built in the atmosphere. (other than my strongly held opinion that public-by-default was the wrong choice and bolting on permissioned spaces now is not a right answer)

I'm personally waiting on the next attempt that learns from AP/AT/Nostr, but makes privacy first core. I think it will be a few years still. Right now more people are shunning social media across the board, it's all so toxic and polarizing regardless of modality and where you use it.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#122

Post by CharlesW »

ascorbic wrote: post #102
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 can host it for free on Cloudflare using my Cirrus PDS: https://cirrus.earth/

Brilliant, so happy to learn about this!

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#123

Post by drdexebtjl »

ranger_danger wrote: post #118
refulgentis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the main problem is you can't really ever tell with a high degree of certainty This is false, it is trivial to find humans with 99%+ accuracy[1] and there is a well-known service with 99%+ accuracy when analyzed by 3rd parties with no affiliation.[2] > people are just guessing based on what they see in an unscientific way As we see above, this is just guessing in an unscientific way. :) It's important to be rationa…

> This is false, it is trivial to find humans with 99%+ accuracy Sorry but no, this is also false. AI is largely trained on human data. What it outputs is also largely what a human would output. We could both easily make up the exact same sentences (especially smaller ones) and there is NO way to tell what the real source of a sentence is, especially considering the source can be multiple things (AI and human) at the…

Humans can write these tropes individually. But we usually don’t write them one after the other over the course of the entire text.

We have our own personal biases towards certain words and sentence structures that don’t match the same biases that post-training favors. We speak egoistically how we want to speak, not necessarily how the listener wants to hear.

We don’t polish every sentence, because not every sentence needs polish.

If a human wrote like this, I would be concerned that they’re spending too much effort into making me feel or thing something, and not enough effort into expressing their own thoughts and emotions. I would be concerned that they’re spending way too much effort into writing blog posts, and not enough effort thinking about the topic they’re writing about. I wouldn’t want to read that either.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#124

Post by EGreg »

nekusar wrote: post #115
EGreg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's compare apples to apples, shall we. How many houses were actually seized, repossessed, commandeered with "eminent domain", slowly taken over via "adverse possession", encroached on with easements and air rights, and whatever else? Versus how many domains? There is no violence on the internet. You can't shoot intruders. And that's a great thing. Put in legal terms, you do NOT have this level of ownership to your…

I'm not sure where you're from, but in my state, we have "Castle Doctrine" and "Stand your Ground" laws. That means if you are a home invader, I can legally shoot and kill you. There'll be an investigation, but both statutes are affirmative defenses to killing. Its not that I want to, or look forward to it. I don't, and I hope I never have to. But I will, if I'm forced.

I am familiar with it. But even then it applies only “if a person is under an imminent threat of serious physical harm or danger by a guest (or an intruder) in their home, they do not have to attempt to safely escape the situation prior to using physical force; the homeowner may immediately use force to eliminate the threat in their home.”

For example shooting a 5 year old kid who trespassed on your property isnt covered

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#125

Post by kevinak »

skybrian wrote: post #13

Most people don’t worry about it for the same reason they don’t worry about GitHub abusing their GitHub account and are even willing to use “login with GitHub” to access their other accounts. Account takeover by a third party is a bigger risk. If you’re concerned about supply chain risks, there are more important concerns than “what if GitHub itself is a bad actor.” It’s solvable if you’re willing to self-host your P…

Correct, but it’s not decentralized in any meaningful way, which is what a lot of ATProto proponents want you to believe.

No one (not literally of course) self hosts their PDS. Like 99.9%, if not more, are using the Bluesky PDSes.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#126

Post by kevinak »

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…

Yes you can but the vast majority don’t, and that is what matters. When Bluesky goes rogue because of profitability issues or VC pressure, the vast vast majority of users lose their identities on the wider network. Users will choose the path of least resistance. It’s all about incentives.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#127

Post by kevinak »

triyambakam wrote: post #6

What's the evidence for this? I'd be very keen to understand. This looks Claude written which is fine but adds an extra layer of skepticism for me.

You can just read the documentation: https://atproto.com/guides/overview#account-portability

“The signing key is entrusted to the PDS so that it can manage the user's data, but rotation keys can be controlled by the user, e.g. as a paper key. This makes it possible for the user to update their account to a new PDS without the original host's help.”

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#128

Post by bluebarbet »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #120
bluebarbet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I just read the article a bit more closely, and personally I see no reason to panic like you (and others here) are doing. The AI suspicion was presumably triggered by one of the subheadings, which follows the "It's not X, it's Y" schema. At this point it's almost a meme that this betrays AI. But I say: who cares? The substance and the authenticity are what count. This article made some interesting points, and it w…

It’s not just that subheading, it’s a recurring pattern. It’s not about authors using AI, it’s about authors not respecting the reader’s time. Writing has a multiplicative force. The writer only needs to spend time writing it once. The text will reach thousands of readers who will collectively spend a lot more time on it than the author. If even with that asymmetry, the author is not willing to put effort into writin…

With respect, if you cannot tell the two types of writing apart with certainty, then your analysis is akin to superstition.

Speaking for myself (as ever), I am just not bothered by what bothers you. Good writing is good writing. Bad writing is bad writing. Who or what generated it, and how much time it took, is immaterial.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#129

Post by refulgentis »

bluebarbet wrote: post #128
drdexebtjl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that subheading, it’s a recurring pattern. It’s not about authors using AI, it’s about authors not respecting the reader’s time. Writing has a multiplicative force. The writer only needs to spend time writing it once. The text will reach thousands of readers who will collectively spend a lot more time on it than the author. If even with that asymmetry, the author is not willing to put effort into writin…

With respect, if you cannot tell the two types of writing apart with certainty , then your analysis is akin to superstition. Speaking for myself (as ever), I am just not bothered by what bothers you. Good writing is good writing. Bad writing is bad writing. Who or what generated it, and how much time it took, is immaterial.

I'm glad all the assumptions about other people got walked back, I hope the openness about my personal situation re: AI was concrete proof why everyone identifying AI writing is not a panicking person afraid of it and starting a new religion against it. :) Cheers.

Re: Who owns your ATProto identity?

#130

Post by refulgentis »

ranger_danger wrote: post #118
refulgentis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the main problem is you can't really ever tell with a high degree of certainty This is false, it is trivial to find humans with 99%+ accuracy[1] and there is a well-known service with 99%+ accuracy when analyzed by 3rd parties with no affiliation.[2] > people are just guessing based on what they see in an unscientific way As we see above, this is just guessing in an unscientific way. :) It's important to be rationa…

> This is false, it is trivial to find humans with 99%+ accuracy Sorry but no, this is also false. AI is largely trained on human data. What it outputs is also largely what a human would output. We could both easily make up the exact same sentences (especially smaller ones) and there is NO way to tell what the real source of a sentence is, especially considering the source can be multiple things (AI and human) at the…

I understand nothing anyone says can ever convince you anything was written by AI. Not much I can say from there. shrugs So I'll just thought dump.

I don't come from much and this reminds me of the rich girl who wondered how anyone could ever tell if anything is true ever in english class last year of high school. Real formative moment for me. It sounds debilitating, but at the very least comparatively to her, people acting like there's no such thing as certainty unless its 100%, and there's no sense in weighing things, allowed me to climb past them without paying the same tolls or having the same advantages.

(for those looking at rationality:

>> This is false, it is trivial to find humans with 99%+ accuracy [link]

> Sorry but no, this is also false...there is no amount of literature you could provide or anything you can do or say that would change my mind on this.

I have science, they have a tortured counter about the nature of certainty that belongs in freshman philosophy class, as it would obviate any discussion of anything ever)

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