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Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

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Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#131

Post by 1dom »

danabramov wrote: post #68
account42 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "gotcha" might get cheers from your fellow AT proto fans but only eye rolls from everyone else.

I don't mean it as a linguistic gotcha ("ha, you said instances! but we call them something else"). I'm saying this is a category error because the network topology is different. This is like saying that web is not free because people aren't running Google-scale indexes in their garages. Tried to clarify this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956

Dan, you really should refine this line of reasoning a bit as it feels not very nice in some way: it feels like you're picking an unintuitive/uncommon definition for "instance" and then using that to tell everyone they're misunderstanding stuff then they're using different, arguably more widely accepted, definitions.

We've had a very similar discussion in response to this same argument recently elsewhere on HN. If you enjoy having this debate, then carry on, but I don't think it endears non ATProto users to the ATProto cause. I think it seems needlessly controversial/pedantic. Sorry for the blunt feedback, it's because I expect better from you:)

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#132

Post by tynanpurdy »

paride5745 wrote: post #80
lou1306 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more of a problem that it's so heavily dominated by US politics. I agree the default Discovery feed is not great, but you can just switch to a different feed like For You or the recent Eurosky version of it, called 'fu'. It vastly improves the experience.

Or join a European Mastodon server and solve the problem at the root.

and only have one feed? forgive me if I understand incorrectly but I'll take an open market of thousands of feeds and easy tooling to make my own that can pull from the whole network over just one local feed controlled by a server admin

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#133

Post by hack1312 »

danabramov wrote: post #119
hack1312 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dan my concern is explicitly that did:web is not the same experience for users as a did:plc. If I host AT Proto infra for my community and want to give people . accounts, I can either host a did:web for them which ties their account permanently to that domain, or they have to register with the centralized PLC to actually have all the benefits of a migratable DID. did:web does not provide the same UX as did:plc From t…

I did read your post :) Yes, you can't migrate between PLC and WEB methods. It's not possible. I get that it's frustrating if you learn about it after making an account. Is that the whole concern? I was replying to this: >not being able to self host a true alternative to did:plc has put a halt to that for now while I figure out what I want to do. I'm saying I don't know what this means. You can fully self-host with `…

My understanding is that if I want to host AT Proto infra for my community and want to give people . account, I can either host a did:web for them which ties their account permanently to that domain, or they have to register with the centralized PLC to actually have all the benefits of a migratable DID, while tying themselves to a central authority. Ergo, did:web does not provide the same UX as did:plc and there’s currently no way (that I know of) to provide such UX to users without requiring them to register did:plc accounts

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#134

Post by danabramov »

1dom wrote: post #131
danabramov wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean it as a linguistic gotcha ("ha, you said instances! but we call them something else"). I'm saying this is a category error because the network topology is different. This is like saying that web is not free because people aren't running Google-scale indexes in their garages. Tried to clarify this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956

Dan, you really should refine this line of reasoning a bit as it feels not very nice in some way: it feels like you're picking an unintuitive/uncommon definition for "instance" and then using that to tell everyone they're misunderstanding stuff then they're using different, arguably more widely accepted, definitions. We've had a very similar discussion in response to this same argument recently elsewhere on HN. If yo…

Let me try to explain my position.

The parent post says "the only viable instance" which implicitly packs an assumption of Mastodon-like topology: a single product is expected to be split into many "instances", with some of them being more or less "viable", and that a lack of many "viable" "instances" is perceived as the protocol not being a real thing, or failing to live up to its promise. (How else are you reading "viable instance"?)

I believe that if you look at the network topology, this argument becomes much closer to "Google Reader being the only viable instance of Google Reader means RSS is a scam with a single player". Which is an absurd thing to say. That is what I'm trying to show by picking at the word "instance".

Do you find my argument flawed, or just the way I present it? How do you prefer I present it alternatively? And how do you read the parent post? My issue isn't with the word, but with the implication in the parent post.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#135

Post by hack1312 »

anon7000 wrote: post #42
hack1312 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

If you want a nice overview of the DID stuff, Steve Klabnik just recently made a post going into detail about did:plc and did:web

https://steveklabnik.com/writing/too-many-words-about-dids/

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#136

Post by danabramov »

hack1312 wrote: post #133
danabramov wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read your post :) Yes, you can't migrate between PLC and WEB methods. It's not possible. I get that it's frustrating if you learn about it after making an account. Is that the whole concern? I was replying to this: >not being able to self host a true alternative to did:plc has put a halt to that for now while I figure out what I want to do. I'm saying I don't know what this means. You can fully self-host with `…

My understanding is that if I want to host AT Proto infra for my community and want to give people . account, I can either host a did:web for them which ties their account permanently to that domain, or they have to register with the centralized PLC to actually have all the benefits of a migratable DID, while tying themselves to a central authority. Ergo, did:web does not provide the same UX as did:plc and there’s cu…

>want to give people . account

To clarify, do you mean you want their domain handles to look like this, or do you want to make them all have `did:web` identities? These are two different questions. Domain handles would work either way (with `did:plc` or `did:web`).

Indeed, the choice between `did:plc` and `did:web` is precisely "would I rather host tie identity JSON document to an entry in a centralized open source publicly verifiable registry that is moving to be maintained as neutrally as possible, or would I rather choose to tie my identity JSON document to a domain". And that choice has to be done at the account creation because every DID, by design, is immutable.

What options are lacking in that choice? It feels like it has an option for a pragmatist and an option for a purist.

>Ergo, did:web does not provide the same UX as did:plc

I mean, that is the difference between them. `did:web` means "I don't want to depend on anyone except domain authorities; I'm fine with losing identity if I lose the domain". Choosing `did:plc` means "I'm okay with depending on a central registry and find the threat model around it acceptable; I never worry about losing a domain". Both options are available.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#137

Post by archagon »

well_ackshually wrote: post #127
ktosobcy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right… and still 99,99% of everything is held by bsky PDS and goes through their rely and appview… so much for "distributed federation"

In the same way that 99.99% of standard mastodon users are on mastodon.social, yes. No, the million of users sharing porn on entirely isolated mastodon instances that absolutely nobody wants to federate with because you'd be exposed to pictures of minors within 5 minutes do not count.

A bizarre exaggeration. In my feeds, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the people I follow use non-.social instances. The same cannot be said of Bluesky.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#138

Post by archagon »

jackyalcine wrote: post #115
eqvinox wrote: post #25

Cool people use ActivityPub. Single vendor owned & controlled standards always turn out badly, just a question when.

This is part of the reason why I stopped heavily engaging with ActivityPub. It's not everyone because I know the team of folks who make apps for the space but it's engagement like this who convinced me to write https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ and had me just step away from ActivityPub (at least until I can see https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api drop and I'll reengage).

This is a non-sequitur? ATProto was explicitly designed to not be compatible with ActivityPub. They shot first. So why are you focused on tone-policing ActivityPub?

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#139

Post by rubyn00bie »

gamerdonkey wrote: post #120
rudyfraser wrote: post #87

Chiming in to say as the CEO of Blacksky that not only do we have an independent AT Protocol implementation in Rust ( https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky ) Not only do we run a fully independent stack ( https://docs.blacksky.community/readme/list-of-our-services ) Not only are we getting paid by other orgs to stand up independent app view servers. We also received a license from Bluesky for the atproto tradem…

I agree that this is not an apocalyptic moment for the protocol. And I support what Blacksky is doing, so I kind of hate that this will probably be the only thing I get to say to you. But the argument that established, profitable organizations in the atproto space have no qualms with this move is not as reassuring as you might think.

I would not be surprised based on the post that the trademark will be given to some sort of non-profit foundation. The post itself made it seem pretty clear that the current reasons to have the PBC acquire it were:

1. An adversary attempting to do so in order to extract money (rent seeking).

2. There was less legal and financial overhead in doing so via the PBC.

While not everything BlueSky has done has been stellar, and there have been missteps, I think they’ve generally been exceptional stewards of atproto and the ecosystem. As a result, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt they will stand by their word.

FWIW— shithead trolls doing things like acquiring copyrights to extract “rents” are exactly why every org I’ve ever worked for pays lawyers for bullshit copyright and patent applications. It’s not because they’re valid, it’s because it’s cheaper to do so upfront, than fight to disprove someone else own’s them later.

Re: Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

#140

Post by ndiddy »

ray_v wrote: post #81
sschueller wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about the existing AT protocol modems use?

I had to shake my head for a moment as I was instantly transported back to 1998 with that comment lol

Anyone who's worked with cell modems knows that AT commands are very much still a thing, see here for example: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/127000_127099/127007/17...
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