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I was right about ATProto key management

notes.nora.codes

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Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#141

Post by direwolf20 »

mcdonje wrote: post #4
arjie wrote: post #3

My experience using ATProto is that it is somewhat like how the nascent blockchain apps were when they first came out: there's no written content that is viable. Instead, you're supposed to use ephemeral conversations and read a widely disparate set of notes in order to use it. In the end, the upshot of all this is that you get to use a slightly worse form of Twitter - which is already rather unpleasant to use for me…

>you get to use a slightly worse form of Twitter The protocol can support all sorts of other social networks. People are building things akin to instagram, tiktok, medium, allrecipies, etc

Is there an advantage to using this protocol instead of a more application–specific one? Perhaps the shared identity?

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#142

Post by direwolf20 »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #114

Bluesky also randomly bans new accounts saying they violated the ToS. Like right after signup before you do anything. It says you'll receive an email with details (never happens) and offers a form to appeal. The form goes nowhere and you never hear anything again. This happened to me a couple months ago so it's probably still an issue. It seems more like sloppy, careless engineering than malice, however.

This happened to me and I made a new account, which isn't banned yet but it could be any day now if they detect "ban evasion". Why I don't trust centralised systems.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#143

Post by account42 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #18
Dwedit wrote: post #15

"View -> Page Style -> Basic Page Style" is required to read any of the text.

I don't have any issues with it but I've been computing since the 8 bit days which basically looked exactly like that :)

I wonder if it renders differently for different people.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#144

Post by direwolf20 »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #87
nightpool wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, OP is saying that they have over-engineered the protocol, and that this acts as an *effective* barrier to participation, regardless of whether it was intended or not. Bluesky's protocol is focused on twitter-scale use-cases, where every node in the network needs to be able to see and process every other event from every other user in able to work properly. This fundamentally limits the people who can run a server…

Great, so what's the alternative? What's the "properly engineered" protocol?

Email, RSS, blogs, even Mastodon protocol (it's not ActivityPub) scales better. Anything that only sends data between interested parties, instead of to everyone.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#145

Post by direwolf20 »

danpalmer wrote: post #24
bramhaag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most people couldn't care less. Bluesky has been lying about being decentralized since day 1, and yet they have millions of users.

Bluesky has been asymptotically approaching full decentralisation. A few years ago the gap was everything except a decentralised design, then it was AppViews, now it's "tooling and documentation" for the bit of the PKI that only 50 entities have done. Meanwhile I lost my Mastodon account history because I moved once, couldn't interact with half the network or apps because I was on a non-Mastodon codebase instance, lo…

They are at 0.1% decentralisation, how can you extrapolate asymptotic decentralisation from that?

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#146

Post by direwolf20 »

danpalmer wrote: post #50
bramhaag wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all classic signs of centralisation. No, these are classic signs of decentralization. > I lost my Mastodon account history because I moved once Your posts still exist on every server that federated with you, there's just no central authority to coordinate reclaiming them. > couldn't interact with half the network or apps because I was on a non-Mastodon codebase instance Independent implementations having compatibil…

Being beholden to a particular server I have no control over sounds like what happened with Twitter/X. The posts might exist, but they aren't associated with me. Why not? Because I was locked into somewhere and unable to vote with my feet and go elsewhere. Maybe I stopped paying because the instance owner enforced sanctions against my country? Why should I lose my identity because of that? > Independent implementatio…

I've realised that social networks are real–time feeds, not archives. Some archival features can be useful but they are not the main focus of the product. Archival needs are very different from real–time needs and combining them in the same product doesn't work out well.

Consider something simple like Slack: the selling point is that you can send messages to people. Being able to scroll back to last week is useful. Being able to scroll back 3 years is a nonessential bonus.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#147

Post by direwolf20 »

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #63
RobotToaster wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced that is not by design.

It is in a sense by design because the focus was creating a decentralize-able/federate-able protocol and infrastructure that can scale more or less indefinitely first and foremost, community second. The community is working on actually decentralising the network now that things mostly "just work" (assuming you are using did:plc/generally a happy path user). - Building out PDS communities that are trusted takes time a…

The way I see it, Mastodon started with a core decentralisation system and then tacked on bits to make it more Twitter-like, while Blue Sky started with a core Twitter-like system and then tacked on bits to make it more decentralised.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#149

Post by azertify »

direwolf20 wrote: post #127
somat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You invert the problem. People want to build store and forward systems because that is their mental model of the problem. store and forward system are fine, and there are many advantages to them, but direct request systems scale much better. basically have each user fetch their messages from the locations they want rather than delivering the messages to them. think how the web works vs how email works.

RSS! But you can't make a personalized timeline with a pull model, and that's where the money seems to be.

I think finding where the money _isn't_ is a fun way to find interesting projects.

Re: I was right about ATProto key management

#150

Post by azertify »

Angostura wrote: post #90
mschuster91 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think is wrong about Mastodon? The same problems as always. Allow federation and you get... - federation wars and moderators conducting these wars using their own users as hostages - I left Mastodon years ago when some particularly dumb morons decided to do bitchfights regarding Israel / Palestine. No I'm not interested in your pointless squabble, but I do care when I suddenly don't see posts from a bun…

Sounds like you want to run your own private instance. That way you control your own moderation and federation policies

I think the problem is that it's too onerous to run your own instance, but being on anything but the "default" instance means dealing with volunteer moderators imposing their worldview on the available discourse.

Creating a Mastodon account shouldn't mean supporting the particular political affiliation of the moderators, but I think it feels that way for many of the instances.

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