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I'm betting on ATProto

brittanyellich.com

21–30 of 158 posts

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#21
post #18

X just unified the feed across languages such that all posts automatically get translated for users. These kinds of innovations are much more important than the ability to be able to switch apps.

Did it? Just checked and my feed is still completely untranslated. I have my settings set as English. I hope they don't do the weird YouTube thing of translating things from languages you know into the language you set. Multilingual people exist

The feature only rolled out to me today and I think it started rolling out to people only a couple days ago.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#22
I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out.

But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 2024. I've never heard anything about PeerTube in casual conversation, and Mastodon is not common to hear about either.

As someone with a tech degree and a liberal arts degree, I think protocols like this are excellent examples of trying to solve social issues with technology instead of policy or other approaches. I can't tell you what those other approaches would be, but I haven't seen a lot of efficacy from the purely technological ones. Eventually, the pressure of turning a profit always seems to take over, pushing the moral mission aside. Still. I'm rooting for ATProto to speak truth to power and uproot apps like X and Instagram.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#23

I've realized not to bet on any social media. For example, pre-Elon Twitter, I thought Twitter was going to around a long time and I would continue to use it for many years. I left Twitter when Elon bought it. While I'm on various social media sites now, I can fairly easily pick up a new one as I see fit. And if my audience doesn't want to follow me there, they don't have to. And I can find different people to follow…

if you are always looking for new 'audiences' it's probably just media and not social media. I use hubs my peers and friends use. IRC, email and for the boomers - Facebook.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like most of Japan.

Japanese is the second most used language on Bluesky https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.d...

Is the same algorithmic connectivity with Japanese happening on Bluesky as it is on Twitter, or are Bluesky's algorithms just as opaque as Twitter's?

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese is the second most used language on Bluesky https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.d...

Is the same algorithmic connectivity with Japanese happening on Bluesky as it is on Twitter, or are Bluesky's algorithms just as opaque as Twitter's?

I'm not sure myself, however in atproto you can fetch all the data and do analytics, love it or hate it.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#26

I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out. But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 202…

I think realistically the only people who care about this are a very niche number of hardcore users. I won't be surprised if federated networks never take off. Obviously there are good reasons for normies to care but when the solution is as disjointed as some of the federated stuff has been, it's just not an advantage. You end up with a bunch of idealists/nerds chatting about the same stuff. It's not terrible but the average person does not care. I mean arguably the average person doesn't really post on social media, either. Sometimes I wonder if future generations will consider this all hot air.

Really, they're kind of unncessary to begin with, you probably do want an off-ramp but it's better if a centralized service just has good governance and policies that can be affected by users. The current setup is still usually relatively closed entities that are federated.

Regarding the awareness of it in the mainstream, I somehow got too high at a local pot shop and ended up chatting with the cashier. He was a former gamedev and knew what quaternions were (we were both confused by them), but I felt deep shame when I mentioned IRC and he clearly had never heard of it. I don't think outside of HN and other niches, people have heard or care about these federated protocols. It's a very nerdy/self-indulgent need to worry about whether all of your Internet writings are accessible via various means.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#27

Focusing on protocol and decentralisation is putting the cart before the horse. The reason why Twitter, and Reddit in particular work so well is because of sub-communities that form organically. More importantly, discovery was part of the value in using it. It's why every Mastodon community specific to one niche/subject is not very interesting, people are not one single interest, we follow someone we like for one rea…

> The reason why Twitter, and Reddit in particular work so well is because of sub-communities that form organically. Which sub-communities are on Twitter right now?

There are a lot of small, informal and fuzzy communities around specific interests in Twitter. For example, I routinely run into the same folks talking about some specific areas in PL/FP or in complex systems/resilience engineering. These sub-communities aren't clearly delineated like a subreddit, rather they arise organically through the same set of people following each other or, at least, consistently appearing in each others' feeds and conversations.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#28

I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out. But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 202…

Re:fediverse - it depends on which communities you're part of. Digital rights, politics here in Canada (see e.g. https://mstdn.ca/@avilewis), politics in the EU (https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/about), basically anything that touches Linux is very much entrenched on the protocol. My local newspaper (https://thetyee.ca/) has a Mastodon share button on the page even. Unlike with Bluesky, leadership has been very consistent and so far trustworthy.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#29

I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out. But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 202…

The Fediverse did take off. Then large numbers of influential people got banned by randos and realized how much better and reliable (non-profit or not) corporate censors are.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#30

I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out. But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 202…

The Fediverse did take off. Then large numbers of influential people got banned by randos and realized how much better and reliable (non-profit or not) corporate censors are.

...for them.
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