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There are no instances in ATProto

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Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#321

Post by hack1312 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #179
danabramov wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m speaking about the hypothetical situation where an app is blown from the face of the earth, not temporarily goes down. I thought that’s what the parent discussion was about. I’m not sure what we’re discussing now. All I’m saying is that if a developer forever takes down some atproto app, another developer can put up a new app that shows the old app’s data because the data is actually inside the users’ repositorie…

Yeah I'm kinda waiting for this. I don't like to join bluesky because I want it more decentralised but I can't join blacksky because it's only for black people. I'm kinda hoping someone sets up a rainbowsky or something for us in the LGBT community. Now that I would join.

Blacksky is not only for Black people. They’re only reserving the blacksky.social domain handles for them, everyone else who wants to have a Blacksky account can use the myatproto.social domain.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#322

Post by tancop »

hack1312 wrote: post #320
danabramov wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say censorship alone is the primary motivation here so I’m a bit wary when people bring it up. But the way to think about it is that your data being on PDS is the mechanism that creates a market opportunity for other apps that, among other things, differ in moderation strategies. Concrete example: Bluesky banned a person, and Blacksky community disagreed with that ban. When Blacksky switched http://blacksk…

Does Blacksky have its own DID system, are they using did:web, or do they rely on blue sky’s did:plc? iiuc did:plc is what allows people to change their handle/use custom domains with the same account, but only Bluesky offers or can run did:plc, everyone else who wants to run their own full stack themselves is relegated to did:web which essentially has the same restrictions as ActivityPub where your account is tied t…

> only Bluesky offers or can run did:plc

PLC is set up in a way where the database is fully visible and exportable. any censorship would show up in logs. if bluesky ever pulls it off at least part the community will stop trusting them, start their own server and patch apps to use the new domain. i know its not that easy in practice but its possible because everything is open source.

> ...your account is tied to the domain hosting the DID

thats nothing like the activitypub model. the atproto equivalent of an instance is your PDS which is something most users dont self host. did:web is not bound to a PDS, it uses a domain you own and a static https server you probably already have to host one file in `.well-known`. the risk of losing your account is much lower because someone would have to steal your domain or vps. theres no admin who can take it away.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#323

Post by inigyou »

RobotToaster wrote: post #314
inigyou wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATProto has both PLC and ICANN ICANN is a severe risk btw. Current new protocols should be designed to avoid DNS wherever possible.

Or use multiple alternative DNS roots like OpenNIC.

Nobody does, and ICANN can take away your OpenNIC TLD by registering the same one, forcing OpenNIC to copy the registration.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#324

Post by hack1312 »

tancop wrote: post #322
hack1312 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Blacksky have its own DID system, are they using did:web, or do they rely on blue sky’s did:plc? iiuc did:plc is what allows people to change their handle/use custom domains with the same account, but only Bluesky offers or can run did:plc, everyone else who wants to run their own full stack themselves is relegated to did:web which essentially has the same restrictions as ActivityPub where your account is tied t…

> only Bluesky offers or can run did:plc PLC is set up in a way where the database is fully visible and exportable. any censorship would show up in logs. if bluesky ever pulls it off at least part the community will stop trusting them, start their own server and patch apps to use the new domain. i know its not that easy in practice but its possible because everything is open source. > ...your account is tied to the d…

yeah yeah “PLC is mirrorable” but can I run my own federated did:plc service at this moment for my own community? As far as I understand, I cannot and am limited to did:web and all the associated drawbacks, or having users sign up with Bluesky’s PLC directory to actually allow for the username portability ATproto promises.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#325

Post by supern0va »

knotbin wrote: post #164
dbingham wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most people" cannot afford $30 /month. And of those who can, most of those cannot afford the time and effort required to run a relay. And I honestly think this is one of the fundamental problems with the push back towards protocols and decentralization. We're overestimating the bandwidth and capabilities of the average user and we haven't fixed the problems that pushed everyone towards centralization in the first pl…

> "Most people" cannot afford $30 /month. And of those who can, most of those cannot afford the time and effort required to run a relay. ??? that's not the point. the goal isn't that some non-technical 40 year old will run their own relay. the goal is that relays will be cheap enough to run that there can be hundreds of relays for developers of apps to choose from. relays are DEVELOPER facing only, meaning the develo…

>To this I would say: migration is not the path to spreading users out across instances at a large scale. Migration to me is more of an insurance against a service going down or turning evil.

I think people aren't paying enough attention this part right here: I think the architecture of atproto creates a different set of incentives. People running communities are more likely to face community pressure to ban users, or de-federate with other communities they don't like, and your open/decentralized network fractures apart, creating little silos.

People running infrastructure connecting them to a global network/resource are less likely to feel those pressures. No one asks an email provider to ban another webmail host. The architecture colors the perception.

The biggest problem Bluesky has had is that by virtue of being the only effective relay at launch, people viewed it more like the former and less like the latter. But I think if we start to see more places like Blacksky and Eurosky get mindshare, we can shift it back.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#326

Post by lmorchard »

demux wrote: post #319
lmorchard wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scaling is not useful if that's not your goal

A mastodon instance is not useful if that's not your goal lol

Why lol? If you only want to scale to a few dozen or a few hundred or even a few thousand folks, a Mastodon instance is fine. You don't have to scale to the whole world.

Re: There are no instances in ATProto

#327

Post by dbingham »

danabramov wrote: post #161
dbingham wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most people" cannot afford $30 /month. And of those who can, most of those cannot afford the time and effort required to run a relay. And I honestly think this is one of the fundamental problems with the push back towards protocols and decentralization. We're overestimating the bandwidth and capabilities of the average user and we haven't fixed the problems that pushed everyone towards centralization in the first pl…

This isn't about "average user". Relays have nothing to do with using atproto as a user . They're about developers making new apps. By "most people" it's implied we're talking about most people who want to run a web app in their spare time . Do you mean a different definition? If you want to run a web app (which is the only reason you'd want a relay) and you're able to pool with ten other developers who want to do th…

You're getting hung up on the relay distinction (which is fair). But I'm not talking about relay's here.

And to be clear, I'm talking about the push back towards protocols and decentralization as the solution to enshittification and lock in. I fully believe decentralized protocols and the ability for us to run federated instances for our communities is valuable in and of itself. What I'm arguing against here is the degree to which the pro-social tech community has coalesced around this push as the one and only solution to the problems of enshittification.

And in that context, the average user is everything. And the push fundamentally misunderstands both how enshittification works (email is fully decentralized but still enshittified to a large degree) and the capabilities of the average user (not just their technical capabilities but their cognitive load capacity).

If you want, s/relay/pds/ and my point may become clearer. Or, even, s/relay+pds/app/. The point is pds+relay+app functions as instance for the average user. And the average user doesn't have the time, energy, or cognitive capacity to pick an instance that would be the right fit for them. Which means these decentralized networks are still heavily centralized. And if they remain heavily centralized, those central players still exercise an enormous amount of power over the network.

Including the power to enshittify it.

We can't solve enshittification if we're not cognizant of what the average user is capable of. And that capability extends to more than just "technical understanding". So far, I don't think the protocols push, in so far as it is being pushed as the solution to enshittification, is grappling with that adequately.

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