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Open Social

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Re: Open Social

#361

Post by danabramov »

geokon wrote: post #317
danabramov wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designers of atproto actually agree with you so the data is not unstructured! It’s structured by schemas (called “lexicons”) controlled by app developers. Data in user repositories is treated as untrusted input by apps, and rejected if it doesn’t pass the corresponding schema. Schemas are evolved in a backwards-compatible way with a nudge towards future extension (eg open unions are default). That’s exactly why you c…

ah okay, i hadnt come across this. seems like a potentially viable strategy > Schemas are evolved in a backwards-compatible way with a nudge towards future extension (eg open unions are default). unions of schemas? Doesnt that lead to a facebook-ized kitchen sink app that does everything? you can effectivelt filter to .. say .. only photos with a photo-only app. But that doesnt form a app/schema culture

See here for how schemas are defined: https://atproto.com/specs/lexicon

I meant specifically that “unions” default to open. Let me give you an example. A Bluesky post may contain different types of attachments. Image, gallery, video, etc. That’s a union of known schemas. However, that union is open. That means that generated type will include “or unknown” as the last possible value. Apps are expected to ignore that case when pattern patching since they wouldn’t know how to interpret it. However, that leaves Bluesky with ability to later officially support other types of attachments. Because more potential types could be added to the union layer (making some previously “unknown” stuff typed).

This has an interesting consequence that third party clients can “recognize” some type before it’s official. Eg some third party Bluesky client could choose to explicitly support a “Leaflet document” attachment to Bluesky posts, governed by Leaflet schema. If this pattern gets popular, Bluesky could be motivated to also support it, and even to reference a Leaflet document as one explicitly noted subtype of that union. Or it could keep ignoring it as one of the “unknown” values.

More on social issues around lexicons here: https://www.pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance

Re: Open Social

#364

Post by dark_mode »

paool wrote: post #360

What is the incentive of someone to create an app and just pay for all the hosting involved? Also, does everyone need to have their own domain name in order to have an identity cuz that seems like a non-starter.

> What is the incentive of someone to create an app and just pay for all the hosting involved?

If you're creating a social app, website, or whatever, you still have to host all your users' data regardless. This is just about the protocol you use which enables universal compatibility, meaning users have the choice to store elsewhere.

> Also, does everyone need to have their own domain name in order to have an identity cuz that seems like a non-starter.

Not really. Bluesky is a good example; when you first sign up it does it for you under their own top domain by default iirc, but the great thing is you can actually use your own domain.

Re: Open Social

#365

Post by dark_mode »

Infernal wrote: post #359
dark_mode wrote: post #357

Awesome read! Question: > What’s more interesting is that Tangled prefilled my avatar based on my Bluesky profile. It didn’t need to hit the Bluesky API to do that; it just read the Bluesky profile record in my repository. I'm a bit confused by this. If a bluesky avatar contains an image, isn't that stored (at least by default) within bluesky? Meaning that Tangled will have to hit the Bluesky API? Or maybe Dan is say…

If I understand correctly it doesn’t matter where the user’s profile is hosted, the point is the user has a store of data that can be accessed by multiple apps via the AT protocol, only naming convention separates one app’s data from another’s within a given user’s profile.

Yeah I understood that part, was just confused by this particular sentence

Re: Open Social

#366

Post by dark_mode »

steveklabnik wrote: post #358
dark_mode wrote: post #357

Awesome read! Question: > What’s more interesting is that Tangled prefilled my avatar based on my Bluesky profile. It didn’t need to hit the Bluesky API to do that; it just read the Bluesky profile record in my repository. I'm a bit confused by this. If a bluesky avatar contains an image, isn't that stored (at least by default) within bluesky? Meaning that Tangled will have to hit the Bluesky API? Or maybe Dan is say…

The “Bluesky API” is the appview, but the avatar is stored in your PDS. Even if you’re using a PDS hosted by Bluesky, it’s a different component that’s being asked to serve the avatar.

Interesting. Ok just saw this https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds

> Self-hosting a Bluesky PDS means running your own Personal Data Server that is capable of federating with the wider ATProto network.

So pds (personal data server) is like the container where you chose to store the data and it follows a certain standard.

If the container is hosted is bluesky, i still consider it a "bluesky api" but I understand the nuance better now.

Re: Open Social

#367

Post by verdverm »

psionides wrote: post #192
verdverm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's def not doing that right now lol, more than half the ops are adversarial and still accepted (the vast majority contain invalid contents)

Yeah, there are tens of thousands of records referencing a PDS with a certain… controversial president's name in the hostname, which doesn't actually exist at all. Also someone from Nostr made a tool that let you upload image files and encode them (split into parts) into plc directory records…

Oh is Nostr the other one, why do these groups feel the need to try and ruin what other people enjoy?

Re: Open Social

#369

Post by dark_mode »

tomgag wrote: post #363

Personal opinion: Bluesky is "fedi-washing". Better Mastodon or Nostr. https://gagliardoni.net/#20250818_battle_of_socials

I like the skepticism against Bluesky, and I agree that where VC money is involved things are mostly sketchy.

However, this post was about the at protocol, which seems like you just hand-waved in one sentence:

> The AT Protocol used by Bluesky has some interesting features, although to be honest I don't know how many of these are just impossible to achieve on ActivityPub or are just WIP lagging behind due to funding constraints.

I don't think the debate between them is super useful because their architectures are very different.

You also mentioned an issue with the bluesky relay, but others already exist so it's not techincally tied to Bluesky. Heck, I think the fact multiple can exist at the same, while degrades the social aspect, still makes it decentralized.

As for the identity management issue, they announced just last week that it's getting branched to an independent entity: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org

Re: Open Social

#370

Post by saghm »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #241
saghm wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully understand what you're saying; I just don't agree with it. For starters, people can be complex and have more than one goal. The effect of making an open source project isn't necessarily just the utility of the project itself, and if some of those other potential effects are desired, the best way to do things won't necessarily be the same as if there's only one output that someone cares about. For another thin…

Okay… Unity and Unreal have a lot less focus than Bevy, but are much better game engines. They will be shipping more great games every day than Bevy will in the next year, including beloved meaningful ones, like Silksong and Indiecute and Cuddlygame or whatever. And hardly anyone there, like most big corpo employees, is directly benefitted from the better games, they get paid the same amount of money, but the rub is…

> Bevy is trying to be best GITHUB OPEN SOURCE game engine

You're the only one saying this. No one else, including the person working on the project that you originally responded to, have claimed this is their sole goal to the inclusion of everything else. It's hard to tell if you think they literally don't care about anything else but are choosing their actions poorly, or if you think that they have the wrong priorities and should change them, or if you just didn't really stop to consider that maybe your assumption about what you're saying they're trying to do is incorrect and haven't read what I'm saying closely enough to understand that no number of examples of other things that happen to fit what you're saying is relevant if you aren't able to establish why anyone else should agree that it applies here in the first place.

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