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I'm betting on ATProto

brittanyellich.com

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Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#71

Post by davidw »

apitman wrote: post #32

> Social media was supposed to connect us, but most of it has turned into ads, division, and loneliness. I'm betting on ATProto as a way to fix that I disagree with the premise here. I think the core mechanics of social media, ie instant communication between random strangers about random topics, creates toxic interactions regardless of whether it's manipulated by engagement algorithms. Some of the most toxic convers…

> I disagree with the premise here. I think the core mechanics of social media, ie instant communication between random strangers about random topics, creates toxic interactions regardless of whether it's manipulated by engagement algorithms.

Larry Wall said, way back in the 1990ies,

"The social dynamics of the net are a direct consequence of the fact that nobody has yet developed a Remote Strangulation Protocol."

Which is kind of correlated to the fact that being behind a keyboard feels different to people than being face to face.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#72

Post by bjt »

I like the future that the ATProto evangelists are painting. I would love for it to happen. But I am skeptical that a protocol is going to solve an incentive problem.

In the beginning Twitter was very free and open with API access. There were plenty of alternative apps. Of course, that changed when they got serious about monetizing.

Would it really be any harder for Bluesky to switch from ATProto to a proprietary API than it was for Twitter to close their API? How many users are realistically going to download their archives and upload them to some other provider? If most people are using the website or official app, that's where the stickiness is. There would be a blog post with a title like "Supporting the Bluesky Community for the Next Century" and how it's better to have a centralized site that can feed its employees than an idealistic decentralized one that disappears. Things would seem OK at first. But enough years of chasing quarterly KPIs would put them in the same spot as Twitter and Facebook.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#73

Post by davidw »

> It was incredible to see all of these people with very different backgrounds and interests coming together for one common goal: making the world better with technology.

I feel that's been kind of absent for a while. Sure, tech is huge and there are niches, but the general zeitgeist.

Like... the tech world went from this kind of niche thing, to "hey, hackers, you could set yourself up by creating a company and then get to do what you want", which then shifted more and more towards companies, and is right now lurching towards a world where you must pay a mega AI corporation if you want your output to be competitive.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#74

Post by 3689023 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #43
esbranson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Banned for what?

For selecting the wrong instance when you created your account. "Defederated", effectively the same thing.

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#75

Post by verdverm »

ninjagoo wrote: post #62
verdverm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest selling point - portable identity - is a mirage because the current providers do not give you the cryptographic keys to your identity. So they can simply lock you down, and your 'identity' is done. Here is one of many sites that help users de-risk, backup, and migrate: https://pdsmoover.com/

> Here is one of many sites that help users de-risk, backup, and migrate Unfortunately, doesn't work if you're already locked out ... And, you have to give this 3rd party site your username and password. Ouch.

You can use `goat` for a CLI version: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lj7jmt2ct72r

I'm not sure if OAuth gives access to the account management APIs. Certainly much could be improved. Nudging users would be a good notification within the Bluesky app, like one of those on boarding task lists that doesn't have to be completed to get started, but remains visible until you complete or discard them.

goat has since moved to a dedicated repository: https://github.com/bluesky-social/goat

There is also an adversarial path (when the PDS will not play nice), but it requires setting up a rotation key and having a repo backup ahead of time.

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/adversarial-pds-migrat...

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#76

Post by 8organicbits »

ninjagoo wrote: post #53

Not trustworthy. The providers mentioned in the article, blacksky and bluesky, presumably the most visible ones, do not allow signups with anonymous email providers even though they make you pass a human verification step. The link in the article for Blacksky (blackskyweb.xyz) has a dark pattern that attempts to get you sign up for bluesky instead of blacksky. Odd. The bigger issue is funding - currently appears to b…

This is also my take and I feel like we've seen this play out enough times to see where it's going. The protocol seems to allow decentralization, but that hasn't happened enough to protect against enshitification. If bsky decided to disconnect their main instance from the others, most bsky users wouldn't even notice, but third-party instances would likely implode.

The happy developer relations is to encourage people to develop on top of this "open" platform, but it's hard to imagine that's not just growth hacking.

Why not build on top of protocols that are actually open and will still have decentralized usage in a decade?

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#77

Post by verdverm »

ninjagoo wrote: post #69
verdverm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is not the default for good reason (onboarding ux), you can establish your own keys and prevent that lock down. Here is one of many sites that help users de-risk, backup, and migrate: https://pdsmoover.com/

Looks like you have to give this 3rd party website your username as well as password. Ouch. On top of that, it doesn't work if you've been already locked out.

I'm going to cutoff the double posting chain we have been doing. Here's my reply in the other thread we have on this. Tl;dr - there is a CLI option as well that stays local.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582442

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#78

Post by jonway »

conception wrote: post #60
pastel8739 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This _isn’t_ the core mechanism of social media. When social media took off, Facebook and Instagram that really did allow you to connect with people that you knew from real life. Twitter was different, and more like microblogging, but I still see the real value of social media to be what the un-shitty versions of Facebook and Instagram were.

Twitter was amazing, not because of people microblogging about breakfast, but because it gave people/companies/orgs a way to interact directly with their audience. If you want to know what Kix cereal had to say - you could follow Kix.

> If you want to know what Kix cereal had to say - you could follow Kix

Please! No more!

Re: I'm betting on ATProto

#80

Post by zhivota »

The only social stuff I interact with anymore is a private forum that's paid, which is by far the best discussion on the internet for me, and other than that some discord servers for games I play.

Global social networks are cancer no matter the protocol, that's my opinion after many years trying to carve out a use for them in my life. No matter how hard I try to curate my feeds, inevitably they make me more angry, sad, and combative in my online life.

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