4d ago

What do you think about the protocol behind Bluesky, ATproto, and how do you think it compares to ActivityPub?

I recently had a discussion with a friend on Bluesky who knows more about the inner workings of the platform, and it pretty much solidified what I already thought was going on behind the scenes with ATproto, which seems to be a lot more complex than the system behind AP, however it did seem to improve on it to an extent simply by splitting up different parts of the "social media pipeline". I was curious what people here think of it

Ps: I really don't mean to proselytize about one or the other!! I think it's good that both exist. Although it does raise me the question of wether protocol diversification is good...

28 comments

The bluesky system isn't completely without advantages: It's much more convenient if what you're looking for in a social media service is all the data collected neatly in a central location so that it can be used for bulk AI training input or mass sentiment analysis.
I don't see any glaring issues with ActivityPub that appear to be solved with these alternatives.
The alternatives look like they're not as open, though, so that leads me to believe they only exist to sucker people who don't know any better onto yet another proprietary platform.
- Main issues with activitypub are discovery and backfilling (doesn't apply to lemmy as much), ATproto solves both those issues, at the cost of being slightly less flexible with how clients can interact.
  Both protocols are just as open.
I don't use it much, but from what I understand ATproto used to super expensive to self host but now costs have fallen significantly and other instances outside of the main Bluesky instance have emerged. I think now the problem they have to solve is getting the users (who are something like 99 per cent on the main Bluesky instance) over to the other instances.
- I don't really know the extent of their independence as there are at least 3 parts to how ATproto works and they can all be hosted independently (so for example, an "independent" instance might still rely on Bluesky for part if it's functionality), however it is true that there's quite a few ATproto services popping up!
  
  Checked out Leaflet, it's a simple text editor with markdown support that gives you links for sharing it with read-only or read-write permissions. I guess the ATProto is only used for discovery? You can write and edit without being logged in.
  Pinksea is just random people doodling there, which can be a fun time killer. You can only interact (make your own doodle, comment on others') logging in with bsky at the moment. The same is true for the other services, only bsky logins work (granted, I don't have a non-bsky account to test)
  
  Okay, I didn't know ATproto had many parts that can be independent or dependent on each other. It would be nice if there was an easy way to check the level of independence of an instance
Last I looked into it, running an ATproto relay is highly cost-prohibitive compared to a fediverse instance.
- It's about 20-30 bucks a month afaik, costs have come down
AP is a standard for letting servers communicate, while ATP is that and more. You could build what ATP does on top of AP, or make both compatible. What matters is really the communities and ecosystems behind these protocols.
AP is behind the Fediverse. The basic building block of the Fediverse is the instance. Every instance is its own self-contained, centralized social media service, that optionally federates with other instances via ActivityPub. There is nothing about AP that encourages decentralization. To the contrary, the way things work rn encourages centralization (but that's pretty technical).
Case in point, Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon instance that choses not to federate. If it was open for federation, the Fediverse would look quite different. Or perhaps more likely, most other instances would choose to defederate.
I explain this because a few weeks ago, there were some posts pitching the Fediverse as decentralized social media. But the Fediverse is what it is because the people running the servers choose to do things a certain way. This is not a result of technical or legal features.
@Proto is the result of a project to make Twitter decentralized. That is, not a decentralized alternative, but actual Twitter with all its users. We might never have heard much about it if Musk had not taken the wrecking ball to Twitter. The team created Bluesky as a proof of concept.
Current social media companies have monopoly power over their users. @Proto seeks to structure social media in such a way that that is impossible. It is quite sophisticated. Improvements may be possible, but it certainly is good enough to solve the technical aspect of social media monopolies. Of course, the technical part was never the hard part. We will see if the economics work out. But the real challenge is the legal angle.
- I mostly agree with your comment, but want to nitpick about this part:
  Fediverse is what it is because the people running the servers choose to do things a certain way.
  This one is something I must disagree with. I'm using the instances (servers) I am precisely because the people running those servers choose to do things in a certain way. If they did them in a different way, I would be on a different server. In the Fediverse it is extremely easy to vote with your feet. The admins have very free reign over their instances, but that doesn't mean that they have a free reign over the users of their instances.
  
  The Fediverse is fine as it is. But some people hope that it is the future of social media which isn't likely at all.
  The Fediverse is called decentralized because no one instance has a majority of users. But the only way to make sure that this state continues is if the most popular instances close registration for new users. That's an easy choice to make for the volunteers running instances. More users mean more expense and more work. That's what I mean by choices. A growth-oriented company would not do that.
  I don't see what's so special about being able to make new accounts. You can do that anywhere. What you can't do is take your followers, communities, or posting history with you. For many people, that is not acceptable, and not just influencers, for whom their accounts are their business capital. That's a big part of what enables social media monopolies.
  I don't see how the Fediverse solves any of the problems with social media. The hobbyist driven Fediverse isn't going to take off. Any professional, growth-oriented instance would have all the familiar problems.
  
  Yeah it really only takes me an hour to setup a new account to my liking, easier now with piefed.
- Fascinating. The concept of AP not actually being made to encourage decentralization isn't something I had considered before, and you do have kind of a point
!bluesky@lemmy.zip
- Ok yea I definitely should have asked this over there, sorry about that
  
  No worries!
I think nostr has the best protocol, specifically the way they handle identity.
- I wish nostr wasn't filled to the brim with cryptobros and ancaps
- I hadn't considered Nostr up until now, might look into it further, seems interesting
The protocol is basically irrelevant. It's about the user population and their dependence on particular hosts.
- To an extent. I can't say I'm well-versed in how to make a successful social media platform but I think having a solid protocol underneath is essential. I've been bothered a couple of times by a Mastodon user with an empty account because nobody had followed them previously
- This place has federation issues a few times a year. Irrelevant 🤣.

28 comments