wrote up a reply to @cwebber's "How decentralized is Bluesky really" blog post: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t - ThreadSky

bnewbold.social.coop.ap.brid.gy • 94 days ago

wrote up a reply to @cwebber's "How decentralized is Bluesky really" blog post:

https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t

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wjmaggos.liberal.city.ap.brid.gy•94 days ago

@bnewbold @cwebber

glad this conversation is happening.

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

"At some point we started using "social web" more, and I think that matches the atproto architecture well. There is some tension around that term because it is used by the W3C Social Web Community Group, and the recently launched Social Web Foundation, both of which are ActivityPub / Fediverse […]

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

(2/?)

It's fair to say that evolving AP has taken up the lion's share of SocialCG attention for a while now.

But AFAIK it's a continuation of a previous W3C group that led to the chartering of the Social Web Working Group. Which, as well as drafting ActivityPub 1.0, also standardised a number […]

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

(3/?)

I believe the SocialCG was also the jumping off point for an attempt to standardise Zot at W3C, before @mike decided to abandon Zot as a separate protocol and fold its features into AP as a set of FEPs;

https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/extending-activitypub

Although Mike (or others) […]

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

(4/4)

If the SocialCG can tolerate engineers from Meta being involved, I'm sure they could gird their loins and welcome participation in social web standards discussions from the BlueSky team ; )

bnewbold.social.coop.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

@strypey our current stance and thinking is that the lower levels of atproto fit better at the IETF: application-agnostic, authenticated transfer (transport) of data in a merkle-tree repository structure using CBOR, etc.

applicaiton-specific schemas on top of that layer are more "document" […]

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

"Overall, I think federation isn't the best term for Bluesky to emphasize going forward, though I also don't think it was misleading or factually incorrect to use it to date. An early version of what became atproto actually was peer-to-peer, with data and signing keys on end devices (mobile […]

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

Bryan Newbold:
> federation isn't the best term for Bluesky to emphasize going forward

So if even BlueSky staff acknowledge that the ATmosphere is not federated, it doesn't really make sense to say it's part of the fediverse (or one of a set of "fediverses" *shudder*). Does it?

(2/2)

strypey.mastodon.nzoss.nz.ap.brid.gy•77 days ago

"Why prioritize these big indices? ActivityPub, Secure Scuttlebutt, and other social web and dweb projects previously demonstrated it is feasible to build network systems which don't involve big expensive servers.

It comes down to a combination of goals, design approach, and an expectation […]

dosowisko.net•94 days ago

@bnewbold @cwebber > The bar we are shooting for is to convince people that atproto is legitimate and useful even if Bluesky and the team adopt the worst of intentions.

Oof, that's a high bar. The protocol itself may still be technically useful, sure, but Bluesky could tomorrow block access to […]

bnewbold.social.coop.ap.brid.gy•94 days ago

this was pretty long so I didn't get in to DID / DNS stuff.

contact lists are awesome and under-utilized, and petnames are part of that. but they don't make sense for big-world or discovery.

we like DNS. it is technically centralized but power/governance is pretty devolved.

bnewbold.social.coop.ap.brid.gy•94 days ago

we didn't pick DIDs because they have "decentralized" in the name, they are basically just an abstraction barrier to uncouple identity mechanisms.

PLC needs work, but is self-certifying and that keeps a lot of paths open.

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