I feel like I may be missing something when it comes to BlueSky, or maybe both I and those trying it out are but in different ways. My understanding is that BlueSky is currently like the Mastodon Social instance is for Mastodon but of the AT Protocol under development, with the long term aim being that once their protocol is sufficiently developed to their liking, they’ll put out the version capable of federation for others to spin up their own instances with.
However, once they do that, won’t it basically create some of the same problems people already have with ActivityPub, i.e. instance choice, federation confusion, etc.?
What’s supposed to set it apart and address existing issues rather than reinvent things and add their own distinct issues?
Nice! Was wondering if you’d pop in to this thread!
Looking forward to the rest of the blog series. Are you at all interested in or looking at what layers/components are amenable to 3rd-party community driven (decentralised?) development of alternative/new apps etc. The feeds system is obviously designed for that (and Relays obviously for big hitters only) but I’m unclear on the rest and curious to hear what anyone else thinks.
Heya! Good answers earlier by you!
Yeah I think I’ll have to get into that, but I’m starting to run into the limit of not being a programmer myself, and information is pretty scarce on ATproto. The article differs from their own federation architecture description from earlier in the year, simply because its outdated and noone has formally written down the new info, so that was a bit of a struggle haha https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture
At any rate, the PDS’s are amenable for sure. Robin Berjon is the furthest along with thinking here, with his AP over AT piece: https://berjon.com/ap-at/ Responses I’ve seen havent suggested its technically impossible, but probably difficult for reasons that I tuned out of reading because I didnt understand :D
Beyond that, people keep talking about the lexicon and how that at is core is also versatile; similar to how fedi has Mastodon’s type=Note that everyone uses, even though you can create any ‘type’ you want. I’m pretty sure that nobody has done that yet tho.