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pfraze I appreciate that you take the time to engage here. I understand that you thought that ActivityPub had challenges (rightly so) and that's why you decided

by shafyy 2y ago

pfraze I appreciate that you take the time to engage here. I understand that you thought that ActivityPub had challenges (rightly so) and that's why you decided to develop ATProto. ActivityPub is far from perfect and needs to be improved. But the decisions you made with ATProto so far make real federation almost impossible. I disagree that data hosting is the most important part. I think switching "servers" and still being part of the network is the most important part. You are right that ATProto is open-source, but you ignore the fact that there's only one company controlling the development of ATProto. You can decide to close it down tomorrow, or you can decide which contributions to accept and decide the general direction of ATProto at your own discretion. This is all fine, you can do whatever you want, but don't try to hide behind detailed technical discussions when comparing ActivityPub to ATProto. Because the difference is much more fundamental than the question how much RAM my server needs if a post goes viral. Don't say Bluesky is decentralized and federated, because it is not today. I understand that you are not one of the founders and you probably see this from a naive technical perspective. But working for a company that needs to show VC-level returns, I think you are being ignorant of how the future will look like. Finally: If the team at Bluesky sincerely thought that ActivityPub is not good enough, why not work with the ActivityPub team to improve the standard and address the challenges? Or, why not give ownership of ATProto to an independent standards organization? I understand that you don't want to do this because you want to control how to develop the protocol, you want the speed and flexibility. That's fine. But don't act like ATProto is the same as ActivityPub in terms of openness. Sorry for the long post :-)

pfraze 2y ago
Back in 2012, I was the first developer to join Dominic Tarr on Secure Scuttlebutt. I built Patchwork, the first client. If you’re not familiar with SSB, give it a look! It’s an aggressively anarchist technical model. After a year and a half, I had serious concerns about our ability to attract users. I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced. We use that in the governance, the technical design, and the execution. We also follow a kind of separation of powers through modularity, and an aggressive focus on the right to exit. SSB was “no authority ever” and it failed to scale. ATProto is “no permanent authority.” Give the essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness a read sometime. I’ve worked in open source for my entire adult life and I’m now 38. There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who.
- shafyy 2y ago
  > There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who. This is not black and white. And to be honest, it is telling that you throw this statement into the room. Of course, there are also organization / people who have more weight in saying into which direction standards like ActivityPub should be developed, but this is a far cry from the protocol roadmap being owned by a single for-profit company. > I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. I agree, and Bluesky is obviously a great product. It is very likely that building on a truely decentralized protocol like ActivityPub has too many drawbacks to build a mass product in today's world. This is beside the point, though. > The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced It can be replaced in almost the same way as you are replacing Twitter. Or any service can be replaced by another. At best, ATProto is a glorified import / export feature in this context. Your work history has nothing to do with Bluesky's future. Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. To be clear, I don't doubt your personal intentions. But it is very naive to believe that a protocol developed by a for-profit company that has just taken in $ 23 million is somehow incentivized to build a network for the good of the people first and not for their own profit. And don't tell me that those two are the same thing or aligned somehow, please. I just would like to know this: How you can say that Bluesky is decentralized while the reality is that all your 20 million users sit on the same service run by the company behind Bluesky. And no, the ability to self-host your own data does not equate to being decentralized. PS: I will read up on those topics you mentioned.
  - elfprince13 2y ago
    > Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. Bluesky is a PBLLC which pretty severely limits the rights of their investors.
    - shafyy 2y ago
elfprince13 2y ago
Just gonna throw out a link to this whitepaper co-authored by the now-CEO of Bluesky and one of the lead authors of ActivityPub https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2535398 https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2535398

by shafyy 2y ago

pfraze 2y ago

Back in 2012, I was the first developer to join Dominic Tarr on Secure Scuttlebutt. I built Patchwork, the first client. If you’re not familiar with SSB, give it a look! It’s an aggressively anarchist technical model. After a year and a half, I had serious concerns about our ability to attract users. I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced. We use that in the governance, the technical design, and the execution. We also follow a kind of separation of powers through modularity, and an aggressive focus on the right to exit. SSB was “no authority ever” and it failed to scale. ATProto is “no permanent authority.” Give the essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness a read sometime. I’ve worked in open source for my entire adult life and I’m now 38. There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who.

shafyy 2y ago
> There’s always somebody in charge. It’s not better when you don’t know who. This is not black and white. And to be honest, it is telling that you throw this statement into the room. Of course, there are also organization / people who have more weight in saying into which direction standards like ActivityPub should be developed, but this is a far cry from the protocol roadmap being owned by a single for-profit company. > I realized that any activist effort needs a theory of change. For a software technology, that’s the market. We need to make better products if we want our technological goal to succeed. I agree, and Bluesky is obviously a great product. It is very likely that building on a truely decentralized protocol like ActivityPub has too many drawbacks to build a mass product in today's world. This is beside the point, though. > The model we follow is more federal more than confederal. We use strong leadership that can be replaced It can be replaced in almost the same way as you are replacing Twitter. Or any service can be replaced by another. At best, ATProto is a glorified import / export feature in this context. Your work history has nothing to do with Bluesky's future. Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. To be clear, I don't doubt your personal intentions. But it is very naive to believe that a protocol developed by a for-profit company that has just taken in $ 23 million is somehow incentivized to build a network for the good of the people first and not for their own profit. And don't tell me that those two are the same thing or aligned somehow, please. I just would like to know this: How you can say that Bluesky is decentralized while the reality is that all your 20 million users sit on the same service run by the company behind Bluesky. And no, the ability to self-host your own data does not equate to being decentralized. PS: I will read up on those topics you mentioned.
- elfprince13 2y ago
  > Bluesky is not owned by you, and while you currently might have some say, as soon as the VC ROI pressure starts building, nobody will care. Bluesky is a PBLLC which pretty severely limits the rights of their investors.
  - shafyy 2y ago

elfprince13 2y ago

Just gonna throw out a link to this whitepaper co-authored by the now-CEO of Bluesky and one of the lead authors of ActivityPub https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2535398 https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2535398