4 ms·

I’m looking at the site and right at the beginning it says: > Standard.site provides shared lexicons for long-form publishing on AT Protocol. Making content ea

I’m looking at the site and right at the beginning it says: > Standard.site provides shared lexicons for long-form publishing on AT Protocol. Making content easier to discover, index, and move across the ATmosphere. Which part of these required a new protocol and couldn’t be built before @at existed? Seems to me we’re reinventing the wheel for I’m not entirely sure which benefit. But maybe someone who’s more into this part of the web can educate me on this.

lou1306 9mo ago
One answer is right under Introduction: > Content portability > Users move between hosts without losing their content, audience, or metadata.
- manuelmoreale 9mo ago
  Did that require an entire new protocol though? I am 100% sure that if Twitter, Facebook and all the other platforms decided that they want to offer a way to move around accounts they could do it.
  - verdverm 9mo ago
    Maybe, coordination is the problem. What does that data look like, what does the target look like, can they be transformed? ATProto has lexicon, which are more about social coordination than schemas for data correctness https://pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance https://pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance The protocol is much more than data portability, it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. Imagine if FB also let you tap into the event stream or produce your own event stream other FB users could listen to in the official FB app. That would be a pretty awesome requirement for all social media apps, yea? https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers
    - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
      > it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. Don’t we already have that and is called “the web”? It’s already a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. What are we really gaining here?
      - verdverm 9mo ago
        A shared event bus, lexicon for coordination, apps that store user data in the users database, separation of client from app data
  - tynanpurdy 9mo ago
    if they decided to, sure they could. they don't want to and never will.
    - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
      I am not debating that. But this same reasoning applies to @at or any other implementation. You have to be willing to implement the features and use the protocol. So I still don’t see why this is any different.
      - verdverm 9mo ago
        You keep asking questions, rejecting answers, and then saying you don't understand. Perhaps it is time to read more about the protocol directly instead of asking questions on HN to poke holes in it from a position of ignorance.
steveklabnik 9mo ago
> Which part of these required a new protocol and couldn’t be built before @at existed? Seems to me we’re reinventing the wheel for I’m not entirely sure which benefit. The atproto folks went and categorized all of the other attempts to do this at the time. (They even had some I hadn't heard of!) All of them make various tradeoffs. None of them were the set of tradeoffs the team wanted. So they needed to make some new things. That's really the core of it. My sibling has one of the largest and most specific things, but this is the underlying reason.
- manuelmoreale 9mo ago
  > The atproto folks went and categorized all of the other attempts to do this at the time. (They even had some I hadn't heard of!) Is this study/exploration available anywhere? I’d love to give it a read if that’s available. If you have a link to share I’d really appreciate it.
  - steveklabnik 9mo ago
    I believe that https://gitlab.com/bluesky-community1/decentralized-ecosystem https://gitlab.com/bluesky-community1/decentralized-ecosyste... is the canonical link, it's not the one I read originally, but is linked from the "related work" section of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239
    - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
      Thank you, will give this a read. I appreciate it.

lou1306 9mo ago

One answer is right under Introduction: > Content portability > Users move between hosts without losing their content, audience, or metadata.

manuelmoreale 9mo ago
Did that require an entire new protocol though? I am 100% sure that if Twitter, Facebook and all the other platforms decided that they want to offer a way to move around accounts they could do it.
- verdverm 9mo ago
  Maybe, coordination is the problem. What does that data look like, what does the target look like, can they be transformed? ATProto has lexicon, which are more about social coordination than schemas for data correctness https://pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance https://pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance The protocol is much more than data portability, it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. Imagine if FB also let you tap into the event stream or produce your own event stream other FB users could listen to in the official FB app. That would be a pretty awesome requirement for all social media apps, yea? https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers
  - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
    > it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. Don’t we already have that and is called “the web”? It’s already a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. What are we really gaining here?
    - verdverm 9mo ago
      A shared event bus, lexicon for coordination, apps that store user data in the users database, separation of client from app data
- tynanpurdy 9mo ago
  if they decided to, sure they could. they don't want to and never will.
  - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
    I am not debating that. But this same reasoning applies to @at or any other implementation. You have to be willing to implement the features and use the protocol. So I still don’t see why this is any different.
    - verdverm 9mo ago
      You keep asking questions, rejecting answers, and then saying you don't understand. Perhaps it is time to read more about the protocol directly instead of asking questions on HN to poke holes in it from a position of ignorance.

steveklabnik 9mo ago

> Which part of these required a new protocol and couldn’t be built before @at existed? Seems to me we’re reinventing the wheel for I’m not entirely sure which benefit. The atproto folks went and categorized all of the other attempts to do this at the time. (They even had some I hadn't heard of!) All of them make various tradeoffs. None of them were the set of tradeoffs the team wanted. So they needed to make some new things. That's really the core of it. My sibling has one of the largest and most specific things, but this is the underlying reason.

manuelmoreale 9mo ago
> The atproto folks went and categorized all of the other attempts to do this at the time. (They even had some I hadn't heard of!) Is this study/exploration available anywhere? I’d love to give it a read if that’s available. If you have a link to share I’d really appreciate it.
- steveklabnik 9mo ago
  I believe that https://gitlab.com/bluesky-community1/decentralized-ecosystem https://gitlab.com/bluesky-community1/decentralized-ecosyste... is the canonical link, it's not the one I read originally, but is linked from the "related work" section of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239
  - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
    Thank you, will give this a read. I appreciate it.