Discussion
Why I'm betting on ATProto (and why you should, too)
hresvelgr: Focusing on protocol and decentralisation is putting the cart before the horse. The reason why Twitter, and Reddit in particular work so well is because of sub-communities that form organically. More importantly, discovery was part of the value in using it. It's why every Mastodon community specific to one niche/subject is not very interesting, people are not one single interest, we follow someone we like for one reason, maybe it's they make cool art, then we find out they also make music too, then bam, you discover a new genre of music and the community around it. Decentralisation actively introduces friction into the most rewarding loop of the entire thing. Centralisation isn't the problem, it's just comorbid with shitty governance.
phoronixrly: > The reason why Twitter, and Reddit in particular work so well is because of sub-communities that form organically.Which sub-communities are on Twitter right now?
skrtskrt: Nazis, groypers, Christian Nationalists
verdverm: I bet on ATProto the last year, I've left this year. The network has been shrinking and the Bluesky leadership has been misleading about "user" numbers and hiding that they took private equity money. The atmo fund looks like a bunch of self dealing. I no longer trust any of them.This year, I'm betting less social media as being better and in the long-run a new protocol that learns from the mistakes.
chokolad: > This year, I'm betting less social media as being better and in the long-run a new protocol that learns from the mistakes.Can you list protocol level mistakes made by ATProto?
throwaway85825: It seems like most of Japan.
CqtGLRGcukpy: I've realized not to bet on any social media.For example, pre-Elon Twitter, I thought Twitter was going to around a long time and I would continue to use it for many years. I left Twitter when Elon bought it.While I'm on various social media sites now, I can fairly easily pick up a new one as I see fit. And if my audience doesn't want to follow me there, they don't have to. And I can find different people to follow on that new one.You never know what is going to happen.
verdverm: Permissioned data is probably the most fundamental, the part I looked most deeply into myself.After that money, which I see as less of a protocol thing. A protocol or platform has to enable the people to make way more money than itself, at least 10x. (1) Bluesky should have created subscriptions for their service, they wouldn't have needed the private equity had they. (2) Bluesky did more to block others making money than enable it. Graze was in talks with them to enable the creators using their feed system to make money, until Bluesky walked away. (3) Permissioned data would unlock monetization without blockchain.Permissioned data is being worked on, but the commentary from Bluesky is not promising. (1) Nobody in ATProto has built a permission system (that I'm aware of) (2) Bluesky are proposing a very simplistic system. This will put burden on app developers and create opposition the credible exit philosophy.Record history / editing. The former should be at the protocol level, the later on feature that is highly desired, possible today, but they resist with fervor.Bluesky could have put way more funding into the ecosystem, especially in hindsight with the $100M they picked up just after peak. Now they are struggling and stepping on that ecosystem, re: replacing Graze instead of supporting and integrating them with their latest "ai" stunt.Compare this to Hytale and what they are doing. Night and day.
charcircuit: X just unified the feed across languages such that all posts automatically get translated for users. These kinds of innovations are much more important than the ability to be able to switch apps.
desireco42: Absolutely agree, but as technologists our instict is to solve problem as technical, not as social.
blactuary: It's a nazi website. Before I left they started allowing people to call me the n-word
verdverm: The PLC comes up a lot, and I understand the criticism, but it is also good enough for now and on the right trajectory, though the pace could be better, hut like much of the Bluesky development it has molasses in winter vibes. Long-term, multiple identity authorities can exist. Something like Handshake would have been ideal, another great project doomed by poor leadership.
acheong08: Did it? Just checked and my feed is still completely untranslated. I have my settings set as English. I hope they don't do the weird YouTube thing of translating things from languages you know into the language you set. Multilingual people exist
acheong08: Utaite. Will find barely any anywhere else. Thankfully if you're in one of those sub-communities, you don't ever get recommended anything political or American.
manifoldgeo: I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out.But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 2024. I've never heard anything about PeerTube in casual conversation, and Mastodon is not common to hear about either.As someone with a tech degree and a liberal arts degree, I think protocols like this are excellent examples of trying to solve social issues with technology instead of policy or other approaches. I can't tell you what those other approaches would be, but I haven't seen a lot of efficacy from the purely technological ones. Eventually, the pressure of turning a profit always seems to take over, pushing the moral mission aside. Still. I'm rooting for ATProto to speak truth to power and uproot apps like X and Instagram.
charcircuit: The feature only rolled out to me today and I think it started rolling out to people only a couple days ago.
