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All 4 items on Vale.Rocks categorised with the tag 'atproto'. Content relating to the protocol used by Bluesky and the rest of the Atmosphere.

The AT Protocol Harkens An Old Web Ethos

Out with the new and in with the old.

Love for the beauty of the AT Protocol and the older web principles it revitalises with open, public data. The opportunity for integrations and automations as seen of the web from roughly the mid-2000s through to the mid-2010s.

https://vale.rocks/posts/atproto-ethos

ActivityPub Bluesky

Naturally, I generally dislike government censorship. That said, I think Bluesky’s approach to it seems to be relatively decent comparative to other, more mainstream platforms.

Bluesky has a global general moderation system with finer-grained moderation rules based on the law and requests of given jurisdictions. Resisting censorship completely is only going to get the entire platform banned in whatever jurisdiction, which obviously isn’t in Bluesky’s best interests and is arguably worse for the platform overall.

At the very least somebody so inclined can skirt around the country-specific moderation thanks to the openness of the AT Proto. It isn’t a perfect approach, but I think it is generally better than the standard and a reasonable compromise.

ActivityPub Bluesky

Bluesky is decentralised in concept, not in practice. The underlying AT Protocol is pretty open, but it imposes significant technical hurdles for any small player, and – as far as general usage is concerned – Bluesky remains a centralised authority for the wider network.

If you build on the AT Protocol hoping to interface with the wider platform, and Bluesky stops you, you’re more or less dead in the water. Bluesky is the dominant provider and custodian of the network.

They have full control over their moderation policies, feature rollouts, user onboarding, protocol development, etc. As we’ve seen with the introduction of checkmark verification, anyone can technically verify an account, but only Bluesky decides who is trusted, as seen by the majority of people.

I’m not yet saying this is a bad thing, but it is worth considering. Bluesky shouldn’t be lauded as federated, because the authority for the biggest instance (the instance that calls the shots) can very well do what they want. It is federated, but only in the loosest sense.

Bluesky is less federated and more the centre of its own solar system, with the rest of the network rotating around it.