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>We plan to transfer that ownership to an appropriate, independent protocol governance organization in the future. I never realized there is no independent gov

>We plan to transfer that ownership to an appropriate, independent protocol governance organization in the future. I never realized there is no independent governance org that should have registered this. So AT is governed by a single for-profit entity, that also runs the only viable instance?

steveklabnik 2mo ago
There is an IETF Working Group these days https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group Those can't register trademarks, of course. > that also runs the only viable instance? This is false, both in the framing ("instances") and in the viability of running alternative infrastructure.
- zoul 2mo ago
  But it’s true in the general idea of Bluesky being highly centralized and dependent on a single for-profit entity.
  - fsflover 2mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931191
- nar001 2mo ago
  How do you mean? As in you can run different instances or as in it's a false open protocol?
  - herrkanin 2mo ago
    ATProto is closer to how RSS works than ActivityPub. In the same way talking about "RSS instances" makes little sense, the same goes for "ATProto instances".
    - notpushkin 2mo ago
      It makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators”. Especially it makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators that speak a specific vocabulary on top of RSS, host 99% of content using that vocabulary, and if you host your own RSS feed with said vocabulary they’ll show it in their aggregator but can ban it any minute”. Did I just describe Apple Podcasts? Huh. Regardless, yeah, there’s no “ATProto instances” technically, but there are ATProto apps and the single biggest one now owns the trademark to the protocol name.
      - throawayonthe 2mo ago
        i guess that's fair, but i've never listened to a podcast from a non-foss app; i'm not really "in" the podcast sphere, but from where i'm sitting it seems podcasting would survive and migrate just fine if apple podcasts had to go away suddenly
        notpushkin 2mo ago
        I guess that’s fair, too. I’m not really into podcasts either, and the ecosystem seems healthy enough. Many FOSS podcast clients use Apple for discovery, which I guess make sense; but there’s probably other databases, and the contents themselves aren’t usually hosted by Apple, just the metadata. So yeah, podcasts are in good shape. In fact, they are probably the most used decentralized media right now (apart from torrents, maybe). I hope Bluesky gets to that point, and I do wish them luck, but we’ve got to see the incentives are not that well aligned. As for the trademark... it’s surely weird, it’s not the end of the world if they continue to hold it, but setting up a non-profit (not in US, perhaps) for the protocol itself would probably be more appropriate down the road.
      - danabramov 2mo ago
        The solution to that is to create more apps, and for one of them to become more popular. This is entirely in our hands as developers.
        notpushkin 2mo ago
  - bmacho 2mo ago
    Read the recently frontpaged "There are no instances in ATProto" by dan abramov <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599515>
  - danabramov 2mo ago
    It's a different network topology. ActivityPub couples three things into one box: community, hosting, and an app. Atproto decouples them: there's app-agnostic hosting (which anyone can run), and there's hosting-agnostic apps (which anyone can run). I wrote about it here: https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so-where-are-all-the-bluesky-instances https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so...
- mort96 2mo ago
  Why can't the IETF register trademarks?
  - kube-system 2mo ago
    Well, clearly they can: https://static.ietf.org/logos/ietf.svg https://static.ietf.org/logos/ietf.svg
  - steveklabnik 2mo ago
    Does the IETF register trademarks on behalf of their working groups? It’s possible that I’m just misinformed about that. I left this comment shortly before bed and my thought process was “a working group isn’t a legal entity and therefore can’t do this” but it’s entirely possible that that was shortsighted of me. (Obviously the IETF itself can.)
kmeisthax 2mo ago
"Only viable instance" is not really the correct framing - Bluesky doesn't have instances. Anyone using ATProto without Bluesky will still be "on Bluesky". When you go to bsky.app, you're interacting with the Bluesky AppView; one key feature of ATProto is that any AppView can interact with any (consenting) Personal Data Server (PDS). So you can self-host your PDS but still use bsky.app if you so choose. But critically, anyone can write an AppView; there are reimplementations of Bluesky as well as other social apps that use the same ATProto infrastructure. That would be closest thing to a Mastodon instance, except you don't have to host your data on it in order to use it. Imagine being able to go to a Lemmy instance and just post things with your Mastodon identity, and have everything show up without Mastodon having to know anything about Lemmy magazines or its special upvote / comment formats. The actual centralization in ATProto lies in a combination of unfortunate design decisions and genuine friction in the self-hosted path. Being totally reliant on Bluesky is the happy path, self-hosting your PDS data is difficult but doable, and being totally independent of Bluesky is only possible if you do everything correctly right at the start. First off, Bluesky doesn't offer any GUI tools for PDS migration. If you want to get off their PDS, you'll need to bust out command-line tools and possibly do some steps in advance of when you need to migrate in order for everything to work properly. Second, even if you're on a PDS, you're still reliant on the Public Ledger of Credentials (PLC) to host your Distributed ID (DID) document. The PLC is run by Bluesky, although they've taken steps to make it easy to notice if they were to do something fucky with the PLC. But let's say we don't like that. There is a solution: you can host your DID document on a normal web server. Problem solved? Well, if you were setting up an account for the first time, then yes, the problem is actually solved, you're 100% independent of Bluesky. But if you made the mistake of registering an account normally, you have a did:plc identity. And one core principle of ATProto is that identity names never ever ever change. So if you go and make a did:web identity, it's like having a second account, there is no way to tie your old did:plc identity into it. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't even redirect one did:web identity to another (say if you need to switch domain names) Regarding Bluesky's "independent protocol governance organization", they made the same promise about the PLC; but it hasn't actually been transferred yet. I would be a lot more bullish on ATProto if there was a way to migrate DIDs and retain all your followers and shit. And if there was proper graphical tools for data migration.
- 2mo ago
sedatk 2mo ago
> So AT is governed by a single for-profit entity A Public Benefit Corporation to be precise. So they are legally obligated to favor public benefit.
- ocdtrekkie 2mo ago
  OpenAI proved even being a nonprofit can be handled away if the money's good enough. PBCs are much weaker in that regard than nonprofits.
- kube-system 2mo ago
  No, public benefits are allowed to include public interest reasons in their decision making, they are not required. This structure was created to allow a business to protect the interest of the public when it conflicts with the interests of their shareholders
isodev 2mo ago
Nothing Bluesky does is really independent. This is such a transparent playbook and yet folks keep falling for a couple of open source repos and whatever hot takes Dan Abramov posts to reframe “instances” to “open social” bs.
- danabramov 2mo ago
  If you have concrete counterarguments to what I said in my articles, I would be happy to debate these counterarguments here.
inigyou 2mo ago
Yes. It has never been decentralised.
danabramov 2mo ago
>that also runs the only viable instance? This is a category error. There are no "instances" in atproto. https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/ https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/ It segments the network differently (into "hosting" and "apps"), and on both axes anyone can run their independent app-agnostic hosting, as well as an independent hosting-agnostic app.
- account42 2mo ago
  This "gotcha" might get cheers from your fellow AT proto fans but only eye rolls from everyone else.
  - danabramov 2mo ago
    I don't mean it as a linguistic gotcha ("ha, you said instances! but we call them something else"). I'm saying this is a category error because the network topology is different. This is like saying that web is not free because people aren't running Google-scale indexes in their garages. Tried to clarify this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956
    - demosthanos 2mo ago
      I don't think the Google comparison is doing you any favors in resolving the concern behind the category error, though. What I'm hearing is that AT is like the web if Google had started the web themselves and designed it around their index as the primary means of accessing anything on the web. Sure, they still have Don't Be Evil as their motto at this stage, and in the 90s maybe we would have been naive enough to believe them. But in the 2020s, after watching what Google did to the web without being able to control the protocol from the beginning, a comparison of Bluesky to Google doesn't really assuage the concern people have about centralization.
      - danabramov 2mo ago
        >designed it around their index as the primary means of accessing anything on the web That doesn't actually translate from the analogy though. You don't use Bluesky to access other apps' data on atproto, you use those apps. You go to https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/ for Tangled (atproto github), you go to https://leaflet.pub/ https://leaflet.pub/ for Leaflet (one of atproto blogging platforms), and so on. Bluesky is not a "one stop shop" for all atproto stuff, it's just one of atproto apps, and anyone can make their own app. The apps themselves have to compete on their own merit, completely unrelated to the protocol stuff. The protocol just makes them all interoperable and changes market dynamics (e.g. someone can resurrect a dead app by creating a new projection of existing data). If your criticism is that there aren't many apps on atproto yet — fair, but you can make those! People are making those. This is something you can actively contribute to, there's no permission you need to ask. The "Bluesky index" is the index of Bluesky posts, so naturally you access that primarily through the Bluesky app. (Although even that isn't set in stone — see Blacksky who run their own stack for everything, but also show Bluesky posts.) And then, if you make your own app with your own data types, it would not be related to Bluesky in any way. >But in the 2020s, after watching what Google did to the web without being able to control the protocol from the beginning, a comparison of Bluesky to Google doesn't really assuage the concern people have about centralization. Sure, and is your argument that it's better if the web had never happened? Atproto is going to IETF so it will become a "proper" internet standard. The way you shift the balance of power is by building your own stuff on it.

steveklabnik 2mo ago

There is an IETF Working Group these days https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group https://atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-working-group Those can't register trademarks, of course. > that also runs the only viable instance? This is false, both in the framing ("instances") and in the viability of running alternative infrastructure.

zoul 2mo ago
But it’s true in the general idea of Bluesky being highly centralized and dependent on a single for-profit entity.
- fsflover 2mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931191
nar001 2mo ago
How do you mean? As in you can run different instances or as in it's a false open protocol?
- herrkanin 2mo ago
  ATProto is closer to how RSS works than ActivityPub. In the same way talking about "RSS instances" makes little sense, the same goes for "ATProto instances".
  - notpushkin 2mo ago
    It makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators”. Especially it makes sense to talk about “RSS aggregators that speak a specific vocabulary on top of RSS, host 99% of content using that vocabulary, and if you host your own RSS feed with said vocabulary they’ll show it in their aggregator but can ban it any minute”. Did I just describe Apple Podcasts? Huh. Regardless, yeah, there’s no “ATProto instances” technically, but there are ATProto apps and the single biggest one now owns the trademark to the protocol name.
    - throawayonthe 2mo ago
      i guess that's fair, but i've never listened to a podcast from a non-foss app; i'm not really "in" the podcast sphere, but from where i'm sitting it seems podcasting would survive and migrate just fine if apple podcasts had to go away suddenly
      - notpushkin 2mo ago
        I guess that’s fair, too. I’m not really into podcasts either, and the ecosystem seems healthy enough. Many FOSS podcast clients use Apple for discovery, which I guess make sense; but there’s probably other databases, and the contents themselves aren’t usually hosted by Apple, just the metadata. So yeah, podcasts are in good shape. In fact, they are probably the most used decentralized media right now (apart from torrents, maybe). I hope Bluesky gets to that point, and I do wish them luck, but we’ve got to see the incentives are not that well aligned. As for the trademark... it’s surely weird, it’s not the end of the world if they continue to hold it, but setting up a non-profit (not in US, perhaps) for the protocol itself would probably be more appropriate down the road.
    - danabramov 2mo ago
      The solution to that is to create more apps, and for one of them to become more popular. This is entirely in our hands as developers.
      - notpushkin 2mo ago
- bmacho 2mo ago
  Read the recently frontpaged "There are no instances in ATProto" by dan abramov <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599515>
- danabramov 2mo ago
  It's a different network topology. ActivityPub couples three things into one box: community, hosting, and an app. Atproto decouples them: there's app-agnostic hosting (which anyone can run), and there's hosting-agnostic apps (which anyone can run). I wrote about it here: https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so-where-are-all-the-bluesky-instances https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/#so...
mort96 2mo ago
Why can't the IETF register trademarks?
- kube-system 2mo ago
  Well, clearly they can: https://static.ietf.org/logos/ietf.svg https://static.ietf.org/logos/ietf.svg
- steveklabnik 2mo ago
  Does the IETF register trademarks on behalf of their working groups? It’s possible that I’m just misinformed about that. I left this comment shortly before bed and my thought process was “a working group isn’t a legal entity and therefore can’t do this” but it’s entirely possible that that was shortsighted of me. (Obviously the IETF itself can.)

kmeisthax 2mo ago

"Only viable instance" is not really the correct framing - Bluesky doesn't have instances. Anyone using ATProto without Bluesky will still be "on Bluesky". When you go to bsky.app, you're interacting with the Bluesky AppView; one key feature of ATProto is that any AppView can interact with any (consenting) Personal Data Server (PDS). So you can self-host your PDS but still use bsky.app if you so choose. But critically, anyone can write an AppView; there are reimplementations of Bluesky as well as other social apps that use the same ATProto infrastructure. That would be closest thing to a Mastodon instance, except you don't have to host your data on it in order to use it. Imagine being able to go to a Lemmy instance and just post things with your Mastodon identity, and have everything show up without Mastodon having to know anything about Lemmy magazines or its special upvote / comment formats. The actual centralization in ATProto lies in a combination of unfortunate design decisions and genuine friction in the self-hosted path. Being totally reliant on Bluesky is the happy path, self-hosting your PDS data is difficult but doable, and being totally independent of Bluesky is only possible if you do everything correctly right at the start. First off, Bluesky doesn't offer any GUI tools for PDS migration. If you want to get off their PDS, you'll need to bust out command-line tools and possibly do some steps in advance of when you need to migrate in order for everything to work properly. Second, even if you're on a PDS, you're still reliant on the Public Ledger of Credentials (PLC) to host your Distributed ID (DID) document. The PLC is run by Bluesky, although they've taken steps to make it easy to notice if they were to do something fucky with the PLC. But let's say we don't like that. There is a solution: you can host your DID document on a normal web server. Problem solved? Well, if you were setting up an account for the first time, then yes, the problem is actually solved, you're 100% independent of Bluesky. But if you made the mistake of registering an account normally, you have a did:plc identity. And one core principle of ATProto is that identity names never ever ever change. So if you go and make a did:web identity, it's like having a second account, there is no way to tie your old did:plc identity into it. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't even redirect one did:web identity to another (say if you need to switch domain names) Regarding Bluesky's "independent protocol governance organization", they made the same promise about the PLC; but it hasn't actually been transferred yet. I would be a lot more bullish on ATProto if there was a way to migrate DIDs and retain all your followers and shit. And if there was proper graphical tools for data migration.

2mo ago

sedatk 2mo ago

> So AT is governed by a single for-profit entity A Public Benefit Corporation to be precise. So they are legally obligated to favor public benefit.

ocdtrekkie 2mo ago
OpenAI proved even being a nonprofit can be handled away if the money's good enough. PBCs are much weaker in that regard than nonprofits.
kube-system 2mo ago
No, public benefits are allowed to include public interest reasons in their decision making, they are not required. This structure was created to allow a business to protect the interest of the public when it conflicts with the interests of their shareholders

isodev 2mo ago

Nothing Bluesky does is really independent. This is such a transparent playbook and yet folks keep falling for a couple of open source repos and whatever hot takes Dan Abramov posts to reframe “instances” to “open social” bs.

danabramov 2mo ago
If you have concrete counterarguments to what I said in my articles, I would be happy to debate these counterarguments here.

inigyou 2mo ago

Yes. It has never been decentralised.

danabramov 2mo ago

>that also runs the only viable instance? This is a category error. There are no "instances" in atproto. https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/ https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/ It segments the network differently (into "hosting" and "apps"), and on both axes anyone can run their independent app-agnostic hosting, as well as an independent hosting-agnostic app.

account42 2mo ago
This "gotcha" might get cheers from your fellow AT proto fans but only eye rolls from everyone else.
- danabramov 2mo ago
  I don't mean it as a linguistic gotcha ("ha, you said instances! but we call them something else"). I'm saying this is a category error because the network topology is different. This is like saying that web is not free because people aren't running Google-scale indexes in their garages. Tried to clarify this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932956
  - demosthanos 2mo ago
    I don't think the Google comparison is doing you any favors in resolving the concern behind the category error, though. What I'm hearing is that AT is like the web if Google had started the web themselves and designed it around their index as the primary means of accessing anything on the web. Sure, they still have Don't Be Evil as their motto at this stage, and in the 90s maybe we would have been naive enough to believe them. But in the 2020s, after watching what Google did to the web without being able to control the protocol from the beginning, a comparison of Bluesky to Google doesn't really assuage the concern people have about centralization.
    - danabramov 2mo ago
      >designed it around their index as the primary means of accessing anything on the web That doesn't actually translate from the analogy though. You don't use Bluesky to access other apps' data on atproto, you use those apps. You go to https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/ for Tangled (atproto github), you go to https://leaflet.pub/ https://leaflet.pub/ for Leaflet (one of atproto blogging platforms), and so on. Bluesky is not a "one stop shop" for all atproto stuff, it's just one of atproto apps, and anyone can make their own app. The apps themselves have to compete on their own merit, completely unrelated to the protocol stuff. The protocol just makes them all interoperable and changes market dynamics (e.g. someone can resurrect a dead app by creating a new projection of existing data). If your criticism is that there aren't many apps on atproto yet — fair, but you can make those! People are making those. This is something you can actively contribute to, there's no permission you need to ask. The "Bluesky index" is the index of Bluesky posts, so naturally you access that primarily through the Bluesky app. (Although even that isn't set in stone — see Blacksky who run their own stack for everything, but also show Bluesky posts.) And then, if you make your own app with your own data types, it would not be related to Bluesky in any way. >But in the 2020s, after watching what Google did to the web without being able to control the protocol from the beginning, a comparison of Bluesky to Google doesn't really assuage the concern people have about centralization. Sure, and is your argument that it's better if the web had never happened? Atproto is going to IETF so it will become a "proper" internet standard. The way you shift the balance of power is by building your own stuff on it.