Chris TrottierJust realized that most people talking to me about Bluesky don't know about DIDs, don't care, and are clueless about its benefits.
And this is a big problem for Bluesky because that's the one thing that AT protocol has over ActivityPub.
For better or worse, Mastodon has spent the past 6 months educating newbies about the benefits of decentralization -- and now we're all able to have a discussion about it.
Folks on Bluesky are still oblivious about decentralization, don't know that Bluesky is supposed to be a decentralized service -- and might not react well when other servers start to federate with it.
Today, I had a Bluesky user try to defend Bluesky’s Terms of Service regarding account termination because they said it’s par for the course with Google and Facebook.
Except Bluesky’s not supposed to own your account! AT protocol is supposed to make your ID a separate concern from the server you use!
When I told them this, they said, “Oh, that’s just marketing!”
Wow! Even a Bluesky fan doesn’t believe in DIDs—he thinks it’s too fantastic!
However, I don’t. I want it to have mass adoption.
I think everyone who looks over AT protocol agrees that Bluesky’s approach to decentralized identity is unique and interesting.
You may disagree with how they go about it, but at least the approach is unique and interesting.
But try explaining what it does in plain language.
Dr. Sam Wein@atomicpoet As someone who has had to relearn a bunch about AT commands over the past couple of days, I dislike the reuse of acronyms.
Cenobyte 
@samweingamgee @atomicpoet That's pretty cool. I haven't used AT commands in decades...I kind off miss them. What are you using them for?
@cenobyte @atomicpoet It turns out they are still used for communication with LTE modems. I've been working on some driver stuff for my XMM7360, which uses them extensively for control (and the command set is now waay bigger than for classic dial-up)
OliverUv@atomicpoet an attempt: It decouples your identity from your home instance, so now new users have to find both a home instance and a home identity provider instance.
(In the end it becomes a key management problem of course, and I don't expect any service that forces normal users to do key management to reach wide adoption)
Not a Spring Onion@atomicpoet
TBH, the whole approach feels a bit like "You can operate your own server on your own dime, but we still control who can be a user".
Either because they control the creation of DIDs, control the "lookup" infrastructure or because they provide additional important services that only work with an official™️ DID.
Like reinventing the Internet but owning the DNS.
LAUREN@atomicpoet I am completely blown away by people and their willingness to give complete control away. And this is without blocking capabilities yet. These are intelligent people signing up. I am dumbfounded. Zero recourse available to users outside of arbitration. That's how the financial industry works. That's the first red flag for me.
ArneBab@noondlyt intelligence can be thwarted by polarization and/or emotional attachment/loyalty/ideology. @atomicpoet
James Harris - Find my bridged Bluesky account@noondlyt @atomicpoet It's the early adopter conundrum. Some people want to be first in line to try something out. People are actively searching for the next platform to replace Twitter. People have tried Mastodon and not found it good enough to scratch that itch. That's what I found funny about moving to Mastodon, many of the same faces I met as early adopters on Twitter, Ello, Diaspora, Google+ etc were here. Even the crap platforms that amounted to nothing, we were taking a poke around.
@jbwharris @atomicpoet
I signed up for everything. I do believe you have to use other platforms in order to determine whether they are going to be right for you or not. My expectations for Post and Spoutible were low and I would say that they were met. What people are attracted to with bluesky is the twitter front end that Jack (still a hero to them in this story) knew would allow everyone to ignore the red flags. It is digital Kool-Aid and the reality of social media atm.
I signed up for everything. I do believe you have to use other platforms in order to determine whether they are going to be right for you or not. My expectations for Post and Spoutible were low and I would say that they were met. What people are attracted to with bluesky is the twitter front end that Jack (still a hero to them in this story) knew would allow everyone to ignore the red flags. It is digital Kool-Aid and the reality of social media atm.
Paul Johnston@atomicpoet as I read it, the bluesky *service* can choose to terminate an account, but you can have an account anywhere that uses the AT protocol and DID. And you can move the account if you want. But I don't see any reason why bluesky can't terminate your account within their sphere of influence e.g. bsky.app. Why not? It's their domain, and their terms of service. If you don't like it, use your own domain, move your data and utilise the protocol.
Oblomov@atomicpoet do we even know if BlueSky actually supports federation, and the AT protocol?
@oblomov I hope someone creates a simple server software with AT protocol and tries to connect with Bluesky.
BornachAnd then test whether they can migrate their account off Bluesky in order to delete it
s4if@atomicpoet @oblomov I think someone will tinker with AT protocol the moment BlueSky release some sort of reference implementation library and commited to federated with third party server.
And I imagine someone will try to make AP-AT bridge like that one with Nostr.
Heck I also can imagine someone will fork Masto-api aware apps like pleroma or gotosocial (or even mastodon itself) then modified that to use AT protocol instead of activitypub.
Imagine, you use mastodon official apps to access AT protocol network, it will be hillarious.. 😬
And I imagine someone will try to make AP-AT bridge like that one with Nostr.
Heck I also can imagine someone will fork Masto-api aware apps like pleroma or gotosocial (or even mastodon itself) then modified that to use AT protocol instead of activitypub.
Imagine, you use mastodon official apps to access AT protocol network, it will be hillarious.. 😬
@atomicpoet This made me chuckle!
Knock knock! Surprise! We're your neighbors and are a part of the same decentralized universe. They do not want to understand this. It all comes down to the UI. I so appreciate the admins here. Thanks for educating me. I really appreciate it. This place is so good at working through things.
Knock knock! Surprise! We're your neighbors and are a part of the same decentralized universe. They do not want to understand this. It all comes down to the UI. I so appreciate the admins here. Thanks for educating me. I really appreciate it. This place is so good at working through things.
It's gonna be like when Google tried merging YouTube and G+ identities/comment feeds
Pre-G+ Youtubers did not react well
https://youtu.be/6L_m8AzSPCM
Everything Wrong With YouTube's Google+ Comment System
Gen X-Wing@atomicpoet I bet they just end up using it to scale in the end and just makes it practically centralized. So they control surveillance and ads.