Mastodawn

So I usually hate sending over bluesky links anywhere since I'm not a fan, but Rob Ricci highlights some important distinctions between #activitypub and #atproto

Fundamentally, activitypub is designed to be useful with a partial view of the network. (Narrowing down to #mastodon here) Likes are communicated, mentions are communicated, and so on.

Over at atproto land, you have no option but to write to your repo, and so you have no choice but to view the entire network to say, find replies and such (narrowing to #bluesky here). So the only way you can get your data is to read the network and filter it yourself, or have someone else do it for you, which doesn't solve the problem, only shift it.

https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3mooua5znk225

#bluesky #bsky #atproto #mastodon #fediverse #activitypub

Rob Ricci (@ricci.io)

ehhh... only sort of agree. The difference is that AP has a way to notify another instance if, say, there is a reply to a post, or a mention of a user. This scales down well. In atproto, since you can only write to your own repo, the only way to find replies is to observe the entire network.

Bluesky Social

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InnocentZero 1d ago

https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/

While having an extremely snobbish and arrogant tone, I think it makes some good points about separating hosting from viewing, which I think the usual #fediverse sort of conflates. And while the doesn't doesn't cover it, #atproto also has the unique feature of your data being relatively portable, largely absent in #fediverse.

#fediverse #atproto #bluesky #mastodon #lemmy #activitypub

There Are No Instances in atproto — overreacted

Like RSS and Google Reader.

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InnocentZero 1d ago

On the other hand, the post largely glosses over the actual cost of running it, which Rob addresses above.

In fact, it entirely skips relays, which are so fundamental now, and in particular, that every #atproto app effectively needs to consume one.

(If your atproto app doesn't consume from a relay, it HAS an embedded relay, and in that case, god help your app's compute consumption).

#atproto #bluesky

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InnocentZero 1d ago

Having said that, and also disliking the fact that it came out of corpo billionaire creators of twitter, I genuinely believe there's some good stuff to pick up from that protocol.

In particular, I think the coolest part of the architecture is server-independent (more like server-migratable) identity, which is kind of amazing.

Activitypub/fediverse should adopt https://helge.codeberg.page/fep/fep/ef61/ soon, and I feel like that'd be even better than what atproto has if I understand correctly.

#activitypub #fediverse #atproto #bluesky #mastodon #federated #protocols

FEP-ef61: Portable Objects - Fediverse Enhancement Proposals

Portable ActivityPub objects with server-independent IDs.

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InnocentZero 1d ago

Hate to mention people out of the blue, but @ricci @cwebber if you can vet this info it'd be great. You two seem like the experts in these two topics, and I don't want to get stuff wrong. Thanks.

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Rob Ricci

@innocentzero @cwebber

FWIW, I didn't personally find this article to be particularly snobbish or arrogant. I think it's quite well written, and while it does have a particular viewpoint and is written with a strong voice, I think it's making a good faith attempt to explain something that is a frequent point of confusion/contention when people are discussing the fediverse and atmosphere.

However, I think it uses a metaphor that's flawed enough that it's not really helping; here's my part of the thread on that:

https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3moogiuvkjc2e

In short, article positions the data storage (PDS) as the blog in its analogy, but I think the PDS is actually more like the backend database for the blog. When people familiar with the fediverse and Web in general ask "why are there not more atproto instances" they are not asking why there are not more databases with people's raw blog posts in them, they are asking why all the blogs are served through a small number of websites.

This particular exchange, I think, helps to clearly explain the difference in how Dan and I are looking at these networks:

https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3moovf2g2dk2u

https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3moovkbywnc2t

Rob Ricci (@ricci.io)

Someone can visit my blog with an "app" that is self-hosted and ubiquitous: a web browser. Or, we can view the blog's backend DB + PHP/python/whatever as the complete app. Either way, I can set up a blog and people can read it with or without an RSS reader.

Bluesky Social

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Rob Ricci 1d ago

@innocentzero @cwebber One of the things I consistently see in these discussion is a conflation of "is cheap to run now" with "scales". This evening, when I pushed a bit more on this, the point that I got to is that people using and running this infrastructure don't seem to expect the network to grow a lot; they seem to think that it has basically reached the order of magnitude that it will be for the foreseeable future. I think this is a fine position to take, and I agree with them that things like relays and jetstreams will remain relatively affordable to run at even 10x the current network size.

But this is at odds with the more aggressive boosters who treat this as the way to build all social applications going forward.

If you think atproto will support a collection of applications that are, in aggregate, 10x the current size, sure, community infrastructure will continue to be cheap to run and the large amounts of data *someone* has to ingest for your small app or community is fine. If you think it will get to Twitter size (100x), I think you are probably wrong about this. If you think it will get to Facebook size, no way.

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william ⁂ maggos 1d ago

@ricci @innocentzero

yes people are really asking about the "small number of websites" or "copies of the app" phrasing used in the thread.

I believe @cwebber said it before but the power lies in who runs the websites/apps and lessening the concentration of power is why we care about decentralization. the choices they make affect everyone using their services. and even if switching is possible, defaults persist for most users. and their experience changes them, and we share a society with them.

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