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

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.

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

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.

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.

@innocentzero @ricci

Just had the most horrifying UX parsing this thread in Mastodon's microblog feed, likely causing 10x more network overhead than needed, and replied to @cwebber quote:

https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116792896530026124

Stepping away from ATProto vs. AP I was most intrigued by @dialecticalmusings comment:

> People arguing about moderation and community building often have fundamentally differing visions for the political economy of the Fediverse, but those differences never get unpacked, so people end up talking past each other.

What is never answered well is: What is fediverse? I'd argue it is just a common utility word like internet and web, denoting a communication medium.

What do you do with this medium is then the next question. Well, the power of ActivityPub allows us "to extend constructs of society online" to support our daily needs.

But on the basis of some warped microblog abstraction turned into a pretzel by bolting on features to hang everything off, this is not possible.

@innocentzero @ricci @cwebber @dialecticalmusings

If you take as the definition of social networking: Any direct and indirect human interaction between people.

And add ActivityPub in the full power of its conceptual architecture: A social graph of addressible actors that exchange activities with an object payload, fully extensible.

Then you have raw power to model about any online service where people interact with each other.

As part of my elaboration on Social experience design (SX) I coined "Personal social networking" as the exercise on how we can translate social networking practices we do for 1,000's of years offline, and think about how to seamlessly extend them with online support.

We talk so much how Moderation is essential, and there must be a Block and Suspend button etcetera.. but where do I have this offline in real social situations? Somehow social happens differently there. There's no moderator looking over my shoulder if I walk the streets of my town.

@innocentzero @ricci @cwebber @dialecticalmusings

Moderation is undoubtedly needed in many cases, but it is likely also done in many different ways and not a one-size-fits-all approach that moderates an overly complex microblog feed that no one can picture the intricate social dynamics that take place. A handful of basic app features aren't able to support that well. And yet we are trying to create that now. The current fediverse represents a lack of fantasy, where it is still Twitter what we have.

With a course correction of ActivityPub as a low-level communication protocol of building blocks and rules, what is build on top of it comes in the realm of Solution development. Carefully designed solutions to handle particular social settings and use cases. And where, if you want to have good interoperability, the business and application domains of these solutions also need to undergo good standardardization practices.

Getting there requires putting focus to the right places.