Jack Dorsey skipped ActivityPub, built AtProto, lost Twitter, funded Bluesky, watched it become a company with VCs and a board, said it was "repeating all the mistakes," left, and now funds Nostr.

@skarnio @mastodonmigration @baralheia yeah, and it's a very niche form of political tribalism around protocols, which in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter to every day people.

Protocols are just a means to an end user product that's simple and joyful to use.

There's interesting design choices on both sides, but at the end of the day, it's better to have two open protocols collaborating and being up against walled garden tech giants together.

Like, the repayable repository structure in AT Protocol, or the OAuth profile that they use would be s huge win to the ActivityPub ecosystem to adopt. The "apps are separate from identity and data" is also a vision in the original spirit of ActivityPub (client to server)

I'm just so sick of folks trying to divide what are otherwise two similar projects, where each project could learn a lot from esch other.

@thisismissem @skarnio @baralheia

Again, apologies for not following all of this discussion at a detailed technical level, but reject the accusation of protocol tribalism as it implies irrational advocacy of one system over the other.

The goal here is to understand the way two different networks scale, and whether from an practical standpoint each enables power sharing sufficient to actually be resilient to a principle bad actor.

1/

@thisismissem @baralheia

Honestly, it has nothing to do with fighting each other. The concern is the continued dependence of AT Proto on Bluesky PBC, and what happens if the management of the company asserts an agenda. But, that is a discussion for another forum.

@vetehinen @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia There is a very big difference between the W3C and its relationship with the AP community and the Bluesky Social PBC.

@skarnio @mastodonmigration @baralheia yeah, and it's a very niche form of political tribalism around protocols, which in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter to every day people.

Protocols are just a means to an end user product that's simple and joyful to use.

There's interesting design choices on both sides, but at the end of the day, it's better to have two open protocols collaborating and being up against walled garden tech giants together.

Like, the repayable repository structure in AT Protocol, or the OAuth profile that they use would be s huge win to the ActivityPub ecosystem to adopt. The "apps are separate from identity and data" is also a vision in the original spirit of ActivityPub (client to server)

I'm just so sick of folks trying to divide what are otherwise two similar projects, where each project could learn a lot from esch other.

@thisismissem @skarnio @baralheia

The assertion has been made that AT Protocol exhibits quadratic scaling amoung independent nodes. If this is the case, it is very hard to see how it can scale 'wide.' And, we seem to be seeing evidence of this as people like Blacksky attempt to do so.

The reason for concern about this is the political environment we live in where bad actors can, and do, acquire control of social media networks and assert political influence thereby.

2/

@skarnio @vetehinen @mastodonmigration @baralheia but as we've previously discussed, AT Protocol isn't going to live with Bluesky PBC, it's being standardised at the IETF, where a working group is in the final stages of being setup.

Also, historically, ActivityPub was based on a technology Evan's startup created, and it only later became ActivityPub through standardisation efforts.

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem @baralheia Well, and more likely, what happens if the PBC can't find a business model and shuts down?

@skarnio @vetehinen @mastodonmigration @baralheia but as we've previously discussed, AT Protocol isn't going to live with Bluesky PBC, it's being standardised at the IETF, where a working group is in the final stages of being setup.

Also, historically, ActivityPub was based on a technology Evan's startup created, and it only later became ActivityPub through standardisation efforts.

@mastodonmigration @skarnio @baralheia AT Protocol doesn't exhibit quadratic scaling in practice.

You can configure any network in its least optimal form and therefore create inefficiencies.

It's just like AT Protocol's properties applied to ActivityPub create some really weird outcomes. Trying to deploy AT Protocol as you would ActivityPub is ignoring the fact that these protocols have different network topologies.

We can find ways that AP, too, performs horribly.

@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia Great. Our main problem isn't technology, but politics... the more independent we can be from corporations, the better. I'll look into this information. Thank you!

@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia My analysis assumes a network architecture in which each node is a major participant in the functionality of the network, because as I argue in the piece, from a power distribution perspective of decentralization, it is important. What I describe in the piece is that if you want more than a pantheon of gods-eye view participants, then not having addressed delivery means that the system can't scale down.

And this is true: you can run a gotosocial node that isn't *dependent* on other major players in the network, and it scales down great.

The question is whether or not that matters and is important to people. Maybe it doesn't, I don't know. It matters to me, though.

@cwebber @thisismissem @baralheia

"...not having addressed delivery means that the system can't scale down"

Getting back to the subject of 'quadratic scaling', unless completely missing the point, which is very possible, this seems to be the crux of the matter. There needs to be a mechanism for independent elements to 'see' everything. If that mechanism scales relative to the total network, you have quadratic scaling. If it scales relative to the element size you have linear scaling.

@dansup @quillmatiq

If ATProto can overcome its origins and single point of failure, great.

But it's gross to gaslight ActivityPub developers that those origins don't exist and it never happened, and don't talk about them when strangers are watching.

@mastodonmigration @cwebber @baralheia I could build an application that tracks just its users, doesn't use a relay, doesn't have a full-network view, and talks directly to PDSes. That's possible in AT Protocol's architecture. It's just not the main way people do things because it comes with trade-offs, just as message passing comes with its own trade-offs.

@dansup Nostr is a good idea, unfortunately nobody is talking to each other and everyone wants funding from the same wallet.

@thisismissem @cwebber @baralheia

Sure, but that's not a decentralized global social network. Again, recognizing that there are many things that AT Proto excels at, and that message passing has its own problems, the subject at hand is how independent nodes scale.

The reason for this focus is that networks that scale linearly as they go wide are inherently easier to scale wide, and therefore better are distributing power across the network.

@mastodonmigration @cwebber @baralheia why isn't it? You could each run your own PDS and host your own copy of the app. We could still see everything between us.

tbh, I'm kinda sick of being lectured by a guy who works at Meta on decentralization. Come collect your paycheck from the fediverse, make that work, then you can lecture me about decentralization.

Edit: Also, no mastodon node has a full view of the network. The argument you're making is fundamentally flawed my dude.

@mastodonmigration @cwebber @baralheia why isn't it? You could each run your own PDS and host your own copy of the app. We could still see everything between us.

tbh, I'm kinda sick of being lectured by a guy who works at Meta on decentralization. Come collect your paycheck from the fediverse, make that work, then you can lecture me about decentralization.

Edit: Also, no mastodon node has a full view of the network. The argument you're making is fundamentally flawed my dude.