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.
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@evan @dansup @quillmatiq interest is great and all, but understanding the social and power dynamics at play is more important.
Every time some leader of an ActivityPub project goes on a tirade against another protocol or project, all it does is hurt the entire ecosystem. It prevents productive partnerships, it creates friction and fights.
We've seen this countless times, and meanwhile majority of ActivityPub applications are not striving for ActivityPub interoperability, but for Mastodon interoperability.
There is so much power centralization in ActivityPub it's not funny, let's not forget that the protocol was left to rot by the W3C for the longest time, when it could've continued on-wards. The amount of infighting and politics here drives people away.
I've talked with folks who have really great ideas, and I've been like "come bring this to a standards meeting, this is really cool" and the response time and again is "I don't want to be involved with those people", because they've seen countless negative interactions.
Meanwhile, in AT Protocol, it's extremely common place to get different application developers and organisations to come together to standardise things, the best example is https://standard.site β I'm also helping a few developers work on interoperability for other things within the Atmosphere, because they realise that they're stronger together.
In ActivityPub there's been constant division "this software is better than that software", and petty little fights about "this isn't really activitypub because it doesn't do what mastodon does, so it doesn't interoperate fully" β Dan was the target of one such hit piece.
The office hours that the bluesky team run every two weeks? They basically entirely focus on sharing and promoting the cool work by other people in the ecosystem, here's some notes from the latest: https://bsky.app/profile/thisismissem.social/post/3mere5l7knk2n
I've mentioned it before, but I've stopped actively contributing to Mastodon because the lack of respect that they show other contributors is so dire that it's not financially viable for me to contribute.
@thisismissem @dansup @quillmatiq Are you working on ATProto projects now? EDIT: I reread, saw that you are. I'm glad to hear that!
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@quillmatiq @dansup I think you do great work in providing a literal and organisational bridge between those two communities.
I'm wondering, how do we get to a point where we actually feel like we're on the same side? And what side is that, even? Because it doesn't feel that way for anyone.
@evan It feels that way every time I talk to atproto developers, and some Fedi ones too (I was just on a call with WordPress, Leaflet, Offprint, and pckt last week about longform bridging). It feels that way when I have face-to-face 1-1s with atproto short-form apps that want to bridge with cross-promotion in tow. I can go on.
It's posts and threads like this that get visibility and skew the conversation in an unproductive direction.
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@thisismissem @dansup @quillmatiq Are you working on ATProto projects now? EDIT: I reread, saw that you are. I'm glad to hear that!
@evan @dansup @quillmatiq yes, I am actively working on several AT Protocol projects.
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@dansup Nostr is a good idea, unfortunately nobody is talking to each other and everyone wants funding from the same wallet.
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@evan It feels that way every time I talk to atproto developers, and some Fedi ones too (I was just on a call with WordPress, Leaflet, Offprint, and pckt last week about longform bridging). It feels that way when I have face-to-face 1-1s with atproto short-form apps that want to bridge with cross-promotion in tow. I can go on.
It's posts and threads like this that get visibility and skew the conversation in an unproductive direction.
@quillmatiq @dansup That's great! I'm glad to hear that you're having some positive interactions where people have a sense of shared goals.
What's making that work well? How do we do it better?
I hope the upcoming Fediforum conference will be another chance to have that kind of conversation.
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@dansup @quillmatiq while I agree on your take on bluesky, the existence of Blacksky and others show that atproto is a viable decentralized protocol and is beyond the control of bluesky, the company. Im hopeful there will be more bridges that will connect activitypub to atproto like Bridgyfed or services that have interoperability built in like Wafrn
@adamtewodros @dansup @quillmatiq
blacksky should build on activitypub
if they build on atproto, ok
good luck to them
but they seem to be choosing a sinking ship
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@quillmatiq @dansup @thisismissem @evan
How many Anuj?
And, what constitutes an AT Proto "independent service"?
@mastodonmigration @quillmatiq @dansup @thisismissem @evan I'm curious to know as well. I'm not dead-set against ATproto, and I like some of their ideas on paper, but i only really know of one public full-stack reimplementation that could exist if Bsky disappeared overnight - BlackSky. But last I read (admittedly been a minute), they're still dependent on Bsky for the plc directory, right? I'd like to be better informed if this is no longer the case, or if there are other fully independent full stack implementations!
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@quillmatiq @dansup That's great! I'm glad to hear that you're having some positive interactions where people have a sense of shared goals.
What's making that work well? How do we do it better?
I hope the upcoming Fediforum conference will be another chance to have that kind of conversation.
@evan What's making it work is not acting as if a specific standard or technology is the only choice everyone has to bet on or is some ideological choice. It's about opening doors, building bridges, and seeing where we can bring people together. It's not that complicated, it's just kindness and openness.
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@evan What's making it work is not acting as if a specific standard or technology is the only choice everyone has to bet on or is some ideological choice. It's about opening doors, building bridges, and seeing where we can bring people together. It's not that complicated, it's just kindness and openness.
@quillmatiq @dansup I agree. Like I said, coalitions don't always share 100% the same goals and values, but we can still work together towards what we do have in common.
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@mastodonmigration @quillmatiq @dansup @thisismissem @evan I'm curious to know as well. I'm not dead-set against ATproto, and I like some of their ideas on paper, but i only really know of one public full-stack reimplementation that could exist if Bsky disappeared overnight - BlackSky. But last I read (admittedly been a minute), they're still dependent on Bsky for the plc directory, right? I'd like to be better informed if this is no longer the case, or if there are other fully independent full stack implementations!
@baralheia @mastodonmigration @quillmatiq @dansup @evan
PLC directory is in the process of being moved to a swiss association, it's just taking time, because legal stuff always takes time.
https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org
The thing about AT Protocol is that you don't *need* to reimplement the entire stack to be independent. You can push people towards independently hosted PDSes, you can use non-Bluesky relays, you can build your own application and social graph. You can run your own moderation systems.
Bluesky is a tiny subset of what we can do on AT Protocol: microblogging. There's so much more happening: video streaming, blogging, science collaboration, annotating the web, links and bookmarking, E2EE messaging, source control management (git), books and pop culture reviews, Q&A services, a container registry, a package management service, music scrobbling, learning journeys, work profiles, video sharing, etc.
I've probably missed at least a few entire categories here.
ActivityPub forces you to re-implement the entire stack, AT Protocol allows you to do it progressively or reuse community infrastructure.
If you think of AT Protocol as Bluesky, then that'd be the same as thinking of ActivityPub as Mastodon. Far too many ActivityPub developers fall into that trap of "I must be compatible with mastodon" that it stifles innovation.
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@quillmatiq @dansup I agree. Like I said, coalitions don't always share 100% the same goals and values, but we can still work together towards what we do have in common.
@evan If you agree, then I think you should be promoting and endorsing more kindness and productive criticism instead of threads like this that push people away. You have a major voice here, be a part of pushing a positive culture.
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@dansup
Are others fighting to survive or dominate ? -
@quillmatiq @evan @dansup I agree!
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@dansup This is such a miscommunication of what's happening. Happy to chat with you about it sometime, but I highly recommend not taking a billionaire's word over what that ecosystem is and what it's meant to be.
@quillmatiq
Aren't the billionaires the ones designing the ecosystem now? -
@quillmatiq @evan @dansup There are a lot of monoculture on both ecosystems, with unnecessary cruelty towards people who all want to create better alternatives to the (closed source) giants.
Every system has limitations, but it would be much more constructive to learn from each other, instead of burning bridges between communities of creators.
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@quillmatiq @evan @dansup I am determined to make the vibes better, we need to stop pushing people away and actually make this a place people wanna be.
@alexchapman @quillmatiq @evan @dansup it happened to @HolosSocial just a week ago, that made me very sad, that the angry loud voices won.
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@quillmatiq @dansup I have a major voice because I'm ride-or-die for ActivityPub. That's my role.
You and I have different roles in the social web. I think yours is really important, and I'm glad you do it, but it's not mine.
We can achieve a lot together even if we don't agree on everything.
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@quillmatiq @dansup I have a major voice because I'm ride-or-die for ActivityPub. That's my role.
You and I have different roles in the social web. I think yours is really important, and I'm glad you do it, but it's not mine.
We can achieve a lot together even if we don't agree on everything.
@quillmatiq @dansup So, I'd like to give you some unsolicited advice, since you've been so generous with yours.
If you want to see more cooperation between people on the Fediverse and the ATmosphere, telling people on the Fediverse that they're bad and wrong and nasty isn't working. It may be true, but it's not effective.
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@quillmatiq @dansup I have a major voice because I'm ride-or-die for ActivityPub. That's my role.
You and I have different roles in the social web. I think yours is really important, and I'm glad you do it, but it's not mine.
We can achieve a lot together even if we don't agree on everything.
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@quillmatiq @dansup So, I'd like to give you some unsolicited advice, since you've been so generous with yours.
If you want to see more cooperation between people on the Fediverse and the ATmosphere, telling people on the Fediverse that they're bad and wrong and nasty isn't working. It may be true, but it's not effective.
@quillmatiq @dansup There are a lot of cases for Fediverse developers to support cooperation.
1. "They're like us". As you've pointed out, ATProto has evolved (almost?) beyond the control of one venture-funded startup. There is a community of third-party developers who are doing interesting things. They are more like Fediverse developers than we realize. Even if the foundations of ATProto suck (agree to disagree!), there's some cool work being done by cool people who share a lot of our values.
