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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Pushing a separate protocol has undoubtedly hurt the entire distributed social networking movement. It was done intentionally.
It shouldn't have worked. ActivityPub should have been more widespread by the time that ATProto launched, so that a competing protocol would have no chance to split the network.
But we weren't, and it did. It's at least partially our fault that a house-brand protocol has been such a serious threat.
I think there is a lot to applaud in the ATProto community in terms of the growing openness, the standardization of part of the stack, and the great work engaging third-party developers.
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@sunnythesheep I'm not talking about Bluesky, I'm talking about atproto, which now includes a variety of services, many of which have no connection to Bluesky with their tech stack.
@quillmatiq I see your point. Still love services who stick to ActivityPub, for interoperability, more.
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@dansup @quillmatiq Anuj, this is unfair.
There is a significant difference in intent and governance between ActivityPub and ATProto.
It's perfectly reasonable to point out those differences, just like the atproto.com site points out technical differences.
@evan @dansup @quillmatiq True, ATProto's intent is to cash in and make it's backers rich, ActivityPub's intent is to provide a protocol for an open web.
Thanks for calling that out!
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I think there is a lot to applaud in the ATProto community in terms of the growing openness, the standardization of part of the stack, and the great work engaging third-party developers.
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.
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Pushing a separate protocol has undoubtedly hurt the entire distributed social networking movement. It was done intentionally.
It shouldn't have worked. ActivityPub should have been more widespread by the time that ATProto launched, so that a competing protocol would have no chance to split the network.
But we weren't, and it did. It's at least partially our fault that a house-brand protocol has been such a serious threat.
@evan @dansup What's hurt it more is not working together on a unified strategy and putting up walls every time there's a chance to do so.
There are folks on the atproto side who have shown an intent to bridge with services like Pixelfed and Loops, *including* adding the logo on the posts to help promote services. We can either move together, or we can continue to push each other away and fall to trillion-dollar companies building their own ecosystems, some of whom the Fedi bet the farm on.
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@evan @dansup @quillmatiq True, ATProto's intent is to cash in and make it's backers rich, ActivityPub's intent is to provide a protocol for an open web.
Thanks for calling that out!
@reflex @dansup @quillmatiq I think Anuj's point is that there is a growing ecosystem around ATProto that is not owned or controlled by Bluesky LLC. There are a lot of people in that ecosystem that are just as concerned about decentralization and distribution of control as we are. Many people in the LLC even support that decentralization. It is a serious bummer that it's splitting the social web, but at least we have bridges and multistack services to connect us.
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@evan @dansup What's hurt it more is not working together on a unified strategy and putting up walls every time there's a chance to do so.
There are folks on the atproto side who have shown an intent to bridge with services like Pixelfed and Loops, *including* adding the logo on the posts to help promote services. We can either move together, or we can continue to push each other away and fall to trillion-dollar companies building their own ecosystems, some of whom the Fedi bet the farm on.
@quillmatiq @evan what walls? The fediverse literally worked with Meta for Threads federation, we’ve been here and open to collaboration, they went off and made a worse implementation that is even more difficult to full self host.
I appreciate the ability for interop, but I’m not wrong about this.
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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.
@evan @dansup I'm not gaslighting anyone, Evan, and I would hope that you would know me better than that after our conversations.
You can throw stones back at the Fedi's bet around Meta and all the other companies that promised ActivityPub integration but never delivered. What are we even doing here?
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@evan @dansup What's hurt it more is not working together on a unified strategy and putting up walls every time there's a chance to do so.
There are folks on the atproto side who have shown an intent to bridge with services like Pixelfed and Loops, *including* adding the logo on the posts to help promote services. We can either move together, or we can continue to push each other away and fall to trillion-dollar companies building their own ecosystems, some of whom the Fedi bet the farm on.
@quillmatiq @evan @dansup I have been thinking about trying to do some sort of protocol bridging with my project Fedi+ but then that runs the risk of people like FediTips getting on the wrong side of things being like oh Fedi+ interacts with fashists or whatever all because of the protocol being associated with Bluesky, which verified ICE and other US government accounts, and so on. My goal with Fedi+ is to not only create that vibe people loved when Google+ was around, but also to make it super easy for people who don't care about Mastodon or ActivityPub or whatever to join on and not even need to think about the protocols behind the scenes.
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@evan @dansup I'm not gaslighting anyone, Evan, and I would hope that you would know me better than that after our conversations.
You can throw stones back at the Fedi's bet around Meta and all the other companies that promised ActivityPub integration but never delivered. What are we even doing here?
@evan @dansup The number of developers and communities who've been pushed out of the Fedi because of this elitist mentality should be alarming to any builder in this space. Are we ever going to learn to do better, or are we going to continue pushing more people away?
The vibes aren't good, Evan, and I really hope you're aware of that, because vibes make or break a community.
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@evan @dansup The number of developers and communities who've been pushed out of the Fedi because of this elitist mentality should be alarming to any builder in this space. Are we ever going to learn to do better, or are we going to continue pushing more people away?
The vibes aren't good, Evan, and I really hope you're aware of that, because vibes make or break a community.
@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.
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@evan @dansup The number of developers and communities who've been pushed out of the Fedi because of this elitist mentality should be alarming to any builder in this space. Are we ever going to learn to do better, or are we going to continue pushing more people away?
The vibes aren't good, Evan, and I really hope you're aware of that, because vibes make or break a community.
@evan @dansup There are brilliant developers who were building in between the two spaces who decided it wasn't worth the hate they were receiving. If you want, I can share how much hate I get for bridging, and the mass majority comes from this side of the ecosystem, I just continue on because I believe in the mission.
It's a culture problem, and you two have the power to help change that.
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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.
The fediverse is the only one in this story that never needed a billionaire to survive.
And it never will.
@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
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Pushing a separate protocol has undoubtedly hurt the entire distributed social networking movement. It was done intentionally.
It shouldn't have worked. ActivityPub should have been more widespread by the time that ATProto launched, so that a competing protocol would have no chance to split the network.
But we weren't, and it did. It's at least partially our fault that a house-brand protocol has been such a serious threat.
@evan @dansup @quillmatiq Evan, perhaps spend some time introspecting why ActivityPub didn't get more adoption and why developers love AT Protocol.
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@evan @dansup @quillmatiq Evan, perhaps spend some time introspecting why ActivityPub didn't get more adoption and why developers love AT Protocol.
@thisismissem @evan @quillmatiq more adoption, like Metas Threads? There are dozens of projects on the fediverse, more than atproto, so that’s not really coming across as you think it is lol
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@thisismissem @evan @quillmatiq more adoption, like Metas Threads? There are dozens of projects on the fediverse, more than atproto, so that’s not really coming across as you think it is lol
@dansup So ActivityPub needed VC money, too?
Btw, Fediverse Threads is in maintenance mode and is one-way, basically RSS with likes, so are we going to even consider it a part of the ecosystem at this point?
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@thisismissem @evan @quillmatiq more adoption, like Metas Threads? There are dozens of projects on the fediverse, more than atproto, so that’s not really coming across as you think it is lol
@dansup @thisismissem @evan @quillmatiq And virtually all of them literally cannot function without Bluesky.
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@evan @dansup I'm not gaslighting anyone, Evan, and I would hope that you would know me better than that after our conversations.
You can throw stones back at the Fedi's bet around Meta and all the other companies that promised ActivityPub integration but never delivered. What are we even doing here?
@quillmatiq @dansup I know you and I appreciate your work.
Coalitions exist when different factions and players share some common goals. But they don't have to share *all* the same goals to work together.
I think there's a good case to be made that the ATProto community and the Fediverse can be a coalition to work together on the Open Social Web.
That doesn't mean we can't talk about our differences, or advocate for our own protocols and technologies.
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@dansup So ActivityPub needed VC money, too?
Btw, Fediverse Threads is in maintenance mode and is one-way, basically RSS with likes, so are we going to even consider it a part of the ecosystem at this point?
@dansup Also, I'm sorry, I have to ask - but how many independent services do you think atproto has right now? Because it's not just a handful, as you're making it out to be.
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@evan @dansup @quillmatiq Evan, perhaps spend some time introspecting why ActivityPub didn't get more adoption and why developers love AT Protocol.
@thisismissem @evan @dansup @quillmatiq
Why do you think this is Emelia?
