#atproto

Blacksky has already built their own ATProto stack that's fully independent from Bluesky. Now Eurosky is making progress as they roll out their own PDS. I see more independent infrastructure springing up on https://atp.fyi/network including AppViews. For anyone hoping that we'll get another wave of people coming to the fediverse once Bluesky folds/enshittifies, that might not necessarily be the case as people will have more options to stay in the Atmosphere. #fediverse #atmosphere #ATProto #bluesky #SocialMedia

@tchambers@indieweb.social the endgame is to not depend on Big Tech douche techbro billionaire owners, and not allow them to own #SocialMedia nor use their nefarious influence to destroy democracy #ATProto is #DTBO -Dorsey created, VC cryptobros own #Bluesky. And #Threads is just Meta. They will not allow people to see or say things against their owners' interest, as this past weekend clearly showed. I guess memories are short.

I frequently come across fairly aggressive criticisms of ATProto or Bluesky on the Fediverse, but the relative moderation loads of a PDS owner and the owner of a Fedi instance are hardly ever mentioned. Apart from redistribution of relative costs, the ATProto decomposition of the network into PDSs, relays and AppViews also distributes the load of moderation differently to that of the Fediverse. If someone is only running a PDS, and using a relay and an AppView provided by other parties, then they are legally responsible for moderating only the posts by users on their own PDS. In contrast, every instance owner on the Fediverse is legally responsible for moderating the entire slice of the Fediverse visible to their instance. Essentially, the owner of every Fedi instance with a decent number of users has to moderate more or less the entire network. Moderation is a huge, unceasing burden. There are so many stories of instance owners on the Fediverse burning out due to moderation responsibilities. So from the moderation point of view, I can understand why many technically proficient people may prefer to host an ATProto PDS, but not a Fediverse instance. Of course, there is a tradeoff—if the dominant AppView censors your PDS, then you are cut off from almost the entire network. But I think a lot of people may be willing to make that tradeoff simply to preserve their mental health. #ATProto #ATmosphere #Bluesky #ActivityPub #Fediverse #Mastodon

Interesting things are happing in the Atmosphere (the network built out around Bluesky and their ATProto protocol). "With Acorn, Blacksky is providing access to these same tools to other communities that want to build their own spaces on the open social web." https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/04/as-x-shuts-down-communities-acorn-debuts-an-alternative-that-puts-creators-in-control/ #news #technology #TechNews #atmosphere #ATProto #bluesky #blacksky #BlackskyAcorn

It looks more independent communities are coming to the Atmosphere. "Latinsky and Medsky, brought to you by [Blacksky's] Acorn system, coming VERY soon..." https://bsky.app/profile/richferro.com/post/3mltltjudfs2m EDIT: It looks like this account requires you to be logged in. Sorry about that! The post also mentions that more updates will be shared by https://bsky.app/profile/latinsky.social and https://bsky.app/profile/medsky.network in the future. #atmosphere #atproto #bluesky #blacksky #BlackskyAcorn

What are the most important issues and discussions about the Open Social Web we need to have this late summer and fall? FediForum #FediForumFriday #ActivityPub #ATProtocol #Fediverse #atproto

What are the most important issues and discussions about the Open Social Web we need to have this late summer and fall? #FediForum #FediForumFriday #ActivityPub #ATProtocol #Fediverse #atproto

The Programmer’s Fulcrum 7 August, 2026 https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-7-august-2026/ Welcome to your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. #activitypub #atproto #fediverse

Great interview between Prof AJ Escoffery and Dr Kay Coghill, who's Community Safety and Support Steward with Blacksky Algorithms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hrPb4egyis #Bluesky #Blacksky #SOcialMedia #AlternativeSocialMedia #Commodon #TrustAndSafety #Misogynoir #ATProto

In an interview with The Verge, Bluesky's CEO sees a common goal between the fediverse and the Atmosphere/Bluesky, can see them co-existing side by side "long-term". "We have not talked to Threads. We’re definitely talking to Mastodon and ActivityPub. They definitely feel we’re very aligned. Our missions are very aligned." https://www.theverge.com/podcast/974387/bluesky-toni-schneider-interview-ai-atproto-atmosphere #interview #technology #SocialMedia #bluesky #atmosphere #ATProto #fediverse

@dansup@mastodon.social A good feeling, hopefully? #ActivityPub #SocialWeb #Fediverse #AtProto

It's a strange feeling, building something with no one to answer to but the people using it. No walls to raise. No data to harvest. No quarter to hit. Just a network of communities that actually belong to the people in them. #ActivityPub #SocialWeb #Fediverse #AtProto

Blacksky continues to build independence from Bluesky the company with a beta of their own app. Official announcement with links in replies: https://bsky.app/profile/blackskyweb.xyz/post/3mrsbr6kg6c2b #atmosphere #atproto #blacksky #bluesky #SocialMedia

#ActivityPub Over #ATProto https://berjon.com/ap-at/ #Mastodon #Bluesky

Last week at Local First Conf, it seems like everyone was talking about ATProto. I really want to build on it, but I'm not sure I'll be able to. I wrote up what and how and why not: https://lukekanies.com/writing/building-on-atproto/ (ActivityPub was never an option, because it's even less local-first, and the HOA mentality makes it impossible to build applications on.) #atproto

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@baileytownsend/116952597706316959 I want to follow this up with an AMAA (ask me anything #atproto!) I've done a few of these on #bluesky and thought it might be fun to do one here! I don't believe in dumb questions, so please ask me any you may have! Happy to answer anything, or at least hopefully point you in the right direction! Feel free to reply your questions to this post. Also feel free to even ask me stuff like "Is atproto really #decentralized", "Aren't relays/PDS expensive?", "What do migrations look like there?", etc. Nothing is off the table, and I'd be glad to answer anything! Good chance I will have questions in the future about #activitypub and #mastodon that I will be asking!

I have acquired opinions on #ActivityPub vs #ATProto in strong favor of ActivityPub. Basically for ATProto to work you need one big entity (called the relay) to sift through all updates published on all servers and provide that to users as their feed. It also provides search and so on. Nobody wants to run these relays since they're really resource-heavy and you don't get any money for running them so if you are a relay operator you can censor all you like because it's not like your users can leave. ActivityPub doesn't have this problem because it has instances which do the feed aggregation. Relays are just one big point of failure for ATProto and thus ATmosphere is not really decentralized.

Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…

So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that ­– cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).

Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.

That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)

The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way? I know it just warms the cockles of my heart. So much sovereignty! But I digress…)

So @_elena@mastodon.social calls them out (someone has to while @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu is busy preparing for their honeymoon after expressing their undying devotion to W Social recently on every social platform¹):

https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t

Anna Zeiter – W CEO, Stanford’s own, and ex-eBay executive (such sovereignty) – replies with this absolute zinger:

“We are just verifying if some [sic] is a human and at least 18 years old. Users are then free to choose their own user name. This (human) user apparently chose the name TikTok.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)

Read that as many times as you like until it really sinks in.

These incompetent clowns (dangerous competent clowns but incompetent clowns nevertheless) make people go through a ridiculous 13-step identity verification stage² and then… umm… you get to choose whatever identity you want.

🤡🤡🤡

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re incompetent. It would be worse if they were competent, given they’re a closed-source venture-capital-funded startup determined to prove your identity.

“Yes we have a business model, it’s not a philanthropy, we are not a B corp, we actually want to make money.” – Anna Zeiter³

But, what I want to know is this: Why has @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu embraced a proprietary, closed-source, corporate ghost town with 14,300 accounts, 90% of which have not posted even once (in other words, with only 1,259 accounts that have ever posted)⁴ when there is a thriving non-corporate fediverse with millions of active people on it.

Could it have anything to do with identity verification, surveillance, and control?

And if so, why can’t they even get that right?

Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.

Oh, and how does this make the whole “European alternatives” thing look? Not good. Not because there aren’t excellent European alternatives but because the folks at the commission are either too clueless or too corrupt to recognise and support them.

So, yeah, how’s your Monday going?

¹ e.g., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108 etc.

² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2

³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (from the YouTube video that they since deleted. Nice transparency there, clowns.)

⁴ Run this script in Node 18+ to reproduce the numbers from their PDS yourself: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/

#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission

Well the cat is out of the bag : if you like #RSS and the idea of a social layer on top of the existing web without lockin, ads and algorithms try it : https://textcaster.app #Fediverse #ATproto #ActivityPub 🔗 https://rmendes.net/notes/2026/07/18/29a7c

Huh, interesting. Bluesky the company trademarked the name of "AT Protocol" as "primarily a defensive measure" against abuse. Going forward, "most everyday use cases [won't] require a license". https://atproto.com/blog/at-protocol-trademark #news #technology #ATProto #bluesky #trademark