Web 2.0 […] proper social applications like Flickr, Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, and Foursquare.

Not a single open source service, community-governed site, …

Someone said it already: web 2.0 is only the web with capitalist entities colonizing the space. Web 2.0 going to shit is absolutely unsurprising. It is impossible for capitalist entities to not try to exploit and make it bad. They took control of web 2.0 by being middlemen, interfaces between providers and consumers, through APIs. An API is nothing spectacular: it’s just one way to interface with a system, with the particularity that the system chooses what can be done, how it to be done, who can do it, etc… perfect for control. What is bluesky doing ? An app, connected to the big firehose that takes lots of resources to run and will only take more as more people will join. Bluesky is everyone doing their stuff on their own but to make it work you have to go through Bluesky’s relay to make sure you don’t miss something. Yes, alternative relays exist, just like alternative online retailers exist; that doesn’t make Amazon disappear. The power of the Default is strong.

Bluesky is putting all the cost (storage, app dev, even moderation) on the outside and keeps an eye on the flow, because that’s where data, hence money, is.

The only way to the old web, the web 1.0 or however it’s called is without capitalists in it, there’s no way around it. What shoul matter is how to make AT sustainable without bluesky (and any capitalist alternative), and should be the primary goal

Looking at the specs, it’s a promising concept, but its considerably less mature than ActivityPub. It’s also struggling with some of the same challenges:

What is Missing?

Non-Public Data: mechanisms for personal and group data sharing are planned, and should support a wide variety of application functionality. These will be large additions to the protocol framework. We recommend against simply “bolting on” encryption or private content using the existing protocol primitives.

Protocol Governance and Formal Standards Process: once the basic protocol framework has been shown to work between multiple interoperating organizations, the plan is to bring the protocol specifications to an existing standards body (like the IETF) for revision and independent review.

The first point is one the Fediverse struggles with (like the fact DMs aren’t private). The second is where ATProto falls behind ActivityPub - right now Bluesky is the only significant org running the protocol, and as such they’re still establishing standards.

I think the lexicon requirement certainly leads to a more polished look as you don’t have to worry about custom interactions across multiple platforms, interoperability is basically baked in (given it’s built to begin with).

It’s quite nice I’ve been working in it quite a lot. A lot of people here tend to get into the “my protocol is better” arguments but honestly both sides have the same ultimate goal, each has its quirks.

Note on the variety, a lot of these like Mu is re-using the bluesky lexicon so it’s effectively like a Mastadon Client. Same goes for Offprint, Leaflet, Pckt they all use the same Standard Site lexicon so they’re effectively clients with some frontend niceties built in and maybe their own features, but the core is the same.

Also my account here is actually atproto 👋

it is kinda funny because this is a bit more of the way I would like things to work and like nostr a lot to. The problem with both is their main thing is xitter like and I went newsgroups to nothing to slashdot to reddit to here. most of the fediverse is xitter to but im not interested in that format.

The ‘Authenticated Transfer Protocol’, or AT Proto for short, is a very simple system at its core. A user signs up on a Personal Data Server (PDS) on which they’re given a data repository.

Ok this is some kind of web automation thing. Nothing to do with dialup modems where you say ATDT followed by the phone number, and so on.