Recently there has been a lot of discourse about ActivityPub and AT Protocol which has been quite dividing and heated.
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@breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan @thisismissem
The problem is a matter of scale. There is no way for 99% of users to "simply" move anywhere.
@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan Blacksky already recently managed a mass migration away from Bluesky hosted PDS's for their community. Similar could happen if needed for other communities.
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@mastodonmigration @ikuturso @stefan @thisismissem
aye, there's the rub
even on mastodon, migrating to another server is hard.
you have to follow a 50 step process, create another account, then move all your stuff...
it would be hella nice to have a one-click button that simply moves all your shit to another server.
@breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan @thisismissem
Yes, that would be nice.
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Recently there has been a lot of discourse about ActivityPub and AT Protocol which has been quite dividing and heated.
Yesterday at the Social Web CG meeting (the group that maintains the ActivityPub and related specifications), I proposed releasing a statement that counters the narrative that one of these protocols must win, when both protocols can co-exist and have a lot to learn from each other.
The statement has been co-signed by various members of both Social Web CG, SocialCG, and the AT Protocol community.
“We do not win by tearing each other down, which only emboldens and empowers those who do not want either protocol to succeed.”
“Arguing between us only emboldens those that seek to derail and destroy efforts to build an open social web.”
You can read the full statement here:
https://writings.thisismissem.social/statement-on-discourse-about-activitypub-and-at-protocol/This was originally in the swicg/general repository, and you can learn about that here:
https://github.com/swicg/general/blob/master/statements/2025-09-05-activitypub-and-atproto-discourse.md@thisismissem
Ya the thing I would like to see more than infighting is fedi apps learning how to behave like PDSes and bluesky learning how to ingest AP -
@stefan that visualization isn't particularly great at showing how (de)centralized it is though.
Things are not to scale in it: Single user PDS is as much as 1/50th the area of a Bluesky Corporate PDS with almost 400,000 users.
@ikuturso Yeah, neither one is perfect.
The first site has an open issue on GitHub to include other parts of the ATProto stack, hopefully that will be added soon.
https://github.com/ricci/distributed-social-networks/issues/1
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@breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan @thisismissem
Yes, that would be nice.
@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan this exists in the ATmosphere — https://tektite.cc/
and a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SdmiCRYeZA
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@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan Blacksky already recently managed a mass migration away from Bluesky hosted PDS's for their community. Similar could happen if needed for other communities.
@thisismissem @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan
Yes, the Blacksky migration was impressive. It still did not change the overall percentage distribution numbers very much. It seems like proponents of AT Protocol should welcome criticism of too much dominance of Bluesky PBC and support more independent Blacksky type efforts.
Why, if Bluesky is actually serious about wanting AT Protocol to be decentralized, is there not more overt support for moving the numbers in a truly meaningful way.
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@thisismissem @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan
Yes, the Blacksky migration was impressive. It still did not change the overall percentage distribution numbers very much. It seems like proponents of AT Protocol should welcome criticism of too much dominance of Bluesky PBC and support more independent Blacksky type efforts.
Why, if Bluesky is actually serious about wanting AT Protocol to be decentralized, is there not more overt support for moving the numbers in a truly meaningful way.
@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan there's also NorthSky in Canada that's building on Blacksky's work, and I'm sure there'll be something similar in the EU too
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@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @ikuturso @stefan Blacksky already recently managed a mass migration away from Bluesky hosted PDS's for their community. Similar could happen if needed for other communities.
@thisismissem did they manage to get away from the did:plc dependency? Assuming not since there is no way to migrate those away from the PBC identity...
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@mastodonmigration @ikuturso @stefan @thisismissem
aye, there's the rub
even on mastodon, migrating to another server is hard.
you have to follow a 50 step process, create another account, then move all your stuff...
it would be hella nice to have a one-click button that simply moves all your shit to another server.
breathoflife@mastodon.social I agree on the one hand, but simple and secure are hard to have together.
I'm not saying the Mastodon migration system can't be improved however...
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@thisismissem did they manage to get away from the did:plc dependency? Assuming not since there is no way to migrate those away from the PBC identity...
@ikuturso @mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @stefan there's plenty of DID methods that have been developed; There are some people using did:web, there's also did:webvh — but there's definitely still more work to do in this space.
I think ActivityPub could theoretically adopt did:web or did:webvh as an alternative to webfinger.
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@thisismissem I would add that both protocols support use cases that the other protocol has a hard time addressing. ActivityPub, for example, is much better at point to point communication where no third party overhears what is happening. ATproto, for example, can be used to build “global trending” or a global index much more easily.
I would not be surprised if at the end of they, the open social web would simultaneously end up using both, in a complementary fashion.@thisismissem @j12t It follows that AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers. And there is a far larger demand for the former than the latter. So I'd predict a future where AT evolves into a high-performance enclave embedded inside AP. -
@thisismissem @j12t It follows that AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers. And there is a far larger demand for the former than the latter. So I'd predict a future where AT evolves into a high-performance enclave embedded inside AP.
@mat “AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers”. That is great framing, I’m going to steal this! (with credit!)
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@mat “AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers”. That is great framing, I’m going to steal this! (with credit!)
what's the argument for this? I disagree because talking to the public (the entire point of social media imo) will never matter if there's a wealthy middleman. AT afaict will usually have that while AP won't. witness @mondoweiss vs Turkiye getting bluesky to censor some accounts.
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what's the argument for this? I disagree because talking to the public (the entire point of social media imo) will never matter if there's a wealthy middleman. AT afaict will usually have that while AP won't. witness @mondoweiss vs Turkiye getting bluesky to censor some accounts.
@wjmaggos @thisismissem @mondoweiss @j12t You're mostly agreeing with me: AT is destined to have problems because it's designed to scale to many users, not to many providers, leaving it vulnerable to censorship. Where we disagree is whether social media is for talking to the public. Compare the MAU of Facebook and Twitter to answer that question. -
@wjmaggos @thisismissem @mondoweiss @j12t You're mostly agreeing with me: AT is destined to have problems because it's designed to scale to many users, not to many providers, leaving it vulnerable to censorship. Where we disagree is whether social media is for talking to the public. Compare the MAU of Facebook and Twitter to answer that question.
@mat @thisismissem @mondoweiss @j12t
Facebook and OG Twitter seem similar but I think they are at least used very differently and it explains their MAU. The first is about communities while the latter was about public discourse. I wish we'd use social networking vs social media to distinguish them.
I'm a civics and "popular culture should be democratically determined, not bought" guy so I wish more wanted to use spaces like we did OG Twitter, but they don't. YET
should all be on AP tho imo.
