Alan Johnson @acjay@qoto.org

@davidgarywood @atomicpoet to be honest, algorithms is a big missing piece of Mastodon for me. I just don't want to be beholden to one billionaire's algorithm.

@trisweb makes sense!

@trisweb I don't necessarily disagree, but why?

@Popehat it's wild to me to see this happen time and time again. I'd like to think I'm not built that way, but I wonder if it's a basic human vulnerability.

@Pat Also frankly, starting from scratch, Bluesky has been able to start a small-scale community that a certain group of people have found more fun and welcoming than Mastodon. They have the opportunity to try to figure out how to scale that, although that will probably be tougher than the protocol challenges.

@Pat Frankly, I do think AT Protocol might have a better shot, simply because they had the chance to learn from ActivityPub and aren't burdened with legacy protocol.

@Pat I would love it if the Fediverse had a better story for identity independent of hosting. I don't think Bluesky is going to succeed if they don't deliver on federation and experience at scale. I don't know whether either network is going to change in the way that I hope.

@justin @orta the main reason is that I've felt the story for identity on ActivityPub is lacking in a way that AT Protocol improves upon. This might seem small to some, but I don't think it's a small deal. True sovereignty from one's host depends on having an independent identity from the host's control.

But that's not just good from the user standpoint. It also means the network can have a better onboarding story, because your choice of onramp to join doesn't lock you in in any way. That removes one of the biggest pain points cited in the Mastodon experience.

This has been on my mind since early in my experience here

https://qoto.org/web/statuses/109402029934201998

https://qoto.org/web/statuses/109615589482835878

Could the #fediverse potentially migrate to AT Protocol? Aside from a different namespace, what would prevent this from happening, from a technical standpoint? Are there places where ActivityPub is more capable?

I realize that there isn't yet a fully baked AT Protocol, so it's possible no one knows the answer for certain, but I'm interested in thoughts.

@Pat It's certainly possible that decentralization in AT Protocol is never realized, in which case, Bluesky would be another centralized service.

But if you can entertain the assumption that AT Protocol opens as planned, I don't understand what you mean. For-profit Fediverse hosts exist already. How would that be any different?

@futurebird one useful distinction I've heard is between private property and personal property. The two things are often conflated in a deeply ideologically capitalist society. But when you think about it, it is kind of weird that nearly everything that can be commoditized is ultimately owned by individuals, perpetually, to the exclusion of EVERYONE else.

@Pat Not sure if you're aware, but Bluesky is built on a federated social media protocol called AT Protocol, which is basically meant to supercede ActivityPub. Now it's true that today, there is only one host in the federation, which is Bluesky, but I'm pretty confident that it will soon look pretty Fediverse-ish.

@Pat having spent the pod past several days on Bluesky, I like a lot of things about it. Of course, right now, it's pretty exclusive. For one thing, I think AT Protocol might simply be superior to ActivityPub.

@alexelcu what do you mean by the Judeo-Christianity religion? Do you mean Abrahamic religions in general?

Does this really contrast with non-Abrahamic religions?