Recently there has been a lot of discourse about ActivityPub and AT Protocol which has been quite dividing and heated.

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

my comrade in christ

the reason that blacksky have their own relay implementation is because bluesky NEVER RELEASED THEIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

they left half the protocol unfinished in a deliberate attempt to centralize control.

then rudy fraser decided "fuck that" and proceeded to build atproto.africa, severely fucking that attempt six ways until sunday and putting atproto on the map as a serious protocol as opposed to a complete joke.

@mastodonmigration Apologies for butting in, but I think https://atp.fyi/network does a better job at showing how decentralized Bluesky/ATProto really is, compared to this site you shared, which, as it explains, only takes PDSs into account.

@thisismissem

@breathOfLife @mastodonmigration @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

Interesting, thank you! Where can I follow Rudy Fraser's work?

@stefan @mastodonmigration @thisismissem

This is interesting, but the only parts of the network that look decentralized on this graph are feeds and labelers - and almost every feed and almost every labeler I hovered over is exclusively connected to Bluesky PBC relays (and no others) and exclusively consumed by the PBC's AppView (and no others).

So the graph does show that anybody can provide *metadata* for AT, but the large scale structure of the network still looks quite centralized to me.

@fontenot Yes, you are absolutely correct, of course!

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem

@breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

Interesting. Did not know this.

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan That's because it's not true, it's completely normal to not know things that aren't real

@stefan @fontenot @mastodonmigration I'm certain in time this graph will change, just as that of ActivityPub adoption and distribution has changed over the years.

AP has a 5 year head start at least here compared to AT Protocol, and I think the efforts ongoing at promising.

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan The relay (formerly "BGS") code has been open source since at least April 2023: https://bsky.app/profile/dholms.xyz/post/3jt33v44njk26

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan The relay (formerly "BGS") code has been open source since at least April 2023: https://bsky.app/profile/dholms.xyz/post/3jt33v44njk26

@mackuba @mastodonmigration @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

huh

then i guess the hoo-hah about atproto not being decentralized came simply from bluesky being a for-profit company.

which, fair enough, profit DOES incentivize enshittification and lock-in, and activitypub is mostly built as a service anyway in reaction to that.

suffice to say, there's always been a general vibe here that atproto was just a bluesky thing.

it took community effort to give atproto legs.

@breathOfLife @mackuba @mastodonmigration @ikuturso @stefan they're not "for-profit" in the traditional sense, being a public benefit corporation (that's what PBC stands for in Bluesky PBC), but in most locales, even your non-profits are technically for-profit corporations.

e.g., Mastodon gGmbH is still a GmbH (especially so when German authorities stripped them of non-profit status due to weird/bad german laws)

@thisismissem @mackuba @mastodonmigration @ikuturso @stefan

didn't mastodon bother to actually fight that ruling in court though?

that and founding a 501(c)(3) company specifically to get around the tax office.