an interesting thread on Bluesky about why people are choosing to build on #ATProto instead of #ActivityPub

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@liaizon the quote post of the original question also give some good insight

Witchsky

(witchsky.app)

like yeah part of it are the cultural issues, but there are some pretty clear dev-ux points as well why people build on atproto

json-ld, and more specifically, the implicit ideal of data being open ended vs lexicon's being structured is a major part to it imo

[julian@activitypub.space]

@oblomov@sociale.network in a nutshell:

1. 2x Here because Rudy from Blacksky is here
2. Rudy (quoted) says ATProto is the distillation of everything good that blockchain/web3 offers without the crypto scams
3. One talks about hazing of devs trying to do good stuff on fedi
4. Another shares secondhand stories of devs wanting to do AP dev but are turned off by the above
5. 2x Fediverse too quiet, couldn't build audience immediately (ironic!!)
6. Unique identity

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@liaizon im waiting for the truly cursed day when someone decides to stuff a lexicon into activitypubs @context field

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@liaizon that link in your post?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@julian thanks for the summary

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@laurenshof watching the lexicon thing unfold and it really just seems like this is how it should work here. It makes the whole division of concerns clearer for everyone

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@laurenshof @liaizon Off-topic, but how do I open this link on bsky.app?

Tried the old "put the URL in the search box" Mastodon trick, no luck.

[julian@activitypub.space]

> @laurenshof@indieweb.social said in an interesting thread on Bluesky about why people are choosing to build on #ATProto instead of #ActivityPubhttps://witchsky.app/profile/did:plc:rtf3bjc3w2yn4syxtm4r7jt2/post/3mfrp6tovy22g:
>
> json-ld, and more specifically, the implicit ideal of data being open ended vs lexicon's being structured is a major part to it imo

Wait what does this mean?

1. JSON-LD is technically optional (I only put a token effort into it and only because people complained to me about it)
2. Open-ended protocols have a history of being successful precisely due to its open-ended nature (see: HTML)
3. Isn't JSON-LD an attempt to bring structure to AP just like Lexicons do to ATProto?

So which one's actually more open-ended?

[makdaam@chaos.social]

@liaizon The posts via witchsky.app don't load reliably. Going through the main bluesky webUI works better.

@oblomov There are some "the crypto is built in by design" answers. Some are about how confusing and potentially unstable individual servers are. Most are "I like my services centralized" (ie. central indexing, search and the usual corpo social media stuff). One complaint about racism on fedi.
I'm happy they found a place to build all that away from fedi, far away from fedi.

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@julian you don't want to platform people who are unwelcoming to devs? I think the issue is that a lot of the devs who show up are also totally oblivious to how their stuff effects the network and people who use it and the implications of their code on peoples lives. So I don't think it's as easy as just us being more welcoming to builders either sadly

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@stefan @liaizon easiest way is to just replace witchsky with bsky in the url, the data structure is all exactly the same so this trick tends to work mostly

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@laurenshof Right, but I'm looking for a user-friendly way to do this. You know, for normies.

@liaizon

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@julian

it really matters which part of the system exactly is open ended. atproto's lexicon system is open ended in the sense that everyone can publish any lexicon they want, but each individual lexicon is constraint (by design)

json-ld also technically has this open-ended nature (you can put whatever you want in @context), but then also tries to make it so that this can result in every mesage being parsable by everything else

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@julian like there is this implicit assumption that every server should be able to read every message type, or at least be able to parse it to determine whether they want to or not

this separations of concerns is much clearer with lexicons: part of your app design is making an explicit choice of 'my app reads these lexicons and disregards the rest'. that distinction is much less clear in activitypub, because you it is so open-ended

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@stefan @laurenshof many apps over there have an "open in Bluesky" button on the 3rd party interfaces, this one is just a fork of the main bluesky codebase by someone who added pronoun viewer support which is why I started using it

[laurenshof@indieweb.social]

@stefan @liaizon there isnt any. its bascially the same question of why phanpy doesnt have a button to view a post in ivory.

difference is that phanpy does have a button to view the post on the home instance. but there is no home instance on atproto in that same sense. like it would mean opening the raw record on your pds

[foolishowl@social.coop]

@n00q @liaizon There's a lot of people who just can't get their heads around the idea that we don't want a centralized system that's easily parsed and commodified.

[sun@shitposter.world]

@liaizon @julian people here hate everything and shit on every attempt to do more with the platform and it's terminally discouraging. people on nostr and bluesky and farcaster are like 1% more welcoming and will actually try things and spend a dollar and it makes a huge difference.

[julian@activitypub.space]

@liaizon@social.wake.st I don't want to platform one-sided discussion against the development of new functonality built on top of ActivityPub.

Critique is fine. It's even accepted. I'm not saying that nobody should ever disagree on implementation, design, etc.

The problem here is that the disagreements are not done on a level playing field. You have one side that has judged another without fully understanding the situation (or not having put any thought in besides "I like this person, they don't like you, and therefore you are bad"), having absolutely demonized this person from the very beginning, and you expect that person to start that uphill battle?

It's absolutely no surprise that they choose to leave instead.

It's an absolute fucking miracle that @quillmatiq@mastodon.social and @snarfed.org@fed.brid.gy are still here.

[ree@shitposter.world]

@sun @liaizon @julian I love what people do but I still can't fix ui scaling