It doesn’t use ActivityPub. So are we demanding that all applications use a specific protocol? Does that mean email, Matrix, the web, Nostr, Frendica, BitTorrent, etc aren’t part of the Fediverse? Nostr, AtProtocol, ActivityPub, Diaspora are four popular, open protocols for federated social media - there are many more - and they’re all part of a wider Fediverse.
It’s owned by a corporation. Great! So if YouTube started to publish all their videos using PeerTube, that wouldn’t count? If your local supermarket creates their own Mastodon instance and are active on it, is that a no-no? Does GMail not count as part of email, or Amazon as part of the world wide web for that reason? Are corporations not allowed at all? No-one is asking your opinion of corporate culture here.
It doesn’t support federation. Yes, it does. Every part of AtProtocol is open source and free for anyone to implement, allowing you to create your own fully independent instance that fully integrated with both BlueSky and other, independent AtProtocol servers.
It’s not open. Yes, it is. Fully open source and permissively licensed. Anyone can implement their own AtProtocol server, reusing as much or as little as they want. But AtProtocol does a lot more than ActivityPub, leading neatly on to:
It’s too complicated. I see this complaint a surprising amount. AtProtocol’s complexity exists because - let’s be honest - ActivityPub doesn’t provide any good way of discovering or searching. If you saw a load of fire trucks barreling down the street and wanted to know what was happening, a quick search on any AtProtocol relay will tell you if anyone on any instance has commented; ActivityPub doesn’t work like that. Hell, it’s hard enough to even find communities without resorting to non-ActivityPub services. AtProtocol’s Relay Servers and Firehoses are demanding applications, but that is required for a true Twitter/Facebook/TikTok replacement.
So, yes, BlueSky is part of the Fediverse. Does that make BlueSky a good thing? That’s a separate debate. But there are a lot of comments in this thread which amount to “no, because I don’t like it” and it’s important we don’t let our personal hangups override our ability to be rational. Maybe instead of moaning about AtProtocol we should at least give a thought to why it’s needed.
Yes.
Here are some complaints people have.
It doesn’t use ActivityPub. So are we demanding that all applications use a specific protocol? Does that mean email, Matrix, the web, Nostr, Frendica, BitTorrent, etc aren’t part of the Fediverse? Nostr, AtProtocol, ActivityPub, Diaspora are four popular, open protocols for federated social media - there are many more - and they’re all part of a wider Fediverse.
It’s owned by a corporation. Great! So if YouTube started to publish all their videos using PeerTube, that wouldn’t count? If your local supermarket creates their own Mastodon instance and are active on it, is that a no-no? Does GMail not count as part of email, or Amazon as part of the world wide web for that reason? Are corporations not allowed at all? No-one is asking your opinion of corporate culture here.
It doesn’t support federation. Yes, it does. Every part of AtProtocol is open source and free for anyone to implement, allowing you to create your own fully independent instance that fully integrated with both BlueSky and other, independent AtProtocol servers.
It’s not open. Yes, it is. Fully open source and permissively licensed. Anyone can implement their own AtProtocol server, reusing as much or as little as they want. But AtProtocol does a lot more than ActivityPub, leading neatly on to:
It’s too complicated. I see this complaint a surprising amount. AtProtocol’s complexity exists because - let’s be honest - ActivityPub doesn’t provide any good way of discovering or searching. If you saw a load of fire trucks barreling down the street and wanted to know what was happening, a quick search on any AtProtocol relay will tell you if anyone on any instance has commented; ActivityPub doesn’t work like that. Hell, it’s hard enough to even find communities without resorting to non-ActivityPub services. AtProtocol’s Relay Servers and Firehoses are demanding applications, but that is required for a true Twitter/Facebook/TikTok replacement.
So, yes, BlueSky is part of the Fediverse. Does that make BlueSky a good thing? That’s a separate debate. But there are a lot of comments in this thread which amount to “no, because I don’t like it” and it’s important we don’t let our personal hangups override our ability to be rational. Maybe instead of moaning about AtProtocol we should at least give a thought to why it’s needed.