Post

@rolle@mementomori.social · 10 hours ago

It seems there are fully hosted and self-hosted options for ATProto/Bluesky now, I stand corrected on that front.

Out of curiosity I looked into what it would take to build my own social media service on top of ATProto. The technical architecture is interesting, but... what would I actually gain?

I chose Mastodon back in 2022 when Bluesky was still invite-only and had no self-hosting story. ActivityPub is a W3C standard. Mastodon gGmbH is a non-profit. The Fediverse has years of proven independent operation across thousands of instances.

Bluesky PBC is a US for-profit company that controls protocol development, although they have made statements about wanting independent governance. Yet the network remains heavily centralized with most users on bsky.social.

Running my own Mastodon instance already gives me sovereignty. ATProto doesn't offer more of that, arguably less given the current state of things. Not saying people shouldn't build on it. But for someone already running independent Fediverse infrastructure, it's hard to see what value it would add. I didn't see the appeal back then and I don't see it now.

#Bluesky #ATProto #Decentralization #SelfHosting #SelfHosted

william.maggos

@wjmaggos@liberal.city replied · 5 hours ago

@rolle

we're stuck because we haven't seen much decentralization of the ATmosphere yet and bluesky isn't even sustainable yet. everybody has their theories on how this will go but that's all they are. and that really sucks because it means that people who might otherwise get behind AP, have good reason to wait. the entry of bluesky into the space has slowed everything down, even as they seem to have gotten lots more people on social media built on an open protocol. frustrating as hell.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange replied · 8 hours ago

@rolle

The only thing AT currently has over ActivityPub is identity portability on someone else’s server. I don’t want to run my own instance, there are lots of useful economies of scale from sharing an instance with a load of other people. With ActivityPub, I can move to a new instance but my handle changes. Followers are migrated, but posts are not. There are proposals to fix this with cooperating servers. Making it work with uncooperative servers (e.g. the instance admin shuts down with no notice) is harder and it would be great to see ActivityPub close that gap.

Sam Hauglustaine

@smhg@fosstodon.org replied · 9 hours ago

@rolle there used to be a plan for Bsky to communicate with ActivityPub, no? That didn't materialize? But Threads does, right? I'm not very much in the loop.

Roni Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social replied · 9 hours ago

@smhg It didn't really materialize fully with either of them. For Bluesky, it already works with BridgyFed (https://fed.brid.gy/settings), but only partially - it works for people who follow both the bot and your counterpart on the other side. So it's not fully two-way.

As for Threads, they opened ActivityPub federation only in the US due to legal issues, and even that is limited. Mastodon users can see Threads posts (like @barackobama), but replies stay within Mastodon. Threads users can't see Mastodon posts, and EU users can't enable this feature at all.

By this point I think interoperability between these services won't ever happen. Nobody is driving it forward.

#Interoperability #Bluesky #Federation #Threads #SocialMedia #Decentralization #BridgyFed

Emil Jacobs - Collectifission

@collectifission@greennuclear.online replied · 10 hours ago

@rolle Wow, I'm surprised it is even possible to run your own ATProto stack. At what cost though? Last time I checked, you needed terabytes of storage, and I imagine it has gotten exponentially worse.

What are we looking at, hundreds of Euros a month?

Roni Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social replied · 10 hours ago

@collectifission Some say it can even run on a Raspberry Pi. Something seems to have changed, but I haven't looked into it that much yet. There are platforms like https://blacksky.community, https://northskysocial.com, https://pinksky.app, and now this new one called W coming up.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:didd.uk/post/3mcni53squ225

https://bsky.app

View

Stefan Bohacek

@stefan@stefanbohacek.online replied · 2 hours ago

@rolle

"Some say it can even run on a Raspberry Pi."

Coincidentally just came across this article, for anyone who might be interested:

https://bsky.bad-example.com/can-atproto-scale-down/

@collectifission

atproto and bluesky

Can atproto scale down?

Decomposing the Bluesky appview and self-hosting the pieces

Luca Sironi

@luca@sironi.xyz replied · 9 hours ago

@rolle @collectifission

By the way, you can try to install #wafrn that is both an activitypub server and a PDS.
I think it's still relying on BS infrastructure pieces though but it's interesting.

What basically drive me away from atproto is the fact that is complicated to understand also for us technicians.

Here i host my mastodon/gts/snac and that's it, all the pieces of the stack together, in popular opensource software.
I can explain in 5 minutes what is a fediverse instance to whoever

gabboman the wafrn dev [SINGLE INSTANCE EDITION]

@gabboman@gabboman.xyz replied · 9 hours ago

@collectifission@greennuclear.online @rolle@mementomori.social @luca@sironi.xyz

We are working right now (ok not now now, im at my dayjob) to make wafrn just require jetstream (wich, there are options not run by bluesky!)

but we also use the app view because our code fails at times and mayy not notify you of some mentions. Im aware of stuff butt its hard to debug. This error may disappear in the near future. “Hello im user give me the notifications. Ok thanks byeeee

It may sound janky # but when I integrated fedi it was even worse at some points too haha

Luca Sironi

@luca@sironi.xyz replied · 8 hours ago

@gabboman @collectifission @rolle

I don't think that W thing is atproto based.
I think it's just plain 2026 stupidity to try to do *another* legacy social network and hope for the people to stop using X for that one.

Ducky 🦆

@ducky.ws@bsky.brid.gy replied · 9 hours ago

These are all different things btw: * Blacksky runs its own AppView (currently at staging.blacsky.community) * Northsky is currently only a public PDS * Pinksky is just a Bluesky client that imitates Instagram * W isn't ATProto or AP

Roni Rolle Laukkarinen

@rolle@mementomori.social replied · 8 hours ago

@ducky.ws OK, it's all a bit fuzzy to me. @collectifission

bonfire.cafe

A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate

bonfire.cafe: About · Code of conduct · Privacy · Users · Instances

Bonfire social · 1.0.1 no JS en

Automatic federation enabled