Comments
Hacker News
I created a web-of-trust forum built on ATProto. https://caterpilla.rs
Probably one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on, and I largely attribute that to the protocol.
I’m particularly interested in the permissioned data spec, but don’t want it to hold me back, so some functionality is on ice, and I went live without it.
by vinnymac
I switched from codeberg to tangled, and the transition couldn't have been smoother. Being on the ATmosphere really helps with peace of mind.
by arikrahman
> A restaurant review is a restaurant review whether I am the only one who ever sees it or it gets shouted to the rooftops. A book review I share with my book club is identical to a book review I share with my wife or publish on my web site.
That is only true if you completely ignore social context and relationships between the subject (reviewer), the object (the reviewed) and the audience. The author does mention being autistic, so perhaps he doesn't see it this way, but to me it would be very important to have a system where anything I record for a narrow audience doesn't become available to the public.
The thing though is that I've been so conditioned to not trust digital platforms that I never publish anything online unless I am 100% comfortable with having that information available to the public. So, in effect, I'd never put anything on my PDS unless it was meant for public consumption, rendering all this "permissioned data" effectively pointless.
by rglullis
Disclaimer: I have not looked carefully at the permissioned data proposal, but I know atproto reasonably well.
Stepping back for a momement, it's clear that permissioned data is driven by real world use-cases (Bluesky needs DMs, Tangled needs private repos, etc). However, I think the synergies with the existing atproto needs to be pretty significant to warrant developing yet another encrypted space spec. We already have various double ratchet protocols, Matrix is having a huge boom. From the point of view of an app developer, does everything need to be handled by atproto, or could we accept that atproto is just for the public stuff?
by sbt
This author speaks to me!
> it should just be called “private data”
> the resulting design looks very hard to build on
> Private and public data are basically identical. ... The permission is world-read
Way back before Bluesky decided on their own what permissioned data would look like, when the Atmosphere Private Data WG still thought they had a say in the design, I gave a talk on a ReBAC/Zanzibar style system that aligns with what I think the author is looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYKA85oZc8U&t=3730s
I suppose we could still build on and run a fork like mine if enough people wanted a more robust IAM system. There are some fundamental issues that I am not sure are resolvable without building them into the protocol core from the start. I have personally given up because of the leadership and am waiting/pondering the next protocol. Another design constraint I'd like to see is incentivizing apps to be federated and installable at the PDS as well as incentivizing small social over public square modalities.
by verdverm
I've been building a board game community on ATProto. The idea revolves in trying to build the feeling of local clubs but online, instead of "PLAY NOW" being on the landing page (although you can play now if you want) it's organized around clubs. I also wanted to move away from one game oriented community. I play Go and Chess and I would love clubs to be for mixed games. You can create leagues, or tournaments, etc.
As an extension of that I've been building a small language to build games (with a nice time traveling debugger and automatic replays) inspired by Elm. Go and Chess are both built on top of this and you could fork them and modify the rules. Want to code a new Chess variant? Go ahead! Want to code a whole new game you want to try? Go ahead!
What I'm very excited with ATProto is that because all games are broadcast on it and each shares a core system of turn-based replays (and review system with branching) software can be built on top to do AI analysis, or a replay view. The idea that my application can be extended without me adding an API is very exciting and very much in the direction I want to take the system (community is the core tenet).
by MarceColl
Reading articles like this one, I do think people are trying to put a square peg (their applications) through a round hole (ATProto). The ATProto was designed around all data being public. You write public data to a user's PDS and then any application can read that public data and do something with it. If all data was private (encrypted?) by default then that would defeat half of all of ATProto's goals.
Imagine someone starts startup A on-top of the ATProto. They raise some money, get some users, some people love it, but ultimately they die. If the data was private to that service, that data dies with the startup. But if the data is all public future startup B can read that old data and do something with it. As a user that's brings me a ton of utility and comfort trying out new services.
If you're trying to built a local-first, mostly private service I just don't think the ATProto is the right tool for the job.
by ekosz
Luke's feedback on the permissioned data proposal is pretty interesting. The current proposal has a kind of locational element to permissions, where a record's URI reflects the access control, and I can understand why that would be jarring. I'm talking with the team about whether we think that's something that could change, and what a change like that would cost. We're still in the collecting feedback phase so it's good to hear how it hits people.
Regarding his other concern, I would've loved to make atproto a localfirst protocol -- that's the field the atproto team came from -- but we had to pick & choose where to spend our complexity budget. I wouldn't say it's a nonstarter for the ecosystem; you can use something like iroh in conjuction with atproto to share identities -- dial people at their dids or domain names -- and then commit state to the atproto repo once it's ready to leave your local sync mesh. Maybe that sort of thing makes its way into future versions of the protocol. But, engineering often involves trades, and for the v1 that was one of the trades we had to make.
by pfraze
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- Hacker News
- I created a web-of-trust forum built on ATProto. https://caterpilla.rs
Probably one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on, and I largely attribute that to the protocol.
I’m particularly interested in the permissioned data spec, but don’t want it to hold me back, so some functionality is on ice, and I went live without it.
by vinnymac - I switched from codeberg to tangled, and the transition couldn't have been smoother. Being on the ATmosphere really helps with peace of mind.by arikrahman
- > A restaurant review is a restaurant review whether I am the only one who ever sees it or it gets shouted to the rooftops. A book review I share with my book club is identical to a book review I share with my wife or publish on my web site.
That is only true if you completely ignore social context and relationships between the subject (reviewer), the object (the reviewed) and the audience. The author does mention being autistic, so perhaps he doesn't see it this way, but to me it would be very important to have a system where anything I record for a narrow audience doesn't become available to the public.
The thing though is that I've been so conditioned to not trust digital platforms that I never publish anything online unless I am 100% comfortable with having that information available to the public. So, in effect, I'd never put anything on my PDS unless it was meant for public consumption, rendering all this "permissioned data" effectively pointless.
by rglullis - Disclaimer: I have not looked carefully at the permissioned data proposal, but I know atproto reasonably well.
Stepping back for a momement, it's clear that permissioned data is driven by real world use-cases (Bluesky needs DMs, Tangled needs private repos, etc). However, I think the synergies with the existing atproto needs to be pretty significant to warrant developing yet another encrypted space spec. We already have various double ratchet protocols, Matrix is having a huge boom. From the point of view of an app developer, does everything need to be handled by atproto, or could we accept that atproto is just for the public stuff?
by sbt - This author speaks to me!
> it should just be called “private data”
> the resulting design looks very hard to build on
> Private and public data are basically identical. ... The permission is world-read
Way back before Bluesky decided on their own what permissioned data would look like, when the Atmosphere Private Data WG still thought they had a say in the design, I gave a talk on a ReBAC/Zanzibar style system that aligns with what I think the author is looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYKA85oZc8U&t=3730s
I suppose we could still build on and run a fork like mine if enough people wanted a more robust IAM system. There are some fundamental issues that I am not sure are resolvable without building them into the protocol core from the start. I have personally given up because of the leadership and am waiting/pondering the next protocol. Another design constraint I'd like to see is incentivizing apps to be federated and installable at the PDS as well as incentivizing small social over public square modalities.
by verdverm - I've been building a board game community on ATProto. The idea revolves in trying to build the feeling of local clubs but online, instead of "PLAY NOW" being on the landing page (although you can play now if you want) it's organized around clubs. I also wanted to move away from one game oriented community. I play Go and Chess and I would love clubs to be for mixed games. You can create leagues, or tournaments, etc.
As an extension of that I've been building a small language to build games (with a nice time traveling debugger and automatic replays) inspired by Elm. Go and Chess are both built on top of this and you could fork them and modify the rules. Want to code a new Chess variant? Go ahead! Want to code a whole new game you want to try? Go ahead!
What I'm very excited with ATProto is that because all games are broadcast on it and each shares a core system of turn-based replays (and review system with branching) software can be built on top to do AI analysis, or a replay view. The idea that my application can be extended without me adding an API is very exciting and very much in the direction I want to take the system (community is the core tenet).
by MarceColl - Reading articles like this one, I do think people are trying to put a square peg (their applications) through a round hole (ATProto). The ATProto was designed around all data being public. You write public data to a user's PDS and then any application can read that public data and do something with it. If all data was private (encrypted?) by default then that would defeat half of all of ATProto's goals.
Imagine someone starts startup A on-top of the ATProto. They raise some money, get some users, some people love it, but ultimately they die. If the data was private to that service, that data dies with the startup. But if the data is all public future startup B can read that old data and do something with it. As a user that's brings me a ton of utility and comfort trying out new services.
If you're trying to built a local-first, mostly private service I just don't think the ATProto is the right tool for the job.
by ekosz - Luke's feedback on the permissioned data proposal is pretty interesting. The current proposal has a kind of locational element to permissions, where a record's URI reflects the access control, and I can understand why that would be jarring. I'm talking with the team about whether we think that's something that could change, and what a change like that would cost. We're still in the collecting feedback phase so it's good to hear how it hits people.
Regarding his other concern, I would've loved to make atproto a localfirst protocol -- that's the field the atproto team came from -- but we had to pick & choose where to spend our complexity budget. I wouldn't say it's a nonstarter for the ecosystem; you can use something like iroh in conjuction with atproto to share identities -- dial people at their dids or domain names -- and then commit state to the atproto repo once it's ready to leave your local sync mesh. Maybe that sort of thing makes its way into future versions of the protocol. But, engineering often involves trades, and for the v1 that was one of the trades we had to make.
by pfraze