[epicsponge]

> and I think the AT Protocol docs identify real and probably intractable shortcomings in ActivityPub

Except that they are objectively wrong about nearly everything they talk about with regard to ActivityPub. Quoting from the FAQ:

> Account portability is the major reason why we chose to build a separate protocol.

There is a widely-accepted account portability protocol built on top of ActivityPub that multiple servers, including Mastodon and Pleroma, all support.

> We consider portability to be crucial because it protects users from sudden bans, server shutdowns, and policy disagreements.

There is nothing inherent about their protocol that solves this. The app on iOS (the Bluesky app) solves this by downloading all tweets locally, which is incredibly space-inefficient and keeps the server from... doing the job of a server (storing that data for you). Additionally, user data is still accessible and downloadable after a suspension on Mastodon and Pleroma.

> Our solution for portability requires both signed data repositories and DIDs, neither of which are easy to retrofit into ActivityPub.

There is quite literally no need for this and they absolutely could have built something that addresses these issues on top of ActivityPub. We're talking about the people who couldn't use OpenAPI, but instead built a shittier version of GraphQL while bold-faced saying 'there was no alternative'.

> a preference for domain usernames over AP’s double-@ email usernames

No need to build a separate protocol for this.

> and the goal of having large scale search and discovery (rather than the hashtag style of discovery that ActivityPub favors).

Nothing about ActivityPub, Mastodon, or the general Fediverse prohibits you from scraping it to make this happen. There are services that do this right now. Mastodon has discovery built into it, this literally completely ignores that.

ActivityPub is the standard for federation on the internet, and for allowing interoperation between social networks. That is the key here. I don't give a shit if people use Mastodon. I myself probably wouldn't use it if I wasn't running a Mastodon server.

What I do care about is whether a service is built on ActivityPub. Even if my friends want to use another social media service (maybe they're on PixelFed or whatever it's called), I can still follow them and interact with them over there while using Mastodon. You cannot do that with Bluesky.

The problems that Bluesky identified with ActivityPub objectively could've been solved by building something on top of ActivityPub, retaining the 'interoperable social network' quality of it. Email had the same problems, and instead of throwing out the email protocol, we built DMARC and co on top of it.

So no, I don't want people to use Mastodon, I don't give a shit about people using Mastodon. I literally criticized Mastodon later on in the thread. What I care about is interoperability, ease of use, and open standards, and AtProto is objectively not that.

[howinteresting]

At an incredibly practical level, bootstrapping a new ecosystem in closed beta that isn't linked to the fediverse has been really great at attracting posters from Twitter who find the original fediverse too stale and curmudgeonly.

[sleepybrett]

Just like twitter before it, and every other social network, they change in tone over time. Sure right now I guess you could argue that the fediverse is stuffy, though not in my little corner apparently. But that won't stay true. Every person that joins changes the network. Sure some servers will ban other servers for any number of reasons and it will probably fragment. Who cares it will all come out in the wash.

[vidarh]

To add regarding the signatures and portability, Mastodon at least signs its posts with JSON-LD signatures. They're in the downloaded archive I got from mastodon.social when I moved off it, for example. So is the key required to validate them.

The only thing missing there to make this better - and this is not an ActivityPub thing - is including those JSON-LD signatures in more contexts, so that you don't need to rely on the export functionality (of Mastodon) to get an archive, allowing clients to choose to keep a local copy (or nominate someone to back it up for them), and providing an upload functionality for posts (Mastodon doesn't do this, but that's also a Mastodon thing, not an ActivityPub thing).

I wouldn't have had an issue if they added extensions to ActivityPub. There are even things Mastodon refuses to add that I'd applaud people for forcing the issue on by adding extensions to support. But their choice to reinvent everything puts me off.