[bnewbold]

fair enough, the did:web flows are not documented even for technical atproto developers, and there needs to be a self-serve way to heal identity/account problems elsewhere in the network (the "burn" problem).

I do think that did:plc provides more pragmatic freedom and control than did:web for most folks, though the calculus might be different for institutions or individuals with a long-term commitment to running their own network services. But did:web should be a functional alternative on principle.

I'm glad that the PDS was easy to get up and running, and that the author was able to find a supportive community on discord.

[NoraCodes]

Thanks for responding, Brian. While I don't agree with a lot of decisions Bluesky and the broader ATProto community have made, I am very excited that progress towards real decentralization is happening; Blacksky's app view, for instance, was the trigger for me to try to finally try to set up an account. I would love to see more of a focus on the parts of the system that make this difficult, so that myself and other people who are tired of coupling ourselves to centralized systems can participate. It's hard for me to trust that this is the direction the community is interested in moving, but I hope you prove me wrong.

[bnewbold]

Thanks for the response Nora.

Because of your blog post I went through the process of setting up a did:web account myself this afternoon, and it was painful. Eg, I found a bug in our Go SDK causing that "deactivated" error (https://github.com/bluesky-social/indigo/pull/1281). I kept notes and will try to get out a blog post and update to 'goat' soon.

We've also been making progress on the architecture and governance of the PLC system. I don't know if those will assuage all concerns with that system immediately, but I do think they are meaningful steps in reducing operational dependency on Bluesky PBC.

[jadbox]

I'm not too familiar, but isn't there a way to host your own did:plc auth server?

[neko-moe]

You can host your own instance, but resolving forks is not self-authenticating and requires some central trust (because of the 72 hour rollback window for higher priority rotation keys). Not counting that, you could essentially run your own fully independent instance where the worst that could happen is that you lack some newer updates to people's did documents (but anyone can upload them since they're self-authenticating). Some people do run their own instances for caching reasons, but these just ingest operations from the official one.

In terms of "credible exit", if the community at large could decide to move to a different PLC host, it would be technically possible for everyone to switch over.

Worth mentioning that Bluesky PBC is relinquishing legal control over the PLC and spinning it off into its own entity based in Switzerland.[1]

[1] https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org

[direwolf20]

No, did:plc is centralised, not federated or anything. The whole ecosystem relies on a server at Blue Sky PBC

[jeremie]

While did:plc was intended to be centralised from the start and under open governance (https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org), did: provided a framework to adopt other key resolution methods.

As part of the IETF work (https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf) this is a hotly debated area and I’d expect some solid evolution to happen as part of that process, super encourage anyone interested to get involved there!

[direwolf20]

Having a framework to provide alternative key resolution methods isn't enough. You need alternative key resolution methods.

[Zigurd]

I wrote a Bluesky app in preparation for a client project. ATProto is over-engineered for my purposes, though probably justifiably carefully engineered for the purposes of a big social Twitter-like thing. But since I didn't have to do the engineering, so what? It's a very solid platform for many kinds of multi-user information-sharing systems.

This article does give me the impression that I should make and use more test accounts than I currently do when mucking around with ATProto/Bluesky.