How does ActivityPub differ from what BlueSky is using? (AT)
How does ActivityPub differ from what BlueSky is using? (AT)
I don't quite understand a lot of the details on how the implementations work.
In what ways is AT better or worse than ActivityPub? Are there different versions of ActivityPub? Are there improvements coming to either to make them better (or compatible)?
My current understanding is
- AT makes it easier to move accounts (according to them), but AT is controlled and maintained by BlueSky, and they are a for-profit company that can mess with the protocol in the future, which goes against the central idea of decentralized social media
What other cool technical details are there?
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I guess mainly:
Activity Pub is actually official W3C standard. There are yearly conferences, development and it's open.
That AT protocol is owned by Bluesky, they decide how it's developed, what gets in, what goes out and to my knowledge it's actually not implemented anywhere else (yet).You are correct, however I want to point out they have stated they want to hand over the governance of the protocol to a standards organization like the Internet Engineering Task Force:
Development of atproto to date has been driven by a single company, Bluesky PBC. Once the network opens to federation, protocol changes and improvements will still be necessary, but will impact multiple organizations, communities, and individuals, each with separate priorities and development interests. If the protocol is successful, there certainly will be disagreements and competitive tensions at play. Having a single company controlling the protocol will not work long-term.
The plan is to bring development and governance of the protocol itself to an established standards body around the time the network opens to federation. Our current hope is to bring this work to the IETF, likely as a new working group, which would probably be a multi-year process. If the IETF does not work out as a home, we will try again with other bodies. While existing work can be proposed exactly “as-is", it is common to have some evolution and breaking changes come out of the standardization processes.