Last Week in the ATmosphere – 24.11.a
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Last Week in the ATmosphere – 24.11.a
One of the main goals of writing this newsletter is not only to share links, but more importantly, to give context to help you make sense of what is happening in the world of decentralised social networks. Yesterday and today I thoroughly exhausted my ability to make sense of things, and as such this edition is more of a collection links to everything.
For an in-depth analysis, earlier this week I wrote about how to think about how ATProto works, how that relates to governance and power, and what decentralisation and federation mean in this new context.
A conceptual model of ATProto and ActivityPub
If you were to design an open social networking protocol, what would that look like? Which metaphors and comparisons would you use to get a general idea of how the network functions? And what would you answer if people ask if your network is decentralised and federated?
fediversereport.com (fediversereport.com)
The News
In an update on Bridgy Fed, the software that allows bridging between different protocols, creator Ryan Barrett talks about possible futures for Bridgy Fed. Barrett says that Bridgy Fed is currently a side project for him, but people make requests for Bridgy Fed to become bigger, and become ‘core infrastructure of the social web’. Barrett is open to that possibility, but not while the project is his personal side project, and is open for conversations to house the project in a larger organisation, and with someone with experience to lead the project.
Atmosphere Stats and Blueview.app both allow you to show you statistics about your account. Blueview shows you your follower growth over time, and Atmosphere Stats assigns you an animal based on your posting style, as well as showing an overview of your posts by time of day.
The Links
Some updates on Bluesky:
- Bluesky will added the ability to post threads in one go soon, and the feature is already available to test, and a preview of what it looks like here.
- A short thread on how the Discover feed works, and some of the steps the Bluesky team is taking to improve the quality of it.
- Bluesky engineer Bryan Newbold shares some aspects about what the Bluesky team currently is working on.
- There is a renewed call for private data on ATProto: Bluesky Engineer Devin Ivy shares some ideas the team is considering, while Bluesky engineer Bryan Newbold reiterates that the team understands the need for it, and says it is a ‘heavy lift’ to implement.
New additions to the wider ATProto ecosystem:
- GitHub will now allow you to display your Bluesky profile on your account.
- The Bluesky Directory has added a database of all Starter Packs, showing how often they are used to sign up as well.
- Bluesky Wall is a simple web app that shows you a realtime feed of posts with any given keyword.
Further integrations of ATProto applications
- Hagoromo is a third-party client for Bluesky, focusing on multi-column, and their latest update now also adds support for your Linkat.blue profile.
- Third-party client Klearsky now supports showing all other ATProto-powered profiles on your Bluesky profile (as well as other updates).
- Blogging platform WhiteWind has added support Frontpage; if a WhiteWind blog is posted on Frontpage, this now automatically shows up in the comment section of the WhiteWind blog as well.
Links for developers:
- Supercell is a lightweight and configurable atproto feed generator.
- Out-of-band tag support on third-party Bluesky client Ouranos.
- Display your Bluesky posts on your Astro sites.
- A (technical) reflection on a stalled attempted to build a Vine clone on ATProto.
- PDSls allows you to paste in bsky.app urls for easier searching.
- New tools to export your repo and blob, as well as viewing the PLC operations log.
Articles:
- Nobody cares about decentralization until they do. – Kye Fox.
- Looking AT the Blue Skies of Bluesky – a paper for the Internet Measurement Conference.
- Bluesky gears up for Election Day as X goes pro-Trump – TechCrunch.
Podcasts:
- Bluesky COO Rose talked with the Quiet Riot podcast about elections and platform values.
- Bluesky board member Mike Masnick talks on Ed Zitron’s Better Offline about tech media and joining the Bluesky board.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online.
Last Week in the ATmosphere – 24.11.a
Visualise statistics about your account with multiple new tools, Bridgy Fed discusses governance, and further integration of the ATmosphere ecosystem with 3p clients
fediversereport.com (fediversereport.com)
