MLS would be the primary standard for group messaging these days with the usual guarantees right? (PFS, backwards secrecy, etc) As I understand it from the RFC, large groups was an explicit design requirement and costs are supposed to be asymptotically logarithmic with group size, so I don't see why it couldn't be used. I feel like Colibri (based on their page) just doesn't believe it's there problem, which seems... irresponsible.

Bluesky DMs aren't end to end encrypted. Where are you getting that impression from?

Even with all that, you're leaking an unacceptable amount of metadata.

And what about reliability? If I cause the key to change, and then alter my PDS so it only shows that event to one half of users, did I completely mess up your protocol so you have to delete the chat room and start over?

> Bluesky solved the DM case by adding E2E encryption using the Signal protocol

This is patently false. Bluesky DMs are not E2EE, they do not use Signal.

Germ is the MLS based system that a few bluesky users are on, but it started separate from ATProto and has had account integration to atproto added on later. The folks behind that are a separate entity from Bluesky. I'm not keen on this setup, I'd prefer an MLS scheme where there are more controlling entities of the servers.

I agree E2EE chat is not the foundation for a Discord alternative and that Colibri has poor messaging and understanding. Communities need permissions, UX needs visibility into the data for things like search. E2EE has unsolved scaling problems required for real world communities.

Theres more recent updates on it in a blog post from Bluesky head of protocol: https://dholms.leaflet.pub/3mhj6bcqats2o

Having something like circles from the Google+ days would be needed if ATProto is going to go anywhere. Is it possible in the protocol?

The current conversations are around how to do permissined data properly on atproto. I have a prototype, but Bluesky hasn't participated in the community effort and looks to be doing their own thing. They also took Bain Capital "funding" (private equity) which was the breaking point for me. They could have set up subs for nothing and made more than that, hard fumble imo.

Just want to chime in with, this does feel very slick, but this was the #1 question I had. I could not determine it from your site, and had to try it out to see.

One major criticism of things like Discord is that they're private, so I don't think that it's inherently disqualifying, some people might even prefer it for that reason. But it's very, very important that you're very clear about this, up front.

First, the user knows this when joining a public community.

Second, the moderators can choose to remove someone who has joined the community in bad faith.

Third, it is entirely different than broadcasting every single action taken by every single user in every single community on the entire protocol to anyone with one URL.

Private channels in public servers exist. I'm almost entirely on private servers.