Atproto isn’t “many servers sending messages to each other”. It’s structured more like RSS:

1) there’s an app-agnostic hosting layer (and anyone can run a host, a bit like personal site with RSS)

2) then there’s apps, which aggregate over data from all hosts (a bit like Google Reader or Feedly)

So there’s no such thing as “defederating”. You don’t have many copies of Tangled beefing with each other. It’s more like you can run your own hosting for your own data (if you want), and anyone can build an app that aggregates from everyone’s data (Tangled is one such app).

If this got you curious, I have two longreads: https://overreacted.io/open-social/ (conceptual) and https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/ (diving into the data model).

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cxr an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Atproto isn’t “many servers sending messages to each other”. It’s structured more like RSS

Except that, crucially, RSS/Atom plays well with static nodes (e.g. personal websites generated with Jekyll/Hugo/whatever—or even written by hand[1]), and Atproto does not. (Nor does Mastodon; previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30862612>.)

It'd be great if the complexities needed to support the "Atmosphere" were widely recognized/acknowledged to be overkill and soon enough ended up going the way of things like CORBA and WSDL while in its place a resurgence of interest in the Atomsphere emerged.

1. <https://m15o.ichi.city/site/writing-atom-feed-manually.html>

	▲	miki123211 a minute ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Atom is pull, Atproto is push. Atom was designed for news, before social media existed, where 15+ minute polling times were (borderline) acceptable. Atproto was designed for social media, in an age of Twitter users getting their news in seconds, to the point of being able to comment on live events play-by-play. There's no coming back from that world. With that said, I wish both Mastodon and Atproto supported opt-in pull-based, static sources.
	▲	jauntywundrkind 7 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There's always some Gemini protocol faction that shows up to yell that everything is wrong and we have to keep hand assembling our packets by hand or it'll never work. Atproto's PDS is the root idea that everything extends off of, is the "social filesystem" that you control. There's a protocol objective to be able to spread your data around widely and for folks to be able to cryptographically check that that data came from you (even if you have to change hosts or even if someone sneakernets your data around). That's going to have some complexity! If you want to make a simpler network where we don't have those guarantees, please go right ahead. It feels to me like a snap reaction though that doesn't bother weighing what we have gotten or why things are this way, that is reflexively demanding.

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4lx87 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The web is already structured like this. You can poll a URL for updates. You can host your own data. Anyone can build an app that aggregates from everyone's data.

	▲	embedding-shape 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, all of those things are possible. Now imagine a protocol built from the ground up for those purposes, not just possible, but the entire community and ecosystem embracing those things.

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rafram an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks, that does seem better for this use case!