Overview: Bluesky and the ATmosphere

This is a Connected Places blog post, published using leaflet and viewed via the Anisota Bluesky client, which is remarkable (see Dame's post).The blog uses the Mississippi ban to explain how clients (like anisota) are viewed "as the point where regulation happens. See also their new ToS, which also makes it clear that this is only for their clien…

"Bluenotes is a fully-featured fork of the Bluesky social app, with the addition of a Community Notes feature that works just like Twitter/X's Community Notes."I logged in using a Bluesky app password for now (they're working on OAuth) and kicked the tyres. The interface is Bluesky with a twist: my accounts, custom feeds, etc., but with an additio…

"When infrastructure is too centralized, gatekeepers gain new powers to capture, enshittify, and censor."Short, link-rich piece on the many ways science is being undermined by gatekeeping scientific publishers and "Large intermediary platforms... inserting themselves between researchers and between the researchers and these published works—through…

"For a while, social media tried to be politically neutral. Moderation is difficult as a practical task, and fighting over the decisions ... is bad business. But it was somewhat obvious to everyone that social platform neutrality was a performative fiction, even before Musk discarded the norm."Whatever you do, social media can't be neutral: "Even …

With Streamplace, "We want to empower all of our users to operate their own little TV station. Not just video on the internet, but decentralized public broadcast... video relay, rebroadcast, and syndication. ... we're introducing the ability node operators to syndicate streams, and for streamers to control how their streams are replicated. Here's …

Laurens pulling no punches: "The Trump administration ... relies on social media for validation of their policies and proposals", with how its actions will play on social a major consideration in what it does - the tail wagging the dog. They rely on X, but "As X radicalises more and more into a place for regime supporters, the platform starts to l…

"publications can now have nested pages — illustrated here with pages about embeds, comments, and more... great for collections, project wikis or documentation, essays with branching tangents, and more", like hubs for ex., with a different skin. "nest them as deep as you like"

A great example of "we can just build it": developer Cataline Bush was "bored one night" so she built a tool to search all leaflet publications.

The leaflet and Semble teams discuss cross-lexicon integrations, creating interoperability without falling down the "slippery slope to building an "everything" app". The approach: plugins a la Obsidin.As "Semble is all about collecting, curating, and sharing "micro-knowledge" -- insights, recommendations, reviews, hot-takes and so on -- ... [ie] c…

"while many people like to say that content moderation is difficult, that’s misleading. Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well... not an argument that we should throw up our hands and do nothing... But there’s a huge problem in that many people ... seem to expect that these companies not only can, but should, strive for a level of co…

Probably the most significant ATproto development is not another app, but "The complete development platform for AT Protocol applications. Deploy schemas, query indexed data, authenticate users. Skip the infrastructure. Focus on your app logic. Everything you need to ship production AppViews with type-safe APIs and automatic indexing."In a gold ru…

"Bluesky develops open protocols, and we want everybody to feel confident building on them. We have released our software SDKs and reference implementations ... To provide additional assurance around patent rights, we are making ... the short and simple Protocol Labs Patent Non-Aggression Pledge: Bluesky Social will not enforce any of the patents …

Another ATproto app in the linkedin space, "ProtoPro is the future of businesses and professionals connecting online. With AT Protocol, your identity, graph, and content are portable, secure, and under your control."

"log in to your existing accounts on the supported networks. Afterward, you’ll instantly be following all your friends in a combined timeline. The app also features a combined trending section and cross-posting support.... will later introduce a subscription plan to generate revenue."

"Track your music listening across all platforms...The most beautiful way to scrobble and analyze your music history...take control of your sound, connect with your audience, and share your tastes with the world. Connect with music lovers who share your taste and discover new tracks through community recommendations. Seamlessly sync your listening…

"at://work is a modern job board that leverages decentralized identity and social networking. We believe in empowering professionals to own their digital identity while connecting with meaningful career opportunities... ensures that your professional profile and job postings remain under your control. "

"Monomarks is an open social bookmarking platform built on the AT Protocol. You can save, organise, and share links to interesting stuff while maintaining full ownership of your data... in the general mould of Pinboard, Delicious"

Another ATproto longform app, "an entire blogging platform that fits in your pocket... a place to jot down and share your ideas, opinions, hobbies, and anything else you’d like to share with the world, quickly and easily.

Yet another longform ATproto writing app, "built for creators in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), art, and business... designed to help you stay focused on the work itself... Our editor uses Markdown plus extensions designed for writers in specialized fields."Includes maths, code, visualisations (maths plots, mermaid), ar…

Another longform ATproto app: "Writers deserve to own their work, their audience, and their future... offprint gives you real monetization built on AT Protocol, you truly own your audience and content. Built for novelists serializing their work, journalists starting newsletters, engineers sharing their journey, and publications breaking free from …

"Middleware, third-party software intermediaries between users and platforms, has been broached as a means to decentralize the power of social media platforms and enhance user agency... widespread adoption of open middleware has long hinged on the cooperation of established major platforms; however... Mastodon and Bluesky, has led to increased off…

"the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conducted a workshop with eighteen experts to explore governance challenges to defederation... on decentralized social media [which] offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety".A good example of how the dis…

There are a lot of reasons to use Substack: apart from doing "all the basic things of a newsletter writing platform well", it's free to get started and - crucially - helps you build an audience. But "Substack makes it hard to leave when you want to leave the platform", as they're pursuing a classic lock-in strategy. Any competitor must provide sim…

At last, a single page setting out the What and Why of Blacksky, which "builds infrastructure for social groups to control how they show up online: how their feeds work, how harm is addressed, and how costs are covered. Instead of one-size-fits-all rules set by a company with growth targets, Blacksky enables groups to govern themselves, and pool r…

How Graze raised funding for NPR and PBS "while also learning more about the future of sponsored content on ATProto".Results: "The Graze.social NPR/PBS donation campaign's 168% ROAS is exceptional performance in the nonprofit digital advertising landscape. Industry benchmarks from M+R show that typical Facebook/Meta campaigns achieve only 48% retu…

The always good Laurens on the ActivityPub-ATproto open letter: "There is a large group of people who are actively moving the space forward, and who have signed the open letter that calls for mutual respect and working together for a better open social web. The number of people who voiced objections and concerns is minimal, but by focusing on proc…

"We’ve built a network of scientists and researchers active on Bluesky. The goal is to better understand how this group of users interact on the platform... we arrived at a science-oriented network of 17,980", computed centrality measures to identify influential members, and created an interactive 3d visualisation.They also provide details of the …

"The first thing I noticed is how strange it felt to use... strange and empty, every interaction felt like it took an eternity... any interaction with others to require multiple levels of intentional actions".After acclimatising, however, "I began to feel comfortable ... very calming... [then] I ran out of stamina" - the site ceased 'working', so …

An open letter trying to calm troubled protocol waters: "the Social Web Community Group has seen an increase in heated discussions online ... a hotbed for conflict, disagreements, and misinformation. There has often been significant biases exhibited within these conversations."Points out that the 2 protocols have more in common than what divides t…

"Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X... according to the first large-scale analysis of science content on Bluesky... suggest Bluesky users engage with posts more than do users of X... The results were posted as a preprint on arXiv last month and have not been peer reviewed.""Interactions on Bluesky wer…