Post
i wrote about atproto and why it matters
September 27, 2025 at 12:33 AM
edit: apparently Leaflet already has the feature i described as theoretical! i must have seen it and forgotten :)
ALT
@leaflet.pub is such an innovative platform
If you select some text (1), a tooltip appears that allows you to share the selection as a quote on Bluesky (2)
If you click the Quotes icon (3), a panel showing all quotes appears (4)
It's a terrific integration between blogging and microblogging
NUMBER TWO ON HACKER NEWS!!!!!
this semi-confirms something i've suspected for a while, atproto's dev community is limited by our medium of communication being exclusively bluesky.
i think there are a ton of devs who would love atproto but just haven't heard of it because they're on twitter
THIS IS JUST AN OBSERVATION BTW
this is NOT me saying we should be going back to twitter lol i'm not proposing we do anything specifically about this its just a challenge i've noticed
haha yea i think it's real but the answer is to Post Better here and eventually things will happen On Here
"Post Better" oh um well i didn't think you would personally attack me like that react man but i guess i'll try
post about open social don't mention google reader challenge: impossible
💔
great stuff dan! This is approachable enough that I'll start using it as my go to explainer and see if it isn't too technical for normies
unrelated but for all the peeps out there, if your logo can be reasonably reproduced with the excalidraw pen tool on a trackpad, you did it right
Is this the first time an atproto article posted to HN has majority positive comments? Definitely reflects the quality of the article regardless, great read!
Ooh, do you want my old OpenSocial API presentations from [checks calendar] 18 years ago? flic.kr/p/55dye5
Funnily enough, the relay/appview model is surprisingly close to what we built for Technorati more than 20 years ago - notify us each time you post, and we parse out the links and create an api view for the people you linked to.
A friend sent me your article, and I hastened forthwith to sign up for a Bluesky account. I can't pretend to grasp all the technical intricacies of what you explain, but I do, as you write of folks generally, know and dislike when people are fucking with me.
just read the whole thing and i think it's really good! explained really well, i'll def reference this
my main concern is users being confused about why signing into one app pulls in data from another, and whether they think this might be some privacy/security concern
I believe scoping OAuth to collections is one of those roadmap things but I might be wrong
yea i kind of handwaved *writing* data. i think builtin backups in popular apps would be nice.
for *reading* data i tried to mention “public” a few times to clarify the scope
what's your excuse for not naming this article Apropo ATproto???
dan this is fantastic
it's going to be a great resource for introducing people to the concept and the problem it solves
I'm new to atprocto, and this was my first detailed read into the technology. It was an engaging read. It was impressive, and I'm excited to host my own PDS soon and also contribute to tools for building it.
As far as I have understood by the article, there doesn't seem to be a concept of private posts. Will it be a deal breaker for those coming from a traditional social media platform? 🤔
it might be frustrating to some. this is something the team is thinking about but nothing short term
Bravo, fantastic piece. a good pick for the Index?
This is a great writeup! I've already done some things with atproto (some auto posting stuff) but this article inspired me to look deeper and think about something more complex.
You write so clearly (thus beautifully). Appreciate your support of the Open Social idea! Or last best hope for the social web.
Hey Dan, extremely well written article! It really helped illuminate what goes on behind the scenes at Bluesky and other atproto services. One thought that came across my mind was in regards to atproto "rules". Is there anything preventing encrypted data from being put into the atmosphere?
you can sort of put anything into the user's repo. if you mean data meant to be private, the concern is that any key leak would expose everything, which sounds unwise e.g. for private conversations. see pfrazee.leaflet.pub/3lzhmtognls2q and pfrazee.leaflet.pub/3lzhui2zbxk2b for recent thoughts
Great write up of a sensible and hopefully future dominant model. Reminds me of self sovereign identity models, which is another area I hope moves to an open model. Self-sovereign identity - Wikipedia share.google/EuMWHQbGsqlf...
good read!
one question i have now
how will atproto help exactly if you want to move from bsky
yes the data is public, but how different is it from a data export?
cause the data is incompatible with other social apps anyway, unless they chose to do so, isn't the data also "dead" here?
Well, you can move from Bluesky to Blacksky or Northsky today without data loss, loss of followers or really any apparent change at all. Is this what you mean?
i mean it obviously depends on somebody wanting to run one, just like with any product or community.
the difference is that if there’s someone motivated, it is *possible* which isn’t the case with closed social
right
imagine how easy switching to bsky would be if twitter used atproto
bsky might not have been needed to exist even! (just like the hosting providers example)
the blog post's title has a certain nostalgic vibe en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSoc...
i love how you made alice blue and bob pinkish-colour-thing