alt Hacker NewsWhy I'm betting on ATProto (and why you should, too)
Comments
How does ATProto solve the problems that the last 10–20 years have shown seem intrinsic to all social media once it hits a certain scale?
For example:
A simple simulation of social networks rapidly reproduced three well-documented dysfunctions: partisan echo chambers, concentrated influence among a small elite, and amplification of polarized voices - creating a "social media prism" that distorts political discourse. Notably, all attempts at conscious intervention failed to help or made things worse. [1]
Rather than fostering closer relationships, the algorithms and structures underlying social media platforms inadvertently contribute to profound psychological harm - particularly among teenagers, who are disproportionately affected by curated online personas, peer pressure to present a perfect digital image, and constant notification bombardment. [2]
And from Meta's own internal UX research, surfaced in recent harm-related court filings: researchers described Instagram as functionally a drug, users as binging to the point of reward deficit, and the platform's role as that of a pusher. [3]
I've gradually opted out of social media over the last few years. That Meta internal research was the thing that finally pushed me to delete IG, the last social app I was still using. My life has been noticeably calmer and better adjusted since - which makes me skeptical that a better protocol, rather than a fundamentally different relationship with technology and socialization, is our way out of the current mess.
[1] https://arxiv.org/html/2508.03385v1 [2] https://scholar.dsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&con... [3] https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/2025-11-21-Brief-dckt-2480... (p. 33)
I'd be curious to see how ATProto stacks up against ActivityPub in the long run. I was very excited by the prospects of Mastodon, PeerTube, and a few other Fediverse apps. I even started implementing my own ActivityPub library based on their RFC before I fizzled out.
But, the Fediverse never really seemed to take off in the mainstream. Mozilla launched their own mastodon instance around 2023 and then closed it in 2024. I've never heard anything about PeerTube in casual conversation, and Mastodon is not common to hear about either.
As someone with a tech degree and a liberal arts degree, I think protocols like this are excellent examples of trying to solve social issues with technology instead of policy or other approaches. I can't tell you what those other approaches would be, but I haven't seen a lot of efficacy from the purely technological ones. Eventually, the pressure of turning a profit always seems to take over, pushing the moral mission aside. Still. I'm rooting for ATProto to speak truth to power and uproot apps like X and Instagram.
Isn't this just reinventing the wheel of a website, an email list and a message board?
Are the scientists referenced in this article really so averse to having a website or corresponding via email that they need a social media instance to chat with every Tom, Dick and Harry that can't put up with the friction of clicking a mailto: link? How did that go during Covid, when everyone on Twitter suddenly became an infectious disease specialist?
> So you could use another app like Blacksky and have the same exact posts, comments, and likes that you do on Bluesky. And if you ever decide that you don’t like what Bluesky is doing [...] you can move somewhere else, keeping your followers, connections, and content.
How is that different from moving to a new web host or newsletter provider? And what happens if your Bluesky connections don't move over to the new thing? Or if Bluesky chooses to create a read-only archive of your posts and changes the UI to obscure the ATproto ID or whatever it is that certifies the content as being "yours"?
Focusing on protocol and decentralisation is putting the cart before the horse. The reason why Twitter, and Reddit in particular work so well is because of sub-communities that form organically. More importantly, discovery was part of the value in using it. It's why every Mastodon community specific to one niche/subject is not very interesting, people are not one single interest, we follow someone we like for one reason, maybe it's they make cool art, then we find out they also make music too, then bam, you discover a new genre of music and a the community around it. Decentralisation actively introduces friction into the most rewarding loop of the entire thing. Centralisation isn't the problem, it's just comorbid with shitty governance.
I've realized not to bet on any social media.
For example, pre-Elon Twitter, I thought Twitter was going to around a long time and I would continue to use it for many years. I left Twitter when Elon bought it.
While I'm on various social media sites now, I can fairly easily pick up a new one as I see fit. And if my audience doesn't want to follow me there, they don't have to. And I can find different people to follow on that new one.
You never know what is going to happen.
I think that a lot of people are going to get ATProto whether they want to or not. I don't want to believe that anyone involved with it at in a decision-making or policy-driving capacity is a big enough loser to only want better social media out of it. Decentralized web apps are a proof of concept.
Not trustworthy. The providers mentioned in the article, blacksky and bluesky, presumably the most visible ones, do not allow signups with anonymous email providers even though they make you pass a human verification step.
The link in the article for Blacksky (blackskyweb.xyz) has a dark pattern that attempts to get you sign up for bluesky instead of blacksky. Odd.
The bigger issue is funding - currently appears to be VC funded (seed round 2023, Series A 2024), so they'll want a return at some point. Voilà, enshittification.
The biggest selling point - portable identity - is a mirage because the current providers do not give you the cryptographic keys to your identity. So they can simply lock you down, and your 'identity' is done.
I think I just need to be less online, I've kind of lost hope.
I am all-in on face to face relationships and no longer investing in the fiction of socializing with people through a screen (or only over the phone). And I've been here since low baud modem days and through every niche internet community and medium you can think of.
Eventually I decided to prioritize my health over everything -- job, friends, extended family, hobbies -- transient relationships with things & people just don't matter any longer. If you want community you have to cultivate it and it isn't real if it isn't deeply intertwined with most of your life.
Also, owning my own copies of things too, from books to music to video tutorials. It either goes ona shelf or in the NAS and gets indexed.
I bet on ATProto the last year, I've left this year. The network has been shrinking and the Bluesky leadership has been misleading about "user" numbers and hiding that they took private equity money. The atmo fund looks like a bunch of self dealing. I no longer trust any of them.
This year, I'm betting less social media as being better and in the long-run a new protocol that learns from the mistakes.
I was disappointed by the hard divergence from core aspects of Tim Berners-Lee‘s vision (and its current implementations) of a Web 3.0 but oh well. Threads got on board, and it’s not to say the missing parts can’t be bolted on later. In particular any future W3C Linked Web Storage WG protocols.[1]
X just unified the feed across languages such that all posts automatically get translated for users. These kinds of innovations are much more important than the ability to be able to switch apps.
[dead]
> Social media was supposed to connect us, but most of it has turned into ads, division, and loneliness. I'm betting on ATProto as a way to fix that
I disagree with the premise here. I think the core mechanics of social media, ie instant communication between random strangers about random topics, creates toxic interactions regardless of whether it's manipulated by engagement algorithms.
Some of the most toxic conversations I've seen were on Mastodon.
If there's a healthy future for socializing on the internet, I think it will happen in small communities.
That will slow down dissemination of information, but maybe that would be a good thing.