Imma say it. ACLs are a tool that centralizes command and control and, among other things, would create a cultural and economic avenue for eventual protocol capture by probably microsoft or some payment processor cloud+hardware monolith. There. I said it.
Jun 9, 2026 at 3:57 AM
ACLs don't
The ACL model is unable to make correct access decisions for interactions involving more than two principals, since required information is not retained across message sends. Though this deficiency has long been documented in the published literature, it is not widely understood. This logic error in the ACL model is exploited by both the clickjacking and Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks that affect many Web applications.
Authority as Possession: Permissioned Spaces Deserve Better Than ACLs
Why Capability Trees are the right governance primitive for permissioned spaces.
Digital Driver’s Licenses Threaten to Create a “Great Internet Lockdown” | ACLU
Two trends threaten the creation of a bureaucratic wall between Americans and the information they have a right to access
Capability Trees: Sovereignty Is the Point
This piece argues that DASL introduces security risk when applied to delegations, and that by not using DASL, capability trees avoid that risk.
Autonomous Communicator (AC) Protocol — Germ Network
“Hi, I’m Mark, here’s how you can send a message to me.” Our Autonomous Communicator (AC) Protocol empowers people to autonomously define identities which they can exchange with others to form relationships for communicating over end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging channels.
Making MLS more decentralized
It’s no secret that we at Phoenix R&D are big fans of the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, having helped it to come into existence. It’s a versatile group key agreement and messaging protocol that’s used to power both asynchronous and real-time applications. MLS is relatively
Connect, protect, and build everywhere
Make employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost.
Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech
So I finally finished reading this and while I agree with the recommendation, I’m a little wary of some of the context it’s rooted in ideologically and I’m wondering if others have thoughts on these things. Equality in the marketplace I think the main problem with the text is that it relies heavily on the idea of “marketplace of ideas,” leaning heavily on the idea that protocols are actually good for markets specifically because they make competition more perfect (because there’s better knowled...
Yes: Affirmative Consent as a Theoretical Framework for Understanding and Imagining Social Platforms | Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
As part of the Digital Library's transition to Open Access, new features for researchers are available in the Premium Edition. Click here to learn more.
As X shuts down Communities, Acorn debuts an alternative that puts creators in control | TechCrunch
Acorn lets organizations build and run their own online communities using decentralized tech, with custom feeds, moderation, and analytics tools.
a decentralized code competition platform built on the AT Protocol. publish problems, compete in real-time, own your data.
Authenticated Transfer: Architecture Overview
Authenticated Transfer (AT) is a collection of protocol components that together provide a generic framework for interoperable social web applications, using global aggregations of interlinked, self-certifying data records. This informational document provides an overview of the entire system, as implemented in late 2025. Some of those components may be in scope as work for the IETF, while other components may not. Many components are general-purpose and may find use outside of the context of AT. The intent of this document is to provide context for how all the components can fit together for certain use cases.
Decentralization is more than just a buzzword. Looking at the AT Protocol, it’s clear: the future belongs to systems that decouple identity and data from the provider. For sweep-it and my other tools, this means focusing on interoperability rather than closed silos. #atproto #decentralization
I hope @dholms.at or someone else at @bsky.app considers this before it's too late and ACLs are baked into the protocol.
Authority as Possession: Permissioned Spaces Deserve Better Than ACLs
leaflet.pub
