Actually I don't think #atproto is about decentralization. It's more about indexing over distributed data. @bsky.app and @tangled.org are actually a centralized service just like general web search engines are. But just like search engines, we don't own your content and this is the important part. 🧵
Theo
👀👀 To be clear I’m very into decentralized tech and atproto is very cool, I just don’t love shoving it into everything and don’t see it as valuable in a use case like GitHub I’m down to be convinced
May 8, 2026 at 11:29 AM
Decentralisation and blogging on atproto - Connected Places
The space for blogging and long-form writing on atproto is rapidly developing, and it gives some interesting insight in what decentralisation on atproto looks like
Be Wary of Bluesky
Bluesky promises decentralization, but nearly every user's data sits on Bluesky's servers, and every new ATProto app reinforces that centralization. T
What is atproto?
What is atproto? atproto is two things: A protocol for creating open social networks An open social network atproto, the open social network Today the atproto network has 36+ million users and powers Bluesky and a handful of other apps. Almost all atproto data is public. Content like posts, likes, follows, and photos/videos are publicly accessible to any network participant in a permissionless way. As an example of how open the network is, here’s how easy it is to stream all public data on the network using a public atproto Relay like bsky.network:
Is my ATProto app actually decentralized?
A few days ago I wrote about rolld, the little board game tracker I built on the AT Protocol. As I mentioned then, this is very much a learning experiment for me, a way to play with ATProto and lea…
How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
Recently due to various events (namely a lot of people getting off of X-Twitter), Bluesky has become a lot more popular, and excitement for its underlying protocol, ATProto, is growing. Since I worked on ActivityPub which connects together Mastodon, Sharkey, Peertube, GotoSocial, etc, etc, etc in the present-day fediverse, I often get asked whether or not I have opinions about ATProto vs ActivityPub, and the answer is that I do have opinions, but I am usually head-down focused on building what I hope to be the next generation of decentralized (social) networking tech, and so I keep to myself about such things except in private channels.
What ATProto Needs to Support Consentful Distributed Community Governance
The promise of ATproto is social media without corporate overlords | The Web Dev Podcast Series 1
Developers building apps on ATproto, the technology behind social media apps like Bluesky and Leaflet, are promising us a future where we own our content and aren’t at the whims of a tiny handful of companies. Software engineer Zeu Capua talks to host Jason Lengstorf about the promise of social media where we can actually own our own data.
On discourse and decentralisation
Over the last year, as Bluesky got more popular, conversations about whether Bluesky and ATProto are really ‘decentralised’ have gotten more “popular” as well. These conversations ranged from high-quality, productive back-and-forth articles to people just saying a lot of dumb stuff on the internet (shocker, I know). As time went on, this discourse has grown […]
The ecosystem is moving
Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize....
Many people are talking about decentralized social media protocols like #ActivityPub and #ATProto and all the amazing things one can do with them. But do you actually know how they work? We thought we'd do something about this. Come to #FediForum next week if you are curious and like to find […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.socialatproto is routinely called decentralized. Its upper layers are not. An essay on what nostr solves, what atproto cannot borrow, and where partial AppViews fit. night-terrace.offprint.app/a/3mjsp3tse6g23-decentralizin… $ATOPR
Decentralizing the Upper Layers: What atproto Can Learn from nostr, and What It Cannot | Nighthaven⛺︎ | Offprint
night-terrace.offprint.appI still think the biggest perk of atproto for everyday devs is not the decentralization, but things like - Handles auth, with good standards to check that auth and build permission layers. - A free public key/value database. - Can build api clients and some of the backend with lexicon schemas
Playing with the idea of ATProto as a marketplace for compute github.com/publicdomainrelay/compute-con…
Compute Contracts - Blog
john.leaflet.pub
John
Got a little reverse proxy over ssh auth'd via ATmosphere account going: fedproxy.com
Some of us in the ActivityPub world feel jealous of AtProto’s success (like me). But more decentralization is a win for everyone. With Bridgy from @anew.social connecting protocols, this isn’t competition, it’s momentum. We’re stronger together, so let’s build the social web humanity deserves 🚀
Private Social Networks on atproto
Building toward something more like Facebook on atproto (not Facebook Groups, not Marketplace, just *private* content from people you follow.
Stratos
Permissioned Data Diary 3: Your Bucket, My Data - Daniel's Leaflets
Permissioned Data Diary 2: Buckets - Daniel's Leaflets
Spaces as Layers - Nick's Blog
