Can someone explain to me (slowly) how DM data works with atproto? More specifically now that @blackskyweb.xyz is operating its own AppView, how do my DMs show up in both apps? How do DMs differ from mutes for example.
Mar 20, 2026 at 9:35 PM
How do we talk about atproto to non-developers?
The beauty of AT Protocol is that all of your data from different apps is available on your PDS, your own folder on the internet containing your stuff as JSON. This means that you can switch which app you use to view that data, without losing anything. It also makes it very easy to make connections between data stored using different lexicons, or just display activity in one place. Sifa does a nice job of this on your profile page. For web developers, and people who understand webhosting, the concept is reasonably easy to understand. I know that any atproto app I join is going to store data in my PDS, any other people will be able to see it.
atproto-wc · atproto-wc
Framework-agnostic ATProto web components. Content from PDS. Engagement from Constellation. Zero AppView dependency.
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:
Can atproto scale down?
Decomposing the Bluesky appview and self-hosting the pieces
the point of atproto is to make locked-open apps. apps which are constrained such that they cannot be e.g. bought by billionaires and ruined. yes, doing non-atproto things "enables app developers to do more". yes, non-atproto is "more intuitive" and "it sucks" when you hit atproto's limits.
My take on the "explaining atproto" discourse is that all the UX/filesystem/etc metaphors are still very verbose and that you can explain the same idea in a lot less words: It separates data from apps, so any app can use data from any other app. That fits in a tweet, with other sentences around it.
Can think of it as two different AppViews (or just atproto apps) The DMs is did:web:api.bsky.chat#bsky_chat and the did.json is found at api.bsky.chat/.well-known/did.json And the AppView as we know it is did:web:api.bsky.app#bsky_appview api.bsky.app/.well-known/did.json
Can someone explain to me (slowly) how DM data works with atproto? More specifically now that @blackskyweb.xyz is operating its own AppView, how do my DMs show up in both apps? How do DMs differ from mutes for example.
I suspect we’ll see a bunch of apps that leverage atproto’s did:plc identity layer but store data out of band.
boltless
the single most important part of atproto is the PDS as a user-controlled auth and storage layer to which clients can connect directly. death to appviews
Authenticated Transfer Enables Orchestration - nekomimi
blog.nekomimi.pet
