Post by @ricci@discuss.systems

2026-06-20 05:53 UTC

@innocentzero@social.tchncs.de @cwebber@social.coop FWIW, I didn't personally find this article to be particularly snobbish or arrogant. I think it's quite well written, and while it does have a particular viewpoint and is written with a strong voice, I think it's making a good faith attempt to explain something that is a frequent point of confusion/contention when people are discussing the fediverse and atmosphere. However, I think it uses a metaphor that's flawed enough that it's not really helping; here's my part of the thread on that: https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3moogiuvkjc2e In short, article positions the data storage (PDS) as the blog in its analogy, but I think the PDS is actually more like the backend database for the blog. When people familiar with the fediverse and Web in general ask "why are there not more atproto instances" they are not asking why there are not more databases with people's raw blog posts in them, they are asking why all the blogs are served through a small number of websites. This particular exchange, I think, helps to clearly explain the difference in how Dan and I are looking at these networks: https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3moovf2g2dk2u https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3moovkbywnc2t

Replies (4)

@ricci@discuss.systems 2026-06-20 06:06

@innocentzero@social.tchncs.de @cwebber@social.coop One of the things I consistently see in these discussion is a conflation of "is cheap to run now" with "scales". This evening, when I pushed a bit more on this, the point that I got to is that people using and running this infrastructure don't seem to expect the network to grow a lot; they seem to think that it has basically reached the order of magnitude that it will be for the foreseeable future. I think this is a fine position to take, and I agree with them that things like relays and jetstreams will remain relatively affordable to run at even 10x the current network size. But this is at odds with the more aggressive boosters who treat this as the way to build all social applications going forward. If you think atproto will support a collection of applications that are, in aggregate, 10x the current size, sure, community infrastructure will continue to be cheap to run and the large amounts of data *someone* has to ingest for your small app or community is fine. If you think it will get to Twitter size (100x), I think you are probably wrong about this. If you think it will get to Facebook size, no way.

Open ##5119996
@wjmaggos@liberal.city 2026-06-20 10:56

@ricci@discuss.systems @innocentzero@social.tchncs.de yes people are really asking about the "small number of websites" or "copies of the app" phrasing used in the thread. I believe @cwebber@social.coop said it before but the power lies in who runs the websites/apps and lessening the concentration of power is why we care about decentralization. the choices they make affect everyone using their services. and even if switching is possible, defaults persist for most users. and their experience changes them, and we share a society with them.

Open ##5119997
@dialecticalmusings@app.wafrn.net 2026-06-21 16:51

@cwebber@social.coop @innocentzero@social.tchncs.de @ricci@discuss.systems Somewhat related—on the relative moderation loads of a PDS owner and the owner of a Fedi instance. RE: https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/78e7e0d7-bd19-49ee-936d-7e5bb388c706 #ATProto #ATmosphere #Bluesky #ActivityPub #Fediverse #Mastodon

Open ##5119999
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online 2026-06-21 22:51

@ricci@discuss.systems RE: "arrogant" "Mastodon-brained" "the Instance Brain" Yeah, definitely arrogant. @innocentzero@social.tchncs.de @cwebber@social.coop

Open ##5120033