[HN Gopher] Publishing on the ATmosphere
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Publishing on the ATmosphere
Author : danabramov
Score : 29 points
Date : 2026-01-20 12:33 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tynanistyping.offprint.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (tynanistyping.offprint.app)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Why would you do that vs just publishing on your own domain?
| tomgag wrote:
| This ATproto astroturfing is becoming a bit ridiculous.
| verdverm wrote:
| The three main publishing platforms are working together
|
| https://standard.site/
|
| ATProto and the ATmosphere are different
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I'm looking at the site and right at the beginning it says:
|
| > Standard.site provides shared lexicons for long-form
| publishing on AT Protocol. Making content easier to
| discover, index, and move across the ATmosphere.
|
| Which part of these required a new protocol and couldn't be
| built before @at existed? Seems to me we're reinventing the
| wheel for I'm not entirely sure which benefit. But maybe
| someone who's more into this part of the web can educate me
| on this.
| lou1306 wrote:
| One answer is right under Introduction:
|
| > Content portability
|
| > Users move between hosts without losing their content,
| audience, or metadata.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > Which part of these required a new protocol and
| couldn't be built before @at existed? Seems to me we're
| reinventing the wheel for I'm not entirely sure which
| benefit.
|
| The atproto folks went and categorized all of the other
| attempts to do this at the time. (They even had some I
| hadn't heard of!)
|
| All of them make various tradeoffs. None of them were the
| set of tradeoffs the team wanted. So they needed to make
| some new things. That's really the core of it.
|
| My sibling has one of the largest and most specific
| things, but this is the underlying reason.
| zawaideh wrote:
| ATproturfing is that correct term for it.
|
| (yes very proud of myself for this )
| lukev wrote:
| God forbid that technologists are enthusiastic about a
| technology.
|
| Such things never happen, least of all here, on Hacker News.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| The article isn't resolving, so I can't speak to what it
| exactly says.
|
| However, the question isn't "on your own domain vs not," it's
| "how you publish." Blog networks are popular because most
| people do not have the technical ability to spin up a server,
| buy a domain, and point it at it.
|
| Why an atproto based solution instead of Medium or whatever?
| Because then you actually own your own data. And that also
| doesn't preclude it ending up on your own domain in the end
| anyway, because it's your data.
| 0-679-72034-0 wrote:
| Herman characterises this as the third distillation: sourcing
| mass-media news.
| skybrian wrote:
| ATproto might not be a platform exactly, but it is an ecosystem.
| Programming language ecosystems don't really die but they do fade
| sometimes.
|
| I think the issue with publishing via a PDS is that you're
| basically letting anyone republish on their own website. For
| comments that makes a lot of sense since they can show up under
| articles. But for a blog? Maybe it would be better to keep your
| database of articles offline, publish it to your own website, and
| not replicate it to the world? Instead, send a ATproto post for
| each article with a link to your website.
| lukev wrote:
| What's the downside of it being replicated and distributed?
|
| It's got a digital signature, which can verify that it comes
| from you and is unaltered.
| skybrian wrote:
| They could sell their advertising instead of yours :-)
|
| I don't see a digital signature helping? Digital signatures
| can be stripped.
| lukev wrote:
| I mean, that is the status quo of everything published
| anywhere on the internet today, using any protocol, and is
| why copyright exists. I'm not sure how ATProto changes that
| equation, aside from providing additional mechanisms for
| _authorized_ republication?
| skybrian wrote:
| Not a whole lot but there is at least robots.txt and
| scraper blocking like Cloudflare does. At least there are
| norms and copyright law. What are the norms for serving
| content from someone else's PDS? I think not asking
| permission is the default?
| tolerance wrote:
| I understand I'm behind in terminology in this space and figured
| that there at least would've been a post to make its way through
| HN that would explain what the "Atmosphere" is. Apparently _this
| submission_ was supposed to be that (5 days ago) but it doesn't
| define the concept.
|
| > The "Atmosphere" is the term we use to describe the ecosystem
| around the AT Protocol.
|
| -- <https://atproto.com/guides/glossary#atmosphere> (Why on earth
| is the glossary not alphabetized by the way?)
|
| I think that ATProto is going to win against other
| decentralized/'fediverse' protocols in the long run. Bluesky?
| Maybe not. But I am impressed by the look of other platforms like
| Leaflet and that one that's supposed to be an alternative to
| GitHub or something like that. [1]
|
| I can't speak on the tech behind the protocol itself but as far
| as marketing is considered it's in the lead in my opinion.
| ActivityPub seems too gangly and Nostr is the worst--as in 'worse
| is better'--and in a way I'm fond of it because of that.
|
| The planning behind ATProto appears to be far more coordinated
| than the other two. Despite being the senior of the three,
| ActivityPub is still going through inter-platform drama (e.g.,
| the Instagram clone that was recently condemned for not handling
| text-only posts...like an Instagram clone should) and I get the
| feeling that the mind behind Nostr can care less about
| coordinating. I look at it more like a toolkit to build a
| protocol out of than a single one akin to the other two. [2]
|
| [1]: This is my first look at OffPrint. It looks too much like
| Substack. I hate it. But I figure that the beautiful thing is
| that in theory I can use Leaflet and you can use OffPrint and I
| guess our writing is all in the same...atmosphere. _Hah_.
|
| [2]: Similar to another web project that I'm fond of, Datastar.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| AT is not yours - it belongs to Blue Sky pbc. You can link your
| own domain to it, but the user interface belongs to Blue Sky and
| they will block you if they want.
| lukev wrote:
| This is, like, the entire problem ATProto is designed to solve.
|
| Sure, Bluesky can block you from showing up in Bluesky the
| application. But if they do, you can still host your own
| content (as is being done here) or access it via alternative
| apps (like Blacksky).
|
| This is like saying that "RSS isn't yours because Google Reader
| can block you."
| FiloSottile wrote:
| This article has nothing to do with the Bluesky lexicon or with
| the bsky.app AppView.
|
| What does "they will block you" even mean: this article is
| talking about hosting your data on your PDS and presenting it
| on your domain.
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