Hey 👋 if you don't know us already, we're building Frontpage; an AT Procol based federated link aggregator. We shipped an initial MVP in closed beta recently and have since been thinking about the road to general availability.

This post is an RFC (Request for Comments) targeted at technically minded folks who are interested in seeing the progression of atproto for non-Bluesky/microblogging use cases. All that's to say the language that follows assumes some knowledge about how Bluesky and atproto work! I've tried to include links to explain what all of the jargon means though, so hopefully it's not entirely nonsense for folks a little less familiar!

When you post on Frontpage, we propose that a mirror post will also be created in your Bluesky account. When you comment on Frontpage, we propose that a mirror reply will be created in your Bluesky account.

Conversely, when you reply to one of these mirrored posts in Bluesky - we will show it as a reply in Frontpage.

Additionally, Bluesky likes will be translated to Frontpage votes and vice versa.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] erlend_sh@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

One thing that seems to go unappreciated in the comments is the simplicity of this interop proposal: It is essentially about enabling quote-posting of link-aggregator(Groups) posts.

Bluesky + Frontpage will work this way, and I believe it’ll work exceedingly well. If the ap-net corner of the fediverse isn’t interested in this kind of interop, fair enough. To me however the promise of seamless interop between my social apps was what brought me to the fediverse, so that’s the version of the fediverse I will pursue.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the promise of seamless interop between my social apps was what brought me to the fediverse, so that’s the version of the fediverse I will pursue.

That's fair.

For some other people the appeal of the Fediverse is to be able to manage the instances themselves, and Bluesky still isn't there yet on that side (and probably won't, as it would prevent them from generating revenue if someone can just open a server and connect to their network)

[–] timconspicuous@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

Bluesky still isn’t there yet on that side (and probably won’t, as it would prevent them from generating revenue if someone can just open a server and connect to their network)

I don't think that's necessarily true. As fas as I know there are no plans to inject ads, they are planning to create a marketplace for custom feeds (think "premium" feeds) and labelers and such where they would take a cut. You would obviously still be able to purchase access to them from other servers. But this goal seems kinda lofty, not sure if it can be viable.

[–] tuckerm@supermeter.social 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I also want interoperability between microblogging and threaded services, but unfortunately I'm a little skeptical about the account mirroring concept. Or, at least, I'd like more details about it.

Do users need to opt-in to have their accounts mirrored, like how they do with brid.gy right now? If there are a bunch of users with Bluesky accounts that don't have Frontpage accounts, that would mess with the ability to have all comments showing up between the two services, and it would prevent some people from posting a comment on someone else's comment if one of the commenters has not opted-in to have their account mirrored. Or, can a plain Bluesky account comment on Frontpage threads, but not start a thread?

I like the idea of being able to quote-post link aggregator threads to your Bluesky account, but I think ideally this would only require one account. Which would mean you could also use your Bluesky account to start a thread on Frontpage.

[–] timconspicuous@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

Sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to address your question -- I think one misunderstanding is: in a sense there are no Bluesky accounts and there are no Frontpage accounts, there are only atproto accounts. Whether you make a post on Bluesky or Frontpage or Whitewind or Smokesignal, all of them get collected in the same repository. Here is a neat atproto browser which can display this, this is the account of Frontpage founder Tom Sherman and you can find all of his collections there: https://atproto-browser.vercel.app/at/tom-sherman.com

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I also think that this is how it should be. Initially I thought I wouldn't need multiple accounts for the fediverse. Right now I'm more active on Bluesky than on Mastodon so it would be great to have an AT Protocol equivalent to Lemmy/Reddit and all that without having to create a new account for it.

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Bluesky is not a part of the fediverse. If they don't want to use standards and the devs cry about how it is absolutely impossible to integrate the features of ATProto into ActivityPub, then they can fuck off.

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How does your comment relate to my comment?

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

How does it not relate to your comment?

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Seems quite relevant indeed.

To the stance above: if people prefer to have a unified experience managed by a corporation, that's okay.

There are enough people on the Internet to keep a few places actives. The Fediverse and Blueskey can coexist.

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yes and that's why I don't understand their comment and even less why it gets downvoted. They seem to complain about something to me that I didn't even mention and the topic was not about combining ATProto with ActivityPub or whatever.

Maybe relate wasn't the right word. English isn't my native language.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Reading the thread again, I guess it comes from

Initially I thought I wouldn’t need multiple accounts for the fediverse.

Followed by

Right now I’m more active on Bluesky

Some people might have understood it as "The Fediverse failed, Bluesky is better". As I said, to me it's okay to prefer one or the other, but some people are less tolerant.

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I never said that Bluesky is part of the fediverse for example and the rest of your comment seems to me like it should be directed to OP or devs of ATProto and not me.

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Who said I directed my complaints at you?

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why did you write your comment as an answer to my comment then if it's not directed at me?

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Bluesky is not a part of the fediverse.

That is directed at you, but is not a complaint.

The rest is my own rant at the devs, not directed at you.

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

Then you misunderstood me because I know that Bluesky is not part of the fediverse. With my comment I was trying to say that I would be happy to be able to communicate solely in ATProto apps with one account instead of with multiple accounts in ActivityPub.