ATProto spaces: A new extension to ATProto that enables non-public data
atproto.com
atproto.com
I hope the growing mess of lexicons would eventually trigger them to self correct and look more into reusing (and encouraging) existing ontologies (schema.org or any number of others).
I understand that the system probably is sound, the data just isn't encrypted, which I wouldn't necessarily expect. Maybe it's completely clear for users familiar with AtProto, but for others it needs to be clearer on some things:
- Where exactly is the data is stored
- Who is the "space authority" and why should they be trusted
- Strategies where you can manually encrypt/decrypt the data put in spaces
And avoid sketchy sounding terms like "non-public".
I think that avoiding the word “private” is absolutely the right move here, because they are not building for the individual privacy. That’s not what the spec is intending to unlock. Their goal is to enable the next set of apps, that need to enable sharing of content with a specific and controlled group of users.
The data is stored in a PDS. You can use the one that Bluesky PBC or any other service provider provides, or you can self-host.
Space Authority is a DID, per the link above. So, in ATProto land, that’s just an account. The authority DID controls the accesss to the the space for other DIDs.
I can’t answer your question about encryption. Hard to answer it without a specific use case.
Who would I ask for my private space records but myself?
I could hate on them for reinventing the wheel but the cryptographic stuff they do with signed merkle trees is pretty clutch, it’s a tricky problem to untangle public key identities from domains so you can migrate your content without losing your identity. There’s still not a good flow for that but at least there’s the groundwork done.
It's like http in which you can achieve the same using http, but http isn't prescriptive about any such behaviours, which these protocols address
> It's like [a behavioural prescription on top of HTTP]
So a bit like REpresentational State Transfer (REST) then
As someone reading this from the periphery (and not really even as I have been in the ecosystem, building etc), my first thought was this was some kind of live audio conversation thing ala Twitter Spaces. But nope. I know I know, you want to do your own thing, define your own naming, but alot of people still view things as far as Bluesky's relation to Twitter, in the consumer lens. You'll get there as far as independent separation but it's not there yet (similarly, Bluesky & atproto's connection/independence).
And this isn't even a consumer thing in this respect, but a dev/protocol thing.... couldn't have gone with something like Zones... Permissioned Zones?
Collins: "A particular kind of space is the area that is available for a particular activity or for putting a particular kind of thing in."
Cambridge: "an empty area that is available to be used"
why do you think Twitter called them spaces in the first place?
Isn't that exactly the problem?
It's like using "node" for something in your program's design, or "tree" or "type" whatever. Usually it's better to find a more specific name that communicates the intent even better, or at least less common name, as it'll inevitably will clash with something else, and by then you wish you'd name it differently than every other single thing out there. Unless it truly is only that thing which can be called "tree", don't suddenly call it "perennial" just because.