Don’t call it a Blues Conference.
On the weekend, the first Face to face party Specially used for people built using AT protocols, or Atproto – Techniques that power Bluesky’s growing social network of 33 million users were held in Seattle. During the event, developers, engineers, founders and even members of the Blues team, including CEO Jay Graber, were attended. Many people in the community met each other for the first time after online communication only.
But, although Bruceky It is the largest application built on ATPROTO at this time, and the social network itself is not Atmospheric meeting Focus. Here, the Blues is just another developer, although it is an outstanding developer because it is the management of Atproto, a social networking protocol that provides the framework for building decentralized social networking.
Instead, the meeting is specifically for protocol Its many possibilities include not only building other types of social applications, but also building communities and providing people with a way to Cross-application and web service login Have an open social identity Pass the authentication standard OAuthand more.
The conference is about getting users back into control of their data, algorithms and overall online experience.
In short, there are more than 150 participants, along with others in the community, who are working to rebuild the network by putting electricity back to the hands of those who actually use it.
This also means to some extent taking power away from billionaire tech oligarchs (Caesars) as Graber’s Viral T-shirt mocking Mark Zuckerberg;These tech CEOs now control most online experiences from search to social connections to productivity and beyond.
It is no surprise then that self-proclaimed anarchists, co-aid devotees and open source advocates can be found among attendees of the ATPROTO conference.
But for some attendees, long-term idealism has been suppressed by the reality of failures they have established and observed, including public products like Twitter and early efforts on decentralized applications.
This time, they aim to learn from these mistakes.
Start the activity, Blaine CookHe said he talked about his time on the social network now known as X. There, he coined the term “Tweet” and designed the answer before watching Twitter “corrupted by capital and lack of imagination.” However, he still believes that Twitter is “the innermost representative of public human communication and anyone’s creation.”
Cook, who Launched on Twitter for trying to disperse itComparing today’s decentralized social networks (including Bruinsky) is similar to jungle like a jungle, which makes sense to the individual creatures in it, but seems to be confusing to external observers.
In the early days of using multiple protocols, not only ATPROTO but ActivityPub (base application), but this is especially true. mastodon and Thread), Nostr,,,,, Farcasterand others. Even the inventor of the network, Tim Berners-Lee, Decentralized technology is being studied Designed to return the power to the user.
“I’ve learned in my bones that a social system that has been possible and inevitable for nearly decades, and that it’s always been a revolution that really bothers me,” Cook told the audience.
Cook’s speech set the tone for the event: acknowledge past mistakes but have hope for the future.
Later, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber talked about the promises the network had held on and how she later became pessimistic as it became a tool of surveillance and control rather than freedom and creation.
“We have built civilizations of thought in cyberspace, but we ended up dedicating our lives to large centralized platforms where their CEOs shape themselves as homemade monarchs of the kingdoms we built for them using data and time,” Graber said.
“We have to remember where the power is really, because we give them that power and we can take it back.”
At the conclusion of the speech, the audience burst into thrills with applause and craze that lasted for half a minute. It’s not just a developer meeting. This is a sport.
Other presenters presented their project, detailing aspects of ATPROTO technology and talking about future situations. Some solutions to the current problem.
Speakers at the event contribute their specific expertise, whether it is solving challenges of online communication, finding ways to fund, or even trying wild ideas, such as running Bluesky on bluesky Raspberry pi Single-board computer.
Blacksky Founder Rudy Fraser posted emotions on Saturday when talking about building a community with Atproto. His project today provides moderation and support to make social media a safer place for black users, including those who migrate from online communities. Ultimately, Blacksky may run with all its ATPROTO-based infrastructure and provide its own consumer-facing customers.
However, conference participants were reminded that just new technologies were not the answer – an ecosystem that needed to provide full support and funding for these efforts.
For example, technicians and feed builders Ndra Rininsland On Sunday, even on open social platforms, transgender communities face struggles and continue to face them.
Part of the challenge is that people who run moderation services such as Bluesky Labelers (the ones you don’t want to see signs or automatically hide posts) are often financially burdened by their efforts. As Rininsland said, they could burn and collapse – twice.
But, despite this, she expressed optimism, pointing to similar projects Norsky SocietyThis is based on Blacksky’s idea of using ATPROTO to create a safer social media experience for the LGBTQIA+ community.
“They are ambitious goals, but we’re working on it,” Rininsland said. “Trans aren’t going to be silent by this or any other government. If that means we’ve built the entire parallel infrastructure, our entire damn social network, then you bet your ass and we’re going to do that.”
With the so-calledCareless people built Facebookthe ATPROTO community aims to mitigate the harms of introducing new technologies and seek experts who can help them guide them when they are built.
Erin Kissane, a formerly written and editorial strategist, Sunday A 40,000-word paper on how Facebook contributed to the Myanmar genocideJoin remotely (in the weather, quite a few!) to share her in-depth knowledge about how to build a safer online community with attendees.
In many technologies Relax its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Program To cater to the Trump administration’s policies, Keane’s proposals are moving in the opposite direction. She advises builders to actively seek “the smart and informed perspective of the most vulnerable people you have built for you during rollout and change and during change.”
“If you can keep the most vulnerable, you can keep the safety of everyone,” Kissane said.
These are not radical ideas, but politically induced problems.
At the end of the incident, some attendees immediately started hacking and made contacts over the weekend. Committed to continue talking and contacting and having a positive discord chat, filled with people who are now meeting in person.
“I have participated in many events [San Franscico],” said Tessa Brown, co-founder of the Secure Chat App. Bacterial Networktell TechCrunch. “It’s like…it’s like…it’s all about today, it’s just the future. There’s no lesson in the past.”
By contrast, Brown added: “Everyone here feels very different about how we have achieved so far….”
TechCrunch reported at an atmospheric conference in Seattle, Washington.
