Part of this work will need to get done with the Atmosphere Brand work - specifically “Login with Atmosphere” brand / design work and explaining what it means.
Rachel there is a small group taking this on, and as part of forming a new community co-op, we’re trying to get some of this work funded.
I’m going to point them at this thread as well.
In the meantime, there is a shipping piece of explanatory text of “what is an atmosphere account?” that is part of the reference PDS
I know there is lots of other work to do in explaining this in more prose, visually and other ways, but this might be a starting point to improve text in something that is already deployed.
Blacksky has a Moodle LMS install - not sure if that’s one way to go one level deeper for those that want to learn this stuff - I don’t think there is existing training around accounts but they could be open to contributions.
And there are a number of blog posts that have been written, I’ll specifically point to @quillmatiq.com’s Everything Account
In summary - the work needs to get done! It’s related to the Login with Atmosphere working group that is in the midst of forming, we can use this space for discussion and coordination.
Thanks for collecting all the links together. I’m still pretty new to atproto so I didn’t want to wade in and step on toes, but figuring out how to explain things to different audiences is something I enjoy doing. I’ve seen a few great explanations for people with at least some technical background. However to go “mainstream” we need to talk to people who won’t really care about how it all works. We don’t want them to be taken by surprise by things like realising their data is being displayed on other apps, or using an app without understanding what parts of the data they enter are public.
It also relates to marketing atproto outside of tech circles, as to encourage more folk to use the protocol we need to understand their motivations. For example, there’s a lot of talk about avoiding US-hosted tech, and not losing your followers and posts if you want to move platform. If we can map why people create an account in the first place, that’s a good starting point both for encouraging more people like them and being able to frame things in ways they understand.
@ezraboeth.com has a take on it that I very strongly agree with - Stop Advertising the Atmosphere as Speculative Technology. There is nothing necessarily new or revolutionary about the way atproto works - it’s the largely same stream-processing architecture every other social media site uses under the hood, just designed so that anyone can join into the cluster and use it for anything they want.
People asking about the atmosphere are not usually looking to be marketed to, so giving them a large-scale basic overview into the technical side of what it is tends to go over much better in my experience. It’s a standard to let multiple apps tap into the same single account, designed to let you move that single account to another hosting service if the one they made their account on is going to shut down or otherwise turn to shit. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that.
I’d say “understand why”, but yes, “figuring out how to explain things to different audiences” is the challenge. No? Especially as the audiences are so different and, as my focus is on European media audiences, speak around 24 languages.
Question No 1 any audience will ask. What’s in it for me?
Let me throw this at you as I believe, if we only focus on a single protocol, we soon become guilty of building echo chambers. The social movement in Europe is being called Digital Sovereignty. Yes, its a reaction to big tech’s abuses. That’s not just in the “social media”. Its in the reform of publicly-owned network infrastructure, with MS being the overlord of every public network’s ID.
This social perspective is, from the European Commission (as our primary audience, and possible funder, that needs help) down. N.B. The fact that the EC have introduced eIDas and “the Wallet” is a indication that they (who are policy makers with little imagination of the possibilities of technical inventions) know they are being coerced by US bigtech.
The driver in all of this is a user’s/citizen’s ID and how one keeps control of it without being surveilled and controlled by a big brother - the pds server’s owner (as most of us can’t afford our own) or the government issuing an eID. Sooner or later you have to trust some one/org. So trust, governance and privacy become the primary concerns for anyone aware of the downsides of being social; of attempting to own their digital sovereignty.
Our interest in one networking protocol plays a part in this. Good campaign. No?
Notice first mention of the Atmosphere links to an “Understanding Atproto”. Should be U Understanding TheAtmosphere. It jumps too fast to a the Atproto explanation rather than a philosophic overview. (Why? before the How?) I reckon an editorial meeting with Rudy, Josh and a few others would produce a useful 100 words.
Next para would be the “Core Primitives”, with User DID being the first, short explanation before a link to a deeper explanation. Then Handles, Then Repos)itories). No shortening of any words here.
This is page 1. Needs a bit of a rewrite. The pics don’t quite do it. But sooo close.
This would be page 2 of a manual for bureaucrats with a little technical understanding. The second para “all servers speaking the AT protocol comprise “The Atmosphere” would link from “The Atmosphere” to a full intro page including history of http (or reference to wikipedia WWW page, then history of atprotol’s development. We can use this wikipedia page (and the link to The World Wide Web [page) for guidance of where we’re heading.
Non-developer American here, throwing in my two cents. Here’s how I explain ATproto as a nontechnical person to other nontechnical people, so you can get an example of what I’m focusing on: it’s a technology standards thing that allows for single sign on and moving posts and followers in case the service one is on goes evil. The biggest user of it so far is Bluesky, so if someone has a Bluesky account they can also use it to sign on to a bunch of other smaller apps too.
I know that this doesn’t capture the nuances of everything, but I feel it gets the point across enough. Most of the people I talk to very much have not heard of anything other than Bluesky, so that’s what I lead with.
I never want to be critical but you led with ”its a technical standards thing”, single sign on. So you’re leading with a explanation which requires technical understanding. Check out the ones I pointed to and see where it leads you.
I find this really interesting. I very often nerd-snipe my girlfriend and show her the latest cool thing I discovered around ATProto, and every time I catch myself explaining it as “you can log in with Bluesky here,” which really undersells what the protocol actually is.
I think this is genuinely quite hard, and we should probably do more to establish the “Atmosphere” brand so people understand that Atmosphere doesn’t necessarily mean Bluesky.
One improvement would 100% be giving the PDS you register with more account-management features, similar to what Eurosky does. You could log in, manage your Atmosphere account, see which apps have access to your data, manage permissions, etc. Basically, it could become the central place for managing your internet identity.
Another idea I had is a standard lexicon for “Apps” in the Atmosphere. That could be used to build an interoperable app store that every PDS could expose to its users.
Then it would be easier to explain: “Create an Atmosphere account on a server of your choice, then use that account with Bluesky, Stream.place, and other apps.”
You might be happy to know /account comes as part of the reference PDS, so most PDSes will have it! (for example https://bsky.social/account)
I think ATStore (at-store?) uses their own lexicon that people have to submit to themselves, but the community lexicon effort for app profiles also looks good for generic information
Nerd snipe. I haven’t heard that one before.
I’m with you all the way. That’s one reason I shifted to eurosky; more chance of getting orientated. Also. I’m no geek/nerd but even I can understand (n vague terms) “.. an interoperable app store that every PDS could expose to its users”.
So we’re getting close to my wet dream (watch out). But now we have two threads of conversation about the same dream on this thread - one about the marketing (from me) and one about future UI and development stuff (from you guys). They come together at https://atmosphereaccount.com/ as you’ve said.
Now is a time when we do need to consider that each PDS (at least the ones looking for members) will want attract a particular audience and (if we are to be good librarians) we should consider how we direct interested customers (I call them citizens) to their PLU’s PDS
PLU is a very English term meaning People Like Us. Some(time) with an interest, some(time) with a expertise, some(time) with a common geography. etc.
Getting a bit exciting, no? Another pommy saying; “watching the pennies drop”. A bit like the homer Simpson “Duh!”
