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Comment by lou1306 | Hacker News Reader

> until there's a server that I can bring home and plug in with setup I can do using my TV's remote, you're not going to be able to move most people to "private" data storage

Quite some BSky users are publishing on their own PDS (Personal Data Server) right now. They have been for a while. There are already projects that automate moving or backign up your PDS data from BSky, like https://pdsmoover.com/

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Microblogging is also the least interesting part of the ATProto ecosystem. I've switched all my git hosting over to https://tangled.org and am loving it, not least of which is that my git server (a 'knot' in Tangled parlance) is under my control as a PDS and has no storage limits!

Is it as easy for other people to read as a Github repo? Want to share?

yeah, tangled seems like a pretty well-designed piece of tech. I've never used it, myself, but I did an audit and found that it's not only analogous to github as far as UX, but it also includes features like CI/CD, which other public/social repo servers have struggled with.

only reason I backed away from it is that when the bsky team had a big "fuck the users" moment, the user purporting to be the tangled founder was happy to cheer them on. so between having to use AT proto, and assuming that the tangled dev doesn't really disagree with bsky's "fuck the users" sentiment, I moved on. but, obviously, whiny moral grandstanding is irrelevant to whether or not someone made a good product. if you've got a use for it, I'd certainly recommend giving it a try!

Tangled founder here; it's just as easy! For example, here's the entire Tangled codebase monorepo: https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core — you can clone this directly as you would a git repo anywhere else.

Looks nice!

New user sign up is a bit wonky. It asked for an email, login and password, then it's asking for a bsky sign-in too? This seems a little weird.

(Minor nit: for some reason, Google didn't auto-suggest a strong password for the password field.)

Then I got to the screen where it asks for full read-write access to my PDS and stopped there. It's kind of a lot to ask! I believe this is Bluesky's fault, but I don't think I can really use third-party bluesky apps until they implement finer-grained permissions.

Fine-grained permissions are already shipped btw, though the documentation could be better.

yeah, I was one of them. developers are not the endgame, though. true social media needs people who are not going to do anything more complicated than "go to website, sign up". there's no world where setting up your own pds is that simple without an organized piece of software to do that kind of thing.

personally, I could probably get behind recommending something like umbrel[0], if it included something like a "include a pds" option during config. but even that is asking for a lot of mind-share for a non-tech user. it would take a super smooth setup process for that to be realistic. point is, though, I'm not saying it can't be done; I'm saying no one is doing it and what people are doing is not getting the job done for wider adoption.

[0] https://umbrel.com/ *and, naturally, at this point, I'd prefer they include something that isn't based on AT proto for social publication. I wouldn't mind if they had both, but just an AT proto implementation wouldn't attract me.

and you expect these “go to website, sign up” people to take the extra step to select a provider for repoing data? these people can barely pick a mastodon instance, what sort of data ownership integration work do you expect? it’s a consideration that’s more niche than the current status quo. unless you’re fine with people defaulting to onedrive or similar.

no, I expect them to go to a store to buy the same product that their friend bought. then I expect them to use that product by scanning a QR code that comes up on their TV, and then registering an account using the site linked by that code (or, just using their tv's remote to sign up, with an on-screen keyboard, or whatever).

not "a server so simple, anyone could host it"; "a set top box that gives me a private social media storage, network data storage, secure external connections, and effortless integration with all of my other iot devices". note that the former requires you to know what hosting is, while the latter only requires that you know what you want to do, without having to understand the details of how its done.

What's a PDS?

Personal Data Server. See https://atproto.com/guides/glossary#pds-personal-data-server

https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/atproto

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