Comment by skybrian

9 hours ago

This article goes into a lot of detail, more than is really needed to get the point across. Much of that could have been moved to an appendix? But it's a great metaphor. Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself.

I'll add that, like a web server that's just serving up static files, a Bluesky PDS is a public filesystem. Furthermore it's designed to be replicated, like a Git repo. Replicating the data is an inherent part of how Bluesky works. Replication is out of your control. On the bright side, it's an automatic backup.

So, much like with a public git repo, you should be comfortable with the fact that anything you put there is public and will get indexed. Random people could find it in a search. Inevitably, AI will train on it. I believe you can delete stuff from your own PDS but it's effectively on your permanent record. That's just part of the deal.

So, try not to put anything there that you'll regret. The best you could do is pick an alias not associated with your real name and try to use good opsec, but that's perilous.

10 comments

skybrian

Reply
danabramov  8 hours ago

My goal with writing is generally to move things out of my head in the shape that they existed in my head. If it's useful but too long, I trust other people to pick what they find valuable, riff on it, and so on.

>Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself.

You can skip to the end of the article where I do a few demos: https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/#up-in-the-atmosp.... I suggest a file manager there:

>Open https://pdsls.dev. [...] It’s really like an old school file manager, except for the social stuff.

And yes, the paradigm is essentially "everyone is a scraper".

  • skybrian  8 hours ago

    Thanks! I saved a link to pdsls. I think there's room for improvement in making the UI user-friendly; maybe I'll try it someday.

    • danabramov  8 hours ago

      The devs are responsive to feedback if you mention @pdsls.dev on Bluesky! I often point out small issues and they get fixed the next day.

seridescent  8 hours ago

> Someone should write a user-friendly file browser for PDS's so you can see it for yourself.

https://pdsls.dev/ can serve this purpose IMO :) it's a pretty neat app, open source, and is totally client-side

edit: whoops, pdsls is already mentioned at the end of the article

swyx  3 hours ago

> So, much like with a public git repo, you should be comfortable with the fact that anything you put there is public and will get indexed.

whats the sota on atproto encryption dan? just publish encrypted stuff with sha 256 and thats it?

  • danabramov  3 hours ago

    AFAIK nothing special for it at this point, so whatever you would do with a public cleartext broadcasting platform.

verdverm  4 hours ago

Private data will come to ATProto, it's not a finished protocol

  • ximeng  2 hours ago

    What’s the plan for this? Sharing with a specific group (DM, group chat, feeds from people you follow) are critical to social media.