Comment by skybrian

The thing about file formats is that there are so many to choose from. From a distance they may seem much the same, but ATproto has its own conventions for database records and links between them that makes it easier to replicate data without breaking references.

It's like records are born to replicate for better or worse. They get downloaded immediately and you have no control over where they go after that. Anybody can tap into one of the firehoses spewing them all over the place. But they're all linked together and if links break it's because nobody kept a copy of that record.

Other file formats don't work quite the same way. A git repo is easy to clone and pull from, but things like call graphs are language-specific.

It seems hard to say what apps this sort of replication is right for.