The new social internet: a starting point

The AT Protocol (atproto) is a rapidly expanding ecosystem of applications (the Atmosphere) built to empower users to participate in a more truly social version of the web without being held hostage by the mega-tech platforms that seem to run our lives today.

Make your Atmosphere account by joining one app, and use it to log in to any app built on atproto. And if the app where you made your account starts treating you shittily (like, oh, I don’t know…filling your feed with ads and other blackbox-algorithm-generated content, suppressing posts with links to keep you on their app as long as possible, selling your data, other extractive practices, etc), guess what? You can move your data to a different app and continue using it throughout the Atmosphere. (You can even host your data yourself if you feel so inclined.)

Why is this so powerful? On the individual level: as a user, you are empowered because your data—your account, your friend/follower connections, your posts, all the content you create—can’t be held hostage by a single tech platform. On the collective level: atproto app developers are incentivized to treat users better and to work cooperatively with each other in a way that current tech giants are not.

Traditional social media companies operate primarily on competition, monopolization, closed-off proprietary technologies, and profit extraction. The atproto ecosystem relies on and fosters collaboration, openness, transparency, and a higher degree of agency for both developers and users. (And, if you’re wondering, no, investors don’t yet seem to have grasped the real value of this total shift in the power dynamics of social media technology, so a lot of the Atmosphere is currently being built by open source developers who are not getting paid for their work but who are extremely passionate about it.)

Come check it out. Tell a couple of friends. Soon, we’ll wonder why we ever relied on Instagram.

Some key apps:

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