Yeah except there’s no guarantee of structured data there! With AT, each record is specified using a corresponding lexicon—making for much more straightforward interop.
> There is seemingly nothing in the AT protocol that prevents sites from defederating and enabling vendor lock-in, just like how every other social media site has switched to requiring you to log in to see links.
And that’s fine! Any site can choose to do whatever they please—but the underlying AT records always remain accessible to other consumers (apps, users, …).
> I imagine these types of users will be effectively blocked due to spam filtering.
Blocked by whom? If the relay (which pulls records from your PDS) “blocks” your PDS, you can simply switch to one that doesn’t. The beauty of AT infra is every piece of it can be run separately. That’s “meaningful” decentralization.
>Blocked by whom? If the relay (which pulls records from your PDS) “blocks” your PDS, you can simply switch to one that doesn’t.
Blocked by pretty much everyone, in the case of email. If most people use gmail or hotmail, and these mail providers block mail from new domains regardless of DMARC/DKIM/etc. then you are effectively blocked from sending email to most people. It's inevitable that this happens because there is no sybil resistance built in to the network layer, so providers have to be blocky to prevent spam.
> The beauty of AT infra is every piece of it can be run separately. That’s “meaningful” decentralization.
So kind of like how in the web, every website can be run separately?
You can switch, but everyone else won't coordinate to switch at the same time. So you have been deplatformed. It is the same with the web, where if you get banned from a forum (perhaps one that changes its rules to suit sponsors), you can switch to using a forum that no one uses due to network effects.
Yeah except there’s no guarantee of structured data there! With AT, each record is specified using a corresponding lexicon—making for much more straightforward interop.
> There is seemingly nothing in the AT protocol that prevents sites from defederating and enabling vendor lock-in, just like how every other social media site has switched to requiring you to log in to see links.
And that’s fine! Any site can choose to do whatever they please—but the underlying AT records always remain accessible to other consumers (apps, users, …).
> I imagine these types of users will be effectively blocked due to spam filtering.
Blocked by whom? If the relay (which pulls records from your PDS) “blocks” your PDS, you can simply switch to one that doesn’t. The beauty of AT infra is every piece of it can be run separately. That’s “meaningful” decentralization.