putting the @ in atproto

I sense a growing consensus among the atproto community that the current Bluesky branded login flow is not the right path forward as the ecosystem and protocol matures. This largely reflects the core ethos of atproto that no single entity should be in charge, yet we can't ignore the current power dynamics playing out as Bluesky remains a singularity in the network. Every login to an app or a fun exploration (like tic tac toe or guest books) on atproto associates and legitimizes Bluesky as the authority of the network. This has as much to do with branding like "login with your Bluesky handle" as much as it has to do with redirecting to bsky.social/oauth/authorize and BlueSky's account creation. Let's look across the ATmosphere to see the language and branding folks are using:

It's not surprising that almost every example above mentions Bluesky in some form, either explicitly or though example. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with this, in fact it's quite understandable, I think it's emblematic of the current state of the network. Just as interesting is the other terminology being used like "ATProto Handle", "ATmosphere Account", "custom domain", "Handle" and "Internet Handle".

Introducing Internet Handles

The last phrase is interesting because it refers to @danabra.mov's recent writing about Internet Handle, which has seeded much discussion around unifying the branding of atproto authentication. Internet Handle pulls on the idea that every account is referenced by a unique internet domain and atproto lets you bring that domain across apps (well at least any app that interops with atproto). The part about internet handle that I like is the way that it reframes how adding a period inside @handles demonstrates that it can potentially be used across apps. As Dan elaborates, it's this initial contradiction between how a "'handle' always belongs to an app but here it’s an 'internet handle' like an 'internet site'", that someone is confronted with that makes it an interesting idea. And it's certainly starting to catch on!

On second thought

I'm not entirely sold that internet handle is the right framing and branding. For example, look at early mockups where @ is overtaking "Internet Handle" as the core idea and branding. It's the original branding of aproto's website too.

By @natalie.sh here .

By @tessa.germnetwork.com here .

I think there's something deeper lurking – that internet handle is throwing the baby out with the bath water. It wants atproto to become functionally universal, which conflates the potential of ubiquity with a sprinkle of domination/saviorism (at least that's how I read posts like this). While there is nothing wrong with large aspirations, the internet is unfathomably large and atproto is far from ubiquitous, even compared to other auth protocols like OpenID. This makes atproto claiming to be the internet handle feel disingenuous at best and confusing and exclusionary at worst. If a handle is an alias for a DID, then can it have wider meaning outside of atproto? Is there a reason other social protocols are closed off from interoperating in the future? If there is something to internet handle, maybe it's an adjacent protocol?

Furthermore, let's not conflate atproto potentially becoming an internet standard as justification that it will become ubiquitous. It carries a hubris that reminds me of Web3's forward-looking proclamation of creating a new web that will liberate us from the centralization of Web 2.0 if we all leave Web 2.0 and hop onto the blockchain (i.e. displacement as a theory of change). How did that co-option turn out?

The politics of connection

In some faintly ways similar to Web3, atproto positions itself as liberating us from siloed social media platforms that dispossess us of our data and identity, imprison our attention in infinitely scrolling feeds, surveil our every interaction to find the perfect advisement to show, and feudally moderate our speech. It proclaims that the protocol will let us own our data and identity, pick and create our own feeds, chose different apps to interact with such data, and provide tools for governance and moderation.

Hurrah!

But, at the same time, I get the sense that there is a little too much faith that just the protocol will bring forth such liberation or at the very least stop bad things from happening.

As an aside, one such example is the conflation between adversarial PDS migration being possible for technically literate folks and everyone inherently owning their data. The reality is, at the time of this writing, that 99.6% of people don't have a rotation key making adversarial migration impossible. Without PDS host selection (e.g. Blacksky, Northsky, etc.), backups, and rotation keys becoming ubiquitous for anyone during account selection (and for existing users), proclamations of data ownership feel a little meaningless, even if such an characteristic is technically novel. Until then, such aspects will continue to reinforce the power dynamics that bluesky leverages.

I worry that such technological faith without a guiding emancipatory politics is vulnerable to co-option and reproducing the systems it initially aims to oppose. Without such we are vulnerable to infighting and giving the big bads a seat at the table.

View post on Bluesky

We are fighting against the commodification and extraction of our connections with others and our communities. For many, nostalgia of the old web is rooted in a time the interactions we used to communicate like linking, liking, and commenting were sincere acts of personal expression. It was a time before tech companies figure out how to commodify our social interactions through ads and feeds. We need to treat connection in digital spaces as the most sacred of interactions. We must protect what is left from being commodified, we must do our best to reclaim it.

The reason that @ stands out to me is that it has become our symbol of digital connection. Both historically how it became enshrined in email addresses and across social media, but also literal sense, @ is the literal key we press to tag, reply, and cc. I can't write this piece without the handle dropdown accidentally popping up – reminding me that maybe there is someone else worth calling into this conversation. And that's an important leverage point of atproto, the same people I can tag on bluesky, I can tag in this leaflet post, and I should be able to tag on any other atproto app. Let's make the @ ubiquitous across them, let's reclaim and elevate such a symbol.

Now contrast this with the framing of an internet handle – one that focuses on technical aspects around the uniqueness of domains and how that relates to our cross-app identity. The thing about domains (besides the discourse on whether people know what they are) is they tend point to places not people. The difference between an email address/domain and a handle is that I am not an address, nor is referring to my address really referring to me. A handle being prefixed with @ has come to signify such a difference.

Wrapping up

Ultimately I'm not sure what we should call handles or what the best branding for atproto's login flow is. So let's make sure the right people are researching this and to include accessibility and non-english speakers into this process. It is clear to me, however, that an unspoken politics and potential symbol is emerging out of this conversation.

It's likely some folks will read this and think branding isn't as important as making compelling things. While I sympathize with the thought that most people are likely not joining atproto for moral reasons, I also don't see moments like this as fleshing out a marketing gimmick. I see it as a moment to reflect on our political values and figure out how to articulate and embed it into what we're building. In such precarious times, putting our heads down to blindly engineer a way forward without an ethics of care and understanding the power dynamics playing out will likely lead us back to building the very thing we were trying to avoid.