ATProto Community Gathers at ATmosphere Conference to Build a Decentralized Social Web
The ATProto community, including Bluesky developers, met in Seattle to discuss decentralizing social media and taking back control from tech giants.
Matilda
ATProto Community Gathers at ATmosphere Conference to Build a Decentralized Social Web
Over the weekend, the first in-person gathering devoted to those building with the AT Protocol, or ATProto — the technology that powers Bluesky’s growing social network of 33 million-plus users — was held in Seattle. At the event, developers, engineers, founders, and even members of the Bluesky team, including CEO Jay Graber, were in attendance. Many in the community were meeting each other for the first time after having only ever communicated online. Image:Sean Gladwell / Getty Images But although Bluesky is the largest app built on ATProto at this time, the social network itself was not the ATmosphere Conference’s focus. Here, Bluesky was just another developer — albeit a prominent one, given its stewardship of ATProto, the social networking protocol that offers a framework for building a decentralized social network. Instead, the conference was dedicated to the protocol itself and its many possibilities, which include building not only other types of social apps, but also communiti…
