The AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol, or atproto) is a standard for public conversation and an open-source framework for building social apps.

It creates a standard format for user identity, follows, and data on social apps, allowing apps to interoperate and users to move across them freely. It is a federated network with account portability.

Source: Bluesky

Bluesky is a social app that is designed to not be controlled by a single company. We’re creating a version of social media where it’s built by many people, and it still comes together as a cohesive, easy-to-use experience. We’ve done this by building Bluesky on the AT Protocol, an open source toolbox for building social apps that can all talk to each other.

We want modern social media and public conversation online to work more like the early days of the web, when anyone could put up a blog or use RSS to subscribe to several blogs. We believe this will unlock a new era of experimentation and innovation in social media. Researchers and communities will have the ability to jump in to help solve the problems social networks currently face, and developers will be able to experiment with many new forms of interaction.

Traditional social networks are often closed platforms with a central authority. There’s a small group of people who control those companies, and they have total control over how users can use the platform and what developers can build. On these platforms, as a user, if you try to leave, you have to start over from scratch without the connections you built there or the content you made. As a developer, if you try to build a new app, you have to overcome network effects to rebuild the social graph from scratch, and if you try to build on the APIs of these companies they can cut you off and kill your company in the blink of an eye. As a creator, you might spend years building an audience only to lose access to it when the platform changes the rules on you.

Source: Bluesky Website