I outlined some initial thoughts in the first ever comment live on the site as to why I built oyste.rs. But I figured it’s best to make a separate post to go a little more in to my thought train.
In the beginning there was a library
I remember discovering ATProto a little late after the whole Twitter ordeal and Bluesky launch. A friend introduced it to me, and I didn’t really care for the twitter-like feed, but the protocol sort of stuck around with me, and I began thinking about what this would enable me to build. Around the same time I was getting pretty big in to Elixir, and noticed there wasn’t a comprehensive set of libraries available for ATProto (of which there is since many more! Notably Johanna Larsson’s blog has been very helpful.)
Exosphere was created as sort of a toolbox; first solving the identity and login problems so I could easily drop an ATProto login in my throw-away Phoenix apps, and then on to consuming the firehose. As this library grew, admittedly through sparring with Claude Code to learn the protocol and implementation details, I found myself looking for a real thing to use this in; both to identify gaps in the library, and also just to learn.
lobste.rs
I joined lobste.rs in 2017, just 2 years in to my career as a software engineer; and immediately found myself checking in daily to read about relevant topics and it honsetly definitely helped me grow. I love lobsters, I love pushcx’s live streams working on the code, and I love the community. However, with the rise of popularity of LLMs and their impact on our field, it seems that the AI debate has made tagging and topic boundaries blurry, with events like notable contributors leaving the site, and consistent meta arguments on the tags themselves.
This is what pushed me to build some more on ATProto, notably due to it’s labels mechanism, and the network model that really enables users to do with the data as they wish.
oyste.rs is born
With the prior art in mind I set out to build the simple link aggregator, with ATProto sign-in, and a functioning ranking system for posts and comments. That’s where we are today.
What is really to come is two large and important pieces:
- Community
Without a community, oyste.rs holds no value. Fostering and growing that community is hoenstly something new to me, and I’m scared and keen to see where that goes. On the other hand however I do have this unsettling feeling of where do these users come from? I don’t want to position oyste.rs as a “jump ship from lobste.rs if you want X or Y” because disrupting communities is no way to build them. At the same time I have no personal interest in a community that is outside of technology. Whilst oyste.rs could become the next hot spot for ATProto knitting and crafts communities, I just wouldn’t have the personal motivation to run that.
- The real ATProto wins
Labellers, open moderation, deeper integration to the network (why do we have to keep posting http links, over DIDs directly) are all exciting things. This is where I’m going to be spending my time and attention mostly, along with fulfilling the moderation needs if the community grows.
Closing remarks
If you take any interest to this, please do reach out. I find I’m a very community driven person, and hearing interest, thoughts, or feedback from people is what captures my attention to keep working at this. Feel free to DM me on Bluesky or email me at hi [at] tobbbles.cloud