Did that require an entire new protocol though? I am 100% sure that if Twitter, Facebook and all the other platforms decided that they want to offer a way to move around accounts they could do it.

Maybe, coordination is the problem. What does that data look like, what does the target look like, can they be transformed?

ATProto has lexicon, which are more about social coordination than schemas for data correctness

https://pfrazee.com/blog/lexicon-guidance

The protocol is much more than data portability, it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point. Imagine if FB also let you tap into the event stream or produce your own event stream other FB users could listen to in the official FB app. That would be a pretty awesome requirement for all social media apps, yea?

https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers

> it essentially turns the global social media system into a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point.

Don’t we already have that and is called “the web”? It’s already a giant distributed system anyone can participate in at any point.

What are we really gaining here?

A shared event bus, lexicon for coordination, apps that store user data in the users database, separation of client from app data

if they decided to, sure they could. they don't want to and never will.

I am not debating that. But this same reasoning applies to @at or any other implementation. You have to be willing to implement the features and use the protocol. So I still don’t see why this is any different.

You keep asking questions, rejecting answers, and then saying you don't understand.

Perhaps it is time to read more about the protocol directly instead of asking questions on HN to poke holes in it from a position of ignorance.