1025: The Open Web's second chance (w/ Dan Abramov)

**Dan Abramov** (0:00)
In terms of apps, from a user's perspective, it works exactly as today's web. You could imagine something like Reddit, Oneth Prado, or something like Stock Overflow, or something like GitHub. There is a project called Tangled. You could imagine something like Lastfm, but really any kind of social thing where you create something.
You create content in some formats, but the difference is that it lives in your folder. It's like everybody gets a folder and your stuff just goes into that folder, and then apps kind of sync it. So apps become consumers and the source of truth is actually in your folder.

**Scott Tolinski** (0:46)
Welcome to Syntax. Today we have Dan Abramov on, and you probably know Dan Abramov from his work on React. He worked at Bluesky for a while. He still is doing quite a bit of React stuff. It's interesting, but we have him on today to talk about AT Protocol or AT Proto. You may have heard of AT Proto as the protocol that is behind Bluesky.
We did an episode on it probably two years ago, when like maybe even three years ago when that first Bluesky hump came out. And it's a really interesting protocol and it can be used for so much more stuff. And I feel like it's kind of underrated. I know Dan feels like it's kind of underrated and really interesting. So we're going to talk about the technical bits behind all of it, what you can use it for. And he even says it's maybe Web 2.1 or Web 3, but the good one.

**Dan Abramov** (1:42)
Welcome, Dan, thanks for coming on. Hey, thank you for inviting me.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:47)
Yeah, give us the scoop of who you are and what you do. I know people probably know you, but just in case people aren't familiar.

**Dan Abramov** (1:56)
I don't think people know me anymore.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:58)
No?

**Dan Abramov** (1:59)
I've been kind of out of the loop. Yeah. But yeah, I guess I was involved with React for a bunch of years. I used to work on the React team at Facebook slash Meta.
Then later, I did some other open-source stuff like read React app and Redux.

**Scott Tolinski** (2:20)
Redux, yeah.

**Dan Abramov** (2:22)
Yeah. Then I worked at Bluesky for a couple of years, and then I just kind of had a sabbatical, and now I'm starting at Vercel on the Next.js team.

**Scott Tolinski** (2:35)
Wow.

**Wes Bos** (2:35)
So when did the Vercel transition happen?

**Dan Abramov** (2:38)
Just literally a couple of weeks ago.

**Scott Tolinski** (2:41)
That's cool. Ken, before we get into that protocol, can we ask you what you're working on there? Because I'm sure people are dying to know.

**Dan Abramov** (2:47)
Well, I'm on the Next.js team, so just making it better.

**Scott Tolinski** (2:52)
Cranking on that right on. All right, so at protocol, what is it and why should we care about why this is so interesting?

**Dan Abramov** (3:01)
I don't know. There's so much pressure in this question. I'm like, I don't know if I can convince it. To me, I think it fixes a lot of stuff.
In the Matrix, in the movie, there's this question like, have you ever felt that something is wrong with the world?
It's like this, but for the Internet.
Especially if you grew up with the Internet, I think you maybe remember it as this, maybe more lighthearted thing where you create a website, you post something to it, you can link to each other. It's very permissionless. It's very much like there's a spirit of openness and no walled gardens.
Then with time, in a sense, it's gotten more social like social networks and so on. So we've gotten shared spaces. But then these shared spaces, they feel like internet inside of internet, like different walled gardens, like Facebook or Twitter, where we're going to put our stuff there. I put my answers on Stack Overflow or my issues on GitHub, or my posts on Reddit or somewhere else. But then with time, these platforms, they kind of, they fatten up with everyone's content. And then they start doing, they're shutting down alternative clients, start showing ads everywhere, trying to milk, everything. And we can't really walk away from them because then we're going to erase everything that we created there. So in a sense, it's kind of like we put our stuff into somebody else's box, and then this box is just, it's not on the open web anymore. It's kind of, there's like a ghost of it on the open web, like the projections, like the HTML that you can hit through the servers. But in a sense, it's locked somewhere else. And the big thing about Prado is, it's kind of like a data layer for the web is how I like to think about it. So it's kind of like, what if that JSON that we usually put into other products into their boxes, what if the JSON just hung on the web, like the JSON was part of the web? Kind of like in the personal sites era, but you still can use apps, of course. So apps are kind of the consumption and production model, but it lives sort of like in everybody's... It's like if everybody had a job box folder, that all apps can kind of interact with, and then you can always leave an app, but your stuff is still going to be in that folder. And so other apps can kind of present it differently, or even write to it differently, and different apps can see each other's content and kind of interoperate. So yeah, I think of it as people-centric part of the web that is missing, that is necessary to fix these network effects where we get locked into platforms.