Episode

A Record of One's Own

Podcast
Fallthrough
Published
Sep 5, 2026
Duration seconds
2956
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://fallthrough.fm/87
Audio
https://media.transistor.fm/50372120/2177c1e3.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/fallthrough-7123066/episodes/a-record-of-one-s-own
Markdown
/podcast/fallthrough-7123066/a-record-of-one-s-own.md

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Summary

Matthew hosts this week, joined by Kris and by Bailey Townsend, an AT Protocol community ambassador who builds tools for the atmosphere. AT Proto is the protocol underneath Bluesky, and this is a conversation about what it actually is beyond a social network. Matthew moved his own account onto a personal data server he runs himself, which is how Bailey first turned up in his replies asking whether he meant to delete his rotation keys. From there the pair expand on what a PDS is: your data, your identity, and your own way of doing authentication. Along the way there is Tangled, Leaflet, Hubble quietly mirroring 24 million repositories, and the reality that it's just a giant, web scale database. We've got supporter content, of course! This week that includes a report from AT Protocol Community Day at the Recurse Center, the difference between a Bluesky feed and a list, Matthew confessing he has never liked a single post, SDKs and notorious OAuth, and why warranty history should be on an open protocol. Not a supporter yet? Fix that today by heading over to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe where you'll get not only extra content but also higher quality audio. Sign up today! If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GelJdfqWrtU. No episode of the aftershow this week. We'll have more aftershow episodes soon! In the meantime, catch up on previous episodes at https://break.show. Thanks for tuning in and happy listening! Table of Contents: Prologue (00:00:00) Chapter 1: How Matthew Ended Up Running His Own Server (00:02:19) Chapter 2: What AT Proto Is, and What Bailey Builds On It (00:04:37) Chapter 3: Owning Your Data, and Taking It With You (00:08:17) Chapter 4: Beyond Bluesky: Tangled, Leaflet, and Owning Your Posts (00:11:30) Chapter…