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Fediverse vs Atmosphere: what is actually different?

Short answer: The Fediverse and the Atmosphere are two different open-social directions. The Fediverse usually refers to services that communicate through ActivityPub, with independent servers exchanging social activities. The Atmosphere refers to the ecosystem around ATProto, often associated with Bluesky, where identity, data hosting, relays, feeds, and apps can be separated differently. Both aim to reduce one-platform lock-in, but they make different tradeoffs. Neither automatically solves privacy, moderation, safety, portability, or product design.

Why we chose this

TouchGrass compares the Fediverse and the Atmosphere because people should not need a protocol map to understand their social choices.

Open social web language can get muddy fast. One person says “federation” and means ActivityPub. Another says “open social web” and means ATProto. Someone else means Solid, ActivityPods, personal data stores, account migration, or public post syndication. These are related conversations, but not the same promise.

TouchGrass wants a safer, open social home for real life. That means the product promise starts with people: friends, circles, profiles, posts, photos, writing, recommendations, and clear audience choices. Protocols matter when they support those things and create exits from platform lock-in.

The comparison should not dunk on either system. The real lesson is that different open-social systems choose different tradeoffs.

How this works on TouchGrass

TouchGrass builds around intentional social context. It supports public, friends, and circles visibility, profiles, posts, long-form writing, photos and albums, recommendations, friends, and circles. It avoids videos, algorithmic feed pressure, public like counts, infinite scroll, and engagement traps.

That gives TouchGrass a different starting point from many social products. The goal is not to maximize public engagement. The goal is to make a safe, open social home for real life, with better exits and less platform lock-in.

ActivityPub and the Fediverse are one layer of possibility. ATProto and the Atmosphere are another. Solid and ActivityPods point toward other data and identity patterns. Private sharing is yet another layer, and it needs different safety language.

Our feature status page shows which protocol and portability features are available now.

Worth knowing

Public social systems often involve public data. Limited-audience sharing still has limits, including screenshots, copying, recipient misuse, and remote-server or remote-system behavior.

Portability can involve identity, posts, media, followers, social graphs, archives, moderation state, and app-specific features.

FAQ
Is the Fediverse ActivityPub?

Mostly, in common use. The Fediverse often refers to services using ActivityPub, but people may use the term broadly. It is safest to define what you mean.

Is the Atmosphere ATProto?

The Atmosphere is the ecosystem around ATProto. Bluesky is the most visible service associated with it, but the ecosystem idea is broader than one app.

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