Decentralized Social Media at Scale with Dan Abramov…

About this episode

What if every app's data lived in one shared, open database that no company owns? Dan Abramov says that future already exists, and he spent two years building it. Season 3 of Señors at Scale opens with one of the most recognizable names in frontend. Dan Abramov is the co-creator of Redux, spent nearly a decade on the React core team at Meta, writes overreacted.io, and spent the last couple of years as an engineer at Bluesky working on the app and the AT Protocol. He is now at Vercel working on Next.js. In this episode Dan explains AT Protocol from first principles: why it is a specification and not a framework, how it splits hosting from apps, why your followers are not your data, and why he thinks Mastodon is a feudal kingdom passing messages on horses. He walks through migrating his own hosting to Eurosky, what it costs to run your own data server, and where a developer should start building. Then we get into Next.js, Turbopack vs Vite, the React Compiler, and why the creator of Redux has not needed a state manager in five years. Key Topics:- What AT Protocol is and why it is being brought into the IETF- The "everything folder": one repository per user, shared across all apps- AT Proto vs Mastodon and why message passing between instances does not scale- How a post from someone with 10 million followers actually flows through the network- Hosting, relays, PLC identity and the three things in your "passport"- How the Bluesky app itself is built (Go backend, React Native web frontend)- How companies make money when users own their data- Migrating your data hosting to Eurosky and the paper cuts along the way- did:plc vs did:web and what happens if you lose your domain- Why followers, likes and reposts are just links between JSON records- Running your own PDS on a VPS or Cloudflare Workers for close to free- Getting started: PDSLS, Tap, Constellation and building without a backend- Apps Dan wants to see on AT Proto and why cloning existing products is not enough- Vercel, Next.js and what Dan wants to fix- Turbopack vs Vite and the "no bundling in dev" bet- React Compiler as fine grained reactivity- Redux as a to-do list: where state should actually live- Book recommendation: Terence Tao's Analysis I (and its Lean companion) CONNECT WITH DAN🦋 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov🐙 GitHub: https://github.com/gaearon🌐 Blog: https://overreacted.io🌐 Website: https://danabra.mov FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE🎙️ Podcast: https://neciudan.dev/senors-at-scale📧 Newsletter: https://neciudan.dev/subscribe💼 Dan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neciudan💼 Show LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/senors-scale/📸 Show Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senorsatscale/📸 Dan's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neciudev ADDITIONAL RESOURCES- AT Protocol: https://atproto.com- "There are no instances in AT Proto" (Dan's blog post): https://overreacted.io- PDSLS repository explorer: https://pdsls.dev- Tangled (GitHub on AT Proto): https://tangled.org- Terence Tao, Analysis I Lean companion: https://github.com/teorth/analysis #ATProtocol #Bluesky #DanAbramov #React #Redux #NextJS #Decentralized #OpenWeb #WebDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #SeñorsAtScale 💬 Would you move your data hosting off Bluesky's default servers? Or does owning your own JSON not matter to you? Let me know below.