Interesting ideas in this series working towards private data in ATProto. I understand in prior discussion on collaboration in the rs spec, there hasn’t been a conclusive answer/direction or maybe it’s out of scope. I think some of these metaphors are useful and maybe can be a source of ideas.
These are roughly ordered by complexity. Personal data is simple, it’s just you, your PDS, and maybe an application or two acting on your behalf. Gated content is one-to-many with a clear gatekeeper. Social sharing introduces some dynamism around who is able to view your stuff, how they interact with it, and who can see their interactions.
Groups are many-to-many. They have dynamic membership - people join & leave, admins change, ownership of the group changes. Many users are contributing content to a shared context. Users in these groups may want to view their groups in any number of different apps.
My hunch is that if we can design a system that works for groups, the simpler modalities will fall out naturally. Groups force you to confront the hardest questions about ownership, membership, and access control. So that’s the modality I’ll focus on in this post