atproto legal
1<draft>
2(the below uses authoritative language for brevity but i, the author, know that my knowledge is very limited, and i am just speaking based on my perspective and its derivative thoughts. i very much welcome corrections and checks on what might sound dogmatically stated)as apps mature, they develop a need for explicit terms of service (ToS) and other formalizations of their existence / practice. this is both to build trust with their users and to provide legal safety nets for the app / platform to operate safely / legally (not that legal and safe are the same thing).atproto is complicated! its technically demanding enough to build accessible, compelling and useful applications on atproto that adhere to protocol ethos, but another challenge entirely to do so in a manner that is unambiguously legal / protected from massive liability.- what are my legal responsibilities as a platform maintainer (atproto or not) that hosts arbitrary user content?- to what extent do the idiosyncrasies / power of atproto affect these responsibilities?- who are the legal enforcing organizations relevant to my platform’s operation?
3
4these are just a few natural questions that have arisen personally (plyr.fm) as well as for those I’ve spoken to in similar positions (sprk.so). like myself, I don’t think most atproto devs are also booked up on law.atproto devs need resources for legal counsel^ this is the punchline. in no way am I suggesting that such resources exist, ripe for taking, anywhere in the world. i am just suggesting that:
5
6or atproto to thrive macroscopically, it needs to be “easy enough” to build safely
7
8it is extremely unclear what liabilities you expose yourself to as an atproto app builder (it seems like everyone outside of bsky thinks “i’m small enough that no one cares”, but clearly that cannot work in perpetuity if things go well)
9
10the cultivation of social infrastructure around technical movers/shakers on atproto is of similar or equal importance to the technical innovation itself.
11
12
13
14this was motivated by my experience drafting a ToS / privacy policy for plyr.fm, which immediately spawned more rabbit holes than I have witnessed in my startup / OSS maintenance career thus far (which isn’t saying that much tbh).
15
16I don’t have the answers, and I’m creating this post because I haven’t found anyone who pretends to yet!
17</draft>