Luke Kanies discusses the potential of Bluesky's Atmosphere Protocol (ATProto) to form the foundation for a new generation of applications, especially for recording reviews. He highlights the need for interoperable applications built on public standards, contrasting this with current proprietary models where data ownership is retained by companies like Yelp.

Kanies envisions a "local first" approach where users control their data, enabling diverse applications to utilize the same information for different purposes. He emphasizes the critical need for handling both public and private data, suggesting that current applications cater primarily to "influencers" and leave out users who prefer privacy or selective sharing. The ATProto protocol's strength lies in its identity system, but its current public-only design presents challenges for implementing private data features.

The ATProto community is working on "permissioned data" solutions, though Kanies argues for a simpler "private data" designation. He expresses concern that the proposed design for handling private data may be overly complex to build upon, especially given ATProto's existing public-only architecture. The goal is a system that allows users to easily choose between entirely public, entirely private, or group-specific sharing of their data.