ICYMI: two days ago, we announced what we've been working on for the past few months - the reception has been amazing. 💜

We're super excited to start our closed alpha in just ten days!

Really nice to see this!

When we say "user-owned," most of the time individual users don't actually want to run their own infrastructure. But a group of researchers banding together to run infra BY and FOR users like themselves — maybe that's what user agency meant all along 🫶

If you’ve seen me trying not to reveal what I’ve been working on the last few months, well, here it is 🎉

Our first big offering - aside from Atmosphere account hosting - is personal websites for researchers!

Drop your must-haves, preferences, ideas, or questions about personal/prof sites below 🧪🧬💻

The most difficult challenge about hosting Atmosphere accounts for researchers is... deciding how to define "researcher".

This is a big topic that we want to be transparent about and get community input on. More below from @mathewlowry.eurosky.social:

The social internet — for science!

I'm super excited to see @aster.id launching. It's an Atmosphere service provider (like @eurosky.social) for researchers, hosted by your friends at the @modalfoundation.eurosky.social.

Why does it matter? Thread time! 🧵

Thrilled that Aster.id has launched, and very happy for the Modal Foundation to be supporting in an incubation role. modalfoundation.leaflet.pub/3mwqgvxl5a22a

So excited for this!! The idea for Aster was sparked in conversations in Vancouver at @atmosphereconf.org and now after a few months we're launching it! It's a real labor of love - grateful to be part of the wonderful team spanning @modalfoundation.eurosky.social @eurosky.social @atproto.science

This is going to be big, kudos to the @aster.id team.

We can just transform research, together 🤝

#wecanjustdothings

Exciting. If you're a researcher and still don't know about about #ATScience, it's time to get up to speed by reading this thread and following the accounts mentioned.

Oh this is exciting and backed by a murderer’s row of atproto knowers. Makes perfect sense for science to be embracing the protocol like this.

Congrats to @aster.id & @atproto.science team on the launch of Aster ID: accounts for researchers as a non-profit service, hosted on the open web.

And incubated by @modalfoundation.eurosky.social

The modern research ecosystem of online tools and communities is controlled by for-profit companies.

But we think that researchers should be the priority - not the product.

So, we're announcing Aster ID: not-for-profit Atmosphere account hosting for researchers.