- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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I mean…yeah. The guy who created Bluesky is the same guy who created Twitter originally. What makes you think anything would be different? I’m honestly surprised they’re even humoring the idea of decentralization.
He also left Bluesky in 2024 after it didn’t become the libertarian techbro wankfest he envisioned and was instead heavily populated by folks who didn’t want to slob Elon’s knob.
He publicly distanced himself but Bluesky’s ownership is very opaque and they do dishonest PR very well so I would not be at all surprised if Dorsey still owns a part of it.
And he fucked a potato after peeling it and putting it in a sandwich baggy!
Are you asking people to send you photos of that?
sure and he left.twitter, him ostensibly leaving doesn’t make it any better. The entire way its set up is the failure, it’s yet another shitstain on the internet.
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I do think the people behind it like the idea of data portability and decen, just not enough to compromise their business for it.
This seems to be the closest to a reasoned argument in this thread. Realistically, what should they be doing differently?
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I really really REALLY don’t get people who leave one company turned bad to turn to another company trying the same thing.
They’ll be the good guys for sure!
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Yeah, but it has a good UI and isn’t a massive echo chamber so what cha gonna do?
Normies just get screeched at by tankies and nerds and leave 🤷♂️
lol, how is it not a massive echo chamber when that has been the constant complaint in countless articles that keep getting made fun of instead of being taken seriously on Bluesky.
Because the most common people complaining about Bluesky fall into 1 of 2 groups:
People upset that Bluesky isn’t tolerating their behavior (mostly Nazis and transphobes angry about the community not letting it become Truth Social 2 or allowing transphobes to harass users, but also certain leftist groups, much like the tankies here on Lemmy)
People upset that the infrastructure isn’t FOSS or some similar complaint about it not being enough (purity test behavior like in every comment section on Lemmy)
And people saying that Bluesky is an echo chamber tend to fall very heavily into group 1.
Bluesky is in its essence a corpo methadone for the Twitter addicts… its not freedom, its a packaged, tailored simulacrum of it.
IMO this is unfair and conspiratorial. The people behind Bluesky have been quite clear about where they are trying to go (i.e. not simply replace Twitter), some of those people have a lot of credibility in this area, built up over years. Maybe they make different assumptions about tech and user preferences but I see no reason to assume evil intentions.
From the second article:
But I’m not on Bluesky and I don’t have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will
Fair enough. But, as you know already, AT Protocol is not chained to Bluesky. Other things are already being built on it (Blacksky for instance). Sure, the startup costs of federation are high, but that was a technical choice. To insist that it’s all a plot to become the next evil Twitter continues to feel a bit swivel-eyed to me.
This is yet another version of the ridiculous “we’re decentralized in theory so it doesn’t matter that we aren’t in practice” argument which the article does address. In practice it is chained because they are in complete control of the real-world use of it.
People are even worried about Google’s control over Android recently and Google has much less power over AOSP than Bluesky Corp. has over ATproto.
What is swivel-eyed is believing that Venture Capitalists won’t do the thing they’ve historically always done in the past when they’re in control.
they are in complete control of the real-world use of it
They’re not. I mentioned Blacksky.
As I understand it, their endgame is that Bluesky will be a big fish in a pond of other fish, and that the best way to get that fishpond is to make Bluesky as good a product as possible, hence the (limited) VC money.
As a strategy it has risks but so does the alternative. To make the obvious comparison, UX on the fediverse is rubbish, with an incomprehensible onboarding funnel, amateurish design, servers that keep disappearing. There’s a reason Bluesky has eaten the fediverse’s lunch.
With respect, I think people here are making this into a sterile religious war when really it’s a disagreement about strategy. Some of the people who vouch for Bluesky I have been following for years. They want exactly the same things as most people here. Personally, I see no reason to question their intentions.
I’ll take the “eeewww ugly UI” risk over the “high barriers to decentralization” risk.
Blacksky does not fundamentally change the situation. They’ve got a yearly budget in excess of $100,000 and roughly 0.01% of the users. Bluesky can make all those users completely disappear from the other 99.99% with the press of a button and in the case of Link they did exactly that.
As for the “let’s trust the Bluesky team” idea, that’s of course exactly what got everyone into this mess with Twitter. The leadership can change. The investors can push them to do what they want no matter how great people the public facing team may seem to be (and honestly some of the things they’ve done has not inspired trust).
OK I get all that and it’s not to be dismissed. But their product is better than what we have here. That’s why Blacksky built upon it and not upon this, despite the cost. The excessive centralization seems to be more of a human problem than a technical one. Humans take the path of least resistance and Bluesky’s resources have allowed it to make a product that the fediverse will never be able to compete with.
Personally, I get what I want here (I don’t use Bluesky) but it’s pretty clear to me that I’m not representative (in caring about the principle of decentralization) and neither are you. I’m a pragmatist by nature. Bluesky and AT Proto are an obvious improvement on Twitter. If they have the potential to be a version of decentralization that actually takes off and goes mainstream (because let’s be serious, the fediverse is not doing that), then personally I would take that win. It hasn’t happened yet but personally I’m not going to spit on it in advance like everyone here is doing.
the startup costs of federation are high, but that was a technical choice.
that tells a lot.
The main argument against bsky is that they’re still holding all of your data, unless you self host your own server.
I don’t actually see how Lemmy is much different. Most users are not self hosting on Lemmy either, you’re trusting your data to a 3rd party. The main difference seems to be that there’s much more centralisation on bsky.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to be wary of any service, be ready to delete your account if it goes to shit or whatever it is you need to do to feel safe.
But right now, I like blue sky. I’ve had far more positive interactions on there than I ever had on twitter (even before musk took it over), the lists feature that lets you pre-emptively block entire swathes of dickheads is a game changer (I just block one group, anyone Maga) and I’m having a good time.
I expect I’ll get downvoted for this but honestly I don’t care, the world has gone to shit far too much for me to give a crap about what internet strangers think over my own health and wellbeing and right now I’m having a good time and will not apologise for it.
The second that stops, I’ll be leaving bsky.
You’re right that the issue isn’t just trusting a third party in general, that’s how it is for most users on Lemmy or Mastodon too.
The difference isn’t whether you personally run a server. It’s whether the network depends on a single company.
Bluesky operating basically all of the infrastructure on that network means:
- they decide moderation policy and what content gets boosted or hidden for everyone
- they alone can change the rules for access and in general (ads, pay to be seen etc.)
- they can de-prioritize or cut off third-party infrastructure
- if the company fails, pivots or is pressured legally (I’m sure the current US government could never do such a thing), the network can effectively collapse
Here on Lemmy there is no single company that has all that power. If your admin goes bad there are real options to move to and the network will still exist even if they shut their service down. You also have much more leverage over here because you have those options and no operator is drawing in tens or hundreds of millions from investors who get to make the decisions.
I agree. But it’s a bit scary even for Lemmy, given that all the most active communities are currently hosted on the same 1 or 2 biggest instances.
Also, see what recently happened to LemmyNSFW…
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Bluesky is federated though. Like, you can selfhost every part of it and communicate with bsky users just fine: see wafrn and blacksky.
You can argue that it’s not decentralised because one instance has 99% of the users though
No, the main argument is that the main relay is, and for the foreseeable future will be operated by bluesky. This means that bluesky can decide what is and isn’t visible, but that’s not my biggest issue: to me the bigger problem is that bluesky sees everything that everyone says or thinks about anything.
Yes, it is possible to change. As TFA says:
But every counter-argument to the concerns above rests on the same foundation: technically, users can leave. Technically, you can self-host. Technically, you can run your own relay. The capability exists at every layer. But people don’t do these things. They never have with any protocol. Not email, not RSS, not XMPP. The default wins. Always.
It doesn’t matter that a few can be free: the vast majority goes where the lowest friction is because they have their life to live, and the lowest friction leads to the centralized bluesky
It’s popularity had nothing to do with the protocol and making cries to such does nothing.
Make fediverse competitive client wise, and stop screeching at peoples in the center when they call Gavin progressive 🤷♂️. It’s not the tech that keeps people away, it’s the users.
The cries are about how Bluesky uses it and implements the required infrastructure, not the protocol itself.
Agreed. They’re both open on the internet and the data is in many repositories. Moot point (OPs’, not yours).
It obviously matters whether the data and control is mostly in one company’s hands, not just whether it is in “many repositories”.
Do you not get ‘open on the internet’? All the three letter agencies hoover the data up, your countries equivalents do as well, other companies. It’s only a bit in one companies hands, because it’s ‘open on the internet’, just like xitter, facebook, tiktok, their walled gardens don’t stop state level actors, just us plebs (a bit). That just leaves control (in real time), some power, some money there, but long term it’s the data that counts.
I don’t think you’re even talking about the points the article makes… You probably wouldn’t want them selling your data either but this is more about avoiding the kind of fate Twitter had.
I’ve run into people like that on Bluesky much more than on the fediverse. They do of course exist on both.
With the fediverse it IS the tech. Lack of recommendation engines, and overall more sluggish experience compared to established social media does deter a lot of people away. Some things might change, but lot of stuff that makes social media better for most people is against what fediverse wants
Why would people here consider Bluesky when Mastodon already exists?
Bluesky built the platform that people actually want.
Mainly an algorithmic feed and more relaxed and diverse userbase.
They captured some hype but nowadays you often see people complain that the userbase isn’t diverse and that all they talk about is US politics, there’s lots of dormant accounts and the active user statistics have been looking pretty bleak since early 2025.
Assuming they don’t actually have 100M in funding already secured (which i doubt) I think there’s some doubt over how long they’ll actually be able to continue operating this way.
If twitter but with less right wing voices is what the people wanted then they will be sorely disappointed when bluesky enshittifies with no real recourse to prevent it. If everyone just hops on over to blacksky or whatever other 3rd party relay exists, they’ve still got the same problem. All the power resides in a single entity. Bluesky’s basic defense of their platform is that if they enshittify then ATProto allows some other benevolent corporation to take their place but has one major flaw. Corporations are not benevolent
You’re assuming the only way to run the network is to be benevolent? Do you think there is no way they can raise enough revenue to cover costs without enshittifying? Normal people have a pretty high tolerance for monetization. Premium subs, ads in app purchases will probably easily cover running costs and I wouldnt consider that to be enshittified.
Also the amount of right wing voices on the platform doesnt matter. The tools make it easy to block them out.
I am skeptical that it can grow to be a network the size of twitter, be ran as a for-profit, and not enshittify. I can’t think of a single example that hasn’t. Bluesky has ran as a public benefit corporation so far, but it has to keep the lights on somehow.
It took twitter years to run somewhat profitably. Even then Twitter was enshittified before Musk bought it. Premium subs are probably the least enshittified way to raise revenue, but ads and algorithms meant to raise engagement towards those ads are very much enshittification in action. That “normal people” have a high level of monetization they are willing to tolerate, is just grease on the wheels toward enshittification.
I admittedly have a limited understanding of the full operation of ATProto so please correct me if wrong. Appviews/lists/feeds are supposed to be the defense of ad/algorithm enshittification, anyone could write an appview with a different algorithm.
And this is why I assume that the network can only be run without enshittification, is by a benevolent provider. If Bluesky becomes hostile to an Appview that allows users to bypass ads or engagement farming, users can move their PDS to another relay that isn’t hostile to it. But there still remains the underlying reason that Bluesky would theoretically have become hostile to it. I don’t see how blacksky, for instance, wouldn’t also have to eventually take the same steps.
public benefit corporation This means nothing. Its a marketing term. Corporations do not have to maximize shareholder value.
Majority of the companies dont enshitify, we only notice the ones who do. The hosting costs wont be the majority of the costs it will be staff mainly moderation. Because bluesky has better tools for users to moderation it might lower that burdern. All that being said I hate bluesky and everything it is. It feels like its wearing open source decentralized culture as a skin to lure people in.
Network effects.
Adulation of for profit big tech assholes is near ubitious.
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This is exactly the dynamic the article was describing: concerns about power concentration get answered with lists of theoretical protocol features instead of engaging with how the network actually operates. Listing technical escape hatches doesn’t address who controls the dominant infrastructure in practice.
The overwhelming majority of users rely on hosted PDSes, the main relay, and the default appview. Whoever controls those layers controls visibility, discovery, moderation signals, and reach. That’s where practical power sits. Doesn’t matter whether migration is technically possible under ideal conditions because if you’ll need it they won’t be ideal.
Acquisitions and policy changes can happen quickly. Tools that exist “yesterday” are irrelevant if users don’t act before control consolidates, and history shows that most don’t. Claiming decentralization can wait until the last possible moment ignores how network effects and defaults entrench power long before any formal lock-in occurs.
It’s also worth noting that the original article isn’t even arguing “the fediverse is better,” yet the response immediately reframes the debate as a comparison. Even if we entertain that framing, the situations aren’t symmetrical. Yes, a fediverse instance can block migrations or misbehave but no single party in the fediverse comes close to the infrastructural dominance Bluesky Corp currently holds across relays, appviews, and user gravity. An individual Mastodon instance misbehaving affects its users. Bluesky Corp fully controls the experience of over 99% of the users on the protocol and so holds the power to shape the experience of the entire network.
The issue isn’t whether both systems have theoretical weaknesses. It’s where systemic leverage concentrates in practice. And ATProto’s architecture, particularly the cost and complexity of running the more demanding components that need to have a global view of the network, structurally favors concentration at those layers.
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The features are theoretical in the sense that there is no real guarantee they’d be possible after BSky corp changes their behavior and that they are in use only in the least significant way possible, for tiny and irrelevant numbers of users. But of course this is just restating the obvious again. For a network truly to be shielded against this sort of thing it should be decentralized already before.
See this for how constellation makes no difference.
I also wrote a more complete thing about constellation here: https://discuss.systems/@ricci/116132447206279469
In terms of how prepared atproto users are to use adversarial migration, I did a point-in-time survey a couple months ago: https://rob.leaflet.pub/3m7isflo7ls23
I suspect the situation has slightly improved since then, as some or all of the migration tools offer to set up rotation keys for you, but I haven’t had time time to do a followup.
@ricci@discuss.systems Thanks for the link to the explanation, that thread in general and the survey! All were quite insightful.
Insanely well said. It seems like the goal with much of the discourse is just “my choice is right and everything else is wrong, and I’ll work backwards from there”. Not everyone uses social media the same way, not everyone has the same goals, not everyone wants the same features, not everyone values the same levels of privacy. And the running narrative with differing opinions on this seems to just be base-level tribalism. Just look at the insults here, lobbed solely because someone made an account with a social media platform that doesn’t align with your preferences.
I’m sorry, but it’s like you haven’t read the post:
But every counter-argument to the concerns above rests on the same foundation: technically, users can leave. Technically, you can self-host. Technically, you can run your own relay. The capability exists at every layer. But people don’t do these things. They never have with any protocol. Not email, not RSS, not XMPP. The default wins. Always.
It is always technically possible to do differently. It’s computers after all: anything can be coded. And most people won’t because they have their life to live. What matters is the default, and all the incentives point to the default being shittier as time goes on.
The most crucial point is the relay. Yes, appviews can work without, but then you miss everything that is happening which is probably the number one reason people go to bluesky rather than the fedi. Relays are a fundamental part of what makes bluesky attractive and they require large capital to run and maintain, so it all points to bluesky still running the main one that most will connect to
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It costs $34 a month for an experiment. It doesn’t cost anywhere near that for a node that is running, used by thousands/millions of people, ingesting millions of pdses. Don’t be misled by a nice experiment. You need servers, backups, people to run that. See what real world deployment looks like: a little bit under 100k a year for the only independent full stack.
There’s no need to self host as there’s already public third party instances you can switch to.
Yes it’s possible. It’s just not the default. That’s the issue
it’s not something the fediverse is immune to either.
true, although no one said the contrary
This is just incorrect. RSS is probably one of the least centralised protocols right now, it’s not even federated, which makes me question why the author even included it as an example
The argument isn’t whether something exists, it’s what people use: rss is amazing but it’s far from being mainstream. The default path to following isn’t rss, which is the point (and the problem).
It’s not an argument against federation. It’s an argument to look beyond the niceness of a tech.
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you mean the social network whose CEO told users to simply stop posting on their platform when she refused to ban a publicly known racist and transphob from the platform? that social network? The social network whose users decided segregating themselves was the best way to use said platform? that one?
Bluesky is a joke and its userbase are the punchline.
Bluesky is a joke and its userbase are the punchline.
Succinctly said, I love it
Pretty funny to see this here because this blog post seems like written with AI assistance (“it’s not just x, it’s y”, etc.) and also its author advocates for Nostr instead.
(“it’s not just x, it’s y”, etc.)
Keep in mind, the AIs learned from us. So that’s a thing in AI responses because humans use that structure. Same with em dashes.
Yes but in this specific case the author owns up to using Claude for “editing” of the blog entries.
Fair enough. I guess I’m just overly sensitive to the broad-strokes assumption that any given thing is an AI “smoking gun” since I’m an em dash user.
Not much substance to your comment… do you agree with it?
