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How decentralized is Bluesky/ATProto? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 days ago by potat@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(I rewrote the title seven times, I'm just going with this)

I tried Bluesky because of its growing popularity, and I'm confused about its supposedly decentralized nature. Yes, you can "own" your account with a custom domain, but everything else is centralized onto the one instance which is Bluesky - there's no federation or anything like that (?) so I don't see why people promote it as being anti-big corporation even though it may become that at this rate.

With Mastodon/ActivityPub, federated instances connect through the underlying software that they all share. Heck, you can even communicate with other software like Lemmy through the ActivityPub protocol. Sure, I guess you don't "own" your account/likes/etc, but I think it's way better than being locked in to solely one instance and not having the ability to switch if the one your using doesn't appeal to you in some way.

I'm sure I'm missing and/or an incorrect on some information about all this, so I'm really just hoping someone can explain it in a way that I understand.

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[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

they're using decentralized like it's a marketing term hoping to draw in people who are sick of the enshitification we get from the likes of reddit and facebook.

bluesky has already enshitified imo ever since they started censoring gazan users for reporting on the genocide by pretending it's all spam.

[–] mrks@programming.dev 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

bluesky has already enshitified imo ever since they started censoring gazan users for reporting on the genocide by pretending it's all spam.

Do you have more info on that?

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 days ago

Bluesky is apparently deleting the accounts of Palestinians in Gaza under the guise of “spam.” Requests to correct this have so far gone unanswered. https://t.co/vbBfz8TFL2 pic.twitter.com/X4o7OifWlh

— Writers Against the War on Gaza (@wawog_now) November 14, 2024

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

People talked about this yesterday. It is not decentralized, and based on who is in control of Bluesky, in my opinion it won’t be: https://lemmy.ml/post/22830283/15144160

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 10 points 3 days ago

That's my view on it as well. The service isn't set up to where people could operate a Bluesky like service without Bluesky right now. If that is the case, then Bluesky can easily close off interoperable parts one by one, just like Twitter did. Remember when Twitter allowed third party apps to access the service?

[–] potat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago

Man I was really hoping this wouldn't be the answer I get - thanks for the link

[–] underscores@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

Personal data storage can be decentralized, although that's missing the social part of the social network.

Identities are set up through a centralized system that in theory they could change, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Relays supposedly can be decentralized, but need to handle all data on the network. So they require massive hosting costs that keep going up as more people use bluesky. Only large corporations can likely afford to run them, and that hasn't happened yet.