They're still a corporate entity, and they still want access to markets to make money.

For those who don't know, Bluesky isn't really federated. The only way to host a non-Bluesky instance required 1TB of storage in July 2024, and 5 TB of storage in Nov 2024. Could be way more than that now.

You basically have to be a company to federate into the ATProto (Bluesky) ecosystem. You can't just "stand up an instance".

Lots of detail: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

(I know you've already realized that you were conflating Mastodon with Bluesky, I'm putting this here for others who come along so they can get the facts).

Assuming you are serious:

Bluesky is ... arguably 'federated', but it is centralized, not decentralized.

https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20241128-bluesky-decentralization

Their model (AT Protocol) relies on a central, authoritative ... 'Relay', that all 'federated' users and posts on federated PDS (personal data servers) must go through, to actually reach the 'AppView', ie, what all other people/users can actually see.

So, this is not a many to many, tangled spider web of connections, the way lemmy, and other parts of the actual fediverse are.

It is a top down hierarchy, a pyramid.

And Bluesky runs the Relay, the chokepoint.

If Bluesky cuts off the PDS your account is on, everyone on it is now gone.

The actual fediverse, Mastadon, Lemmy, etc, runs on ActivityPub.

In that model... every instance is essentially self contained, and every instance that is federated communicates with every other instance that is federated.

Each instance can decide what other instances they want to federate with... and users on each instance can personally block even more other users, communities, or entire instances if they choose to, but that only effects what that particular user sees.

That is what you call decentralized, approaching, or also having elements of being 'distributed'.

To bring up an example without getting into the drama that led to it:

The 'Tankie Triad' of ml, lemmygrad and hexbear have had a number of other instances defederate from them.

But, there are also a good number of instances that have not done so.

So that means if your account is on hexbear... you can't see or post on an instamce that has blocked your instance.

But, if you (a hexbear...ian?), post on a neutral instance... users on that neutral instance will see the post.

But but, if a user from an instance that has defederated from hexbear goes to to the neutral instance... they will not see the hexbearian's post.

This sounds complicated, and it is, but ... thats the whole point of a decentralized system. It is more complex in the abstract... but the entire system ends up being more robust, more adaptable, more customizable... without a central authority in direct control of the entire system.

You're right that Bluesky isn't federated, but it most definitely is centralized.

The answer it's, they're neither thing right now. And the claim has been made that in order to run your own instance that forwarded all traffic generated by the primary instance, you would need equivalent hardware to what BlueSky currently has. Vs Mastdon, which is…

• not commercially owned
• has a proven federation capability
• Running a pretty large number of instances right now

Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either.

A decentralized service like Mastodon will have the same issues when governments are knocking on the door. The turkish government totally can force all those small turkish instance admins to defederate instances who are not reacting to legal threats. And all those small admins don't have the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle against their own government

People on the Turkey subreddit were running a campaign to move from X to Bluesky

I see so much astroturfing for Bluesky. They have good PR people who know what buttons to push, clearly.

Who could've ever predicted this?!?

Even if it’s a Turkey-specific restriction for users based in the country, it nonetheless shows that Bluesky is willing to comply with government requests.

The account is still up and viewable for me. US.

There isn’t one as far as I’m concerned. People moved from one corpo social media platform to another corpo social media platform thinking that the person running the former platform was the problem, when the entire model is designed to prioritise profit over human expression.