"ATProto does not scale wide: it's a liability to add more fully participating nodes onto the network. Meaningfully self-hosting ATProto is a risk to the ATProto network, there is active reason to disincentivize it for those already participating."

#ChristineLemmerWebber, 2024

https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/

Oof. That is *not* good for the claim that BlueSky's protocol can be as friendly to decentralisation and independent hosting as the fediverse.

IMHO that's game, set and match.

#BlueSky #ATProto

"In many ways, Bluesky is speedrunning the history of Twitter."

@cwebber, 2024

https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/

This is exactly the comparison I've been making. Seeing it made within the context of a careful steelmanning of BlueSky's ATProto is very much a cat-that-got-cream experience for me.

Having criticised BlueSky a *lot* over the past few months, I do want to flag a couple of things that make it qualitatively different from Titter. At least for now.

1) their entire stack is Free Code, and their protocol is documented.

Christine's analysis suggests that doesn't help as much for potential self-hosting as it might. But it remains true that a well-funded organisation could stand up a complete replacement of BS, using their code.

Not true of Titter.

(1/?)

#BlueSky

@cwebber

2) BlueSky's staff, and the people using it, have the entire history of Titter to learn from.

Which means that although enshittification is a risk to any centralised, VC-funded platform, those involved are as aware of that as the critics. An Exit to Community could be baked into their business strategy. Where ownership passes to the workers when the VCs exit, or to the community of people using the platform.

Imagine a social.coop the size of BS! Curious what @ntnsndr thinks of this.

(2/?)

3) There is strong support for interoperation, from both BlueSky engineering staff and management.

Titter was very encouraging of devs building third-party apps on top of their platform. But full interop with competitors was always adversarial.

Yet we see BlueSky Issue discussions where BridgyFed creator @snarfed works through interop bugs with BS engineers. The relationship is so cordial that @EvanProdromou@socialwebfoundation has even said he considers BS a large fediverse node, like Mastodon.social.

(3/?)

So there's a few points to consider. I'm still not setting up a BlueSky account. But I have enabled BridgeFed interop with BS, just as I'm happy to interact with Nostr accounts here through any bridges that are available.

As the old saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. For now at least, the roads of all alternative social networks at least pass through the outskirts of the fediverse.

(4/?)

Back in 2017, I said;

The Fediverse / Federation aims to eventually unite all the things that still exist into one glorious meta-thing.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fediverse-history-piece-from-2017-a-brief-history-of-the-gnu-social-fediverse-and-the-federation/4481

To me, that remains the goal. Let's unite all the things!

(5/5)

Fediverse history piece from 2017: A Brief History of the GNU Social Fediverse and ‘The Federation’

In late 2016, the fediverse was reeling under the onslaught of the first two major waves of people leaving Titter for our shores.

^SocialHub

Great thread.

Another value prop of all-open-source is basic algorithmic accountability.

And I think Christine didn't give enough credit to the composable moderation stack, which I think is an important component.