Disclosure: I’m on the board of Bluesky, so feel free to take as many grains of salt as you want in reading it, even though part of this is cheering on a new entrant looking to build an alternative…

There’s been some debate over the last year or so regarding Bluesky and how decentralized it really is. There has also been a growing fear that “enshittification is inevitable.” Or, worse, that an “evil billionaire” might take it over and ruin it the way other platforms have been ruined.

But I think it’s important to understand that Bluesky has, effectively, created a technological poison pill: by building on an open protocol, ATprotocol, the system itself can be rebuilt outside of Bluesky, but in a way where everyone can continue to communicate, and that creates incredible incentives that undermine any evil billionaires, and would actually punish Bluesky (or anyone else!) should they try to enshittify.

  • futatorius@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    It’s entirely possible to produce a centrally-controlled implementation of a decentralized protocol. Just control both sides of the interface.

    Decentralized protocols are a necessary but not sufficient condition for a lock-in-free experience.

  • MyOpinion@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Bluesky has created the illusion of what we already have with the Fediverse.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.meEnglish
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    2 days ago

    That doesn’t really work when the overwhelming majority of the users are on bsky.social anyway. Like sure I have my own PDS so technically my data is mine, but if they decide to turn off ATproto it barely will have any effect at all for most Bluesky users.

  • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    But I think it’s important to understand that Bluesky has, effectively, created a technological poison pill: by building on an open protocol, ATprotocol, the system itself can be rebuilt outside of Bluesky, but in a way where everyone can continue to communicate, and that creates incredible incentives that undermine any evil billionaires, and would actually punish Bluesky (or anyone else!) should they try to enshittify.

    Bruh, ActivityPub is right there, and we already have places where people can communicate. And it’s already built in such a way that anyone can make use of it. Currently not so with ATprotocol.

    When BlueSky has interoperable servers that anyone can spin up, then this conversation is worth having, but if the protocol at all requires “the next person” to have tons of investment capital to get things running again, it’s still just a billionaire-buyout away.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      1 day ago

      To be fair ActivityPub is a pretty shitty protocol in terms of scaling up with all the quadratic communication and caching growth it requires. Not that ATprotocol is better, just that there is room for improvement on ActivityPub before it could be used on a world-wide scale for the entire human population the way major social media sites are right now.