this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Come now Sean, you know that everything open about BlueSky is smoke and mirrors, considering that everything stops and starts with the indexer.
Isn't that the same issue with ActivityPub and the instances that host accounts and messages?
No. With ActivityPub, it's totally decentralized. There's no central authority whatsoever. What there is however, is an instance that's bigger than the rest. So if we talk about Lemmy. I can access it and post and my ISP can block Lemmy World and I'd never know.
With BlueSky, it pretends to be similar, but the reality is that everything needs to go through their central server in order to be displayed on a timeline. BlueSky is designed in such a way so that everyone does the heavy lifting, but to be seen, you need to have approval from their central server, where they can modify, insert adverts, do whatever. It's a centralised service that cosplays as decentralised. I don't understand why people keep pushing it when it's literally the same shit we all escaped from but with a new paint job.
They have been saying that this is an implementation detail that will change when they open up that part of their implementation. Which is nice, but until that happens I'm only lukewarm in my optimism for Bluesky and the AT protocol.
On the other hand, every federated network has converged on a central host for the vast majority of accounts and data. That host has outsized influence over the standard used on the network and unencrypted acess to the majority of data. So I'm not sure what really matters to what extent.