Because of network effects, more users is generally more interesting. Blue Sky has "enough" at this point for me to be happy there. Programmers like antirez, my bike racing people like inrng, and a bunch of urbanists.

Edit: you lose some connections moving around, but I've also had friends I've known since the days of IRC. I think I'm mostly resigned to picking whatever works best in the moment and being willing to move (like abandoning Twitter) when it's not working.

(Blacksky is the/one of the furthest along in building competing versions of each part of the AT proto stack.)

As others have said, the data has to be publishable to be useful. We do have data export laws. The format is known to be ready to use interoperably, not some private schema--atop the PBC commitment, which will at least have moderate legal costs if not a guarantee. It has unequivocally set a new high bar.

They seem pretty locked in to doing what they committed to. The day may come when they turn. It may come first by friction, but the turn has to be pretty complete, because the data is pretty open. What's needed to view it, use it at all, is pretty close to what's needed to host it.

"The site whose value prop is sharing your posts and data with other apps may stop sharing your posts and data with other apps." Yeah, it's possible. It's also possible they just close.

The real test for the AT Protocol will be whether it can truly decouple from Bluesky PBC before the pressures of monetization or an exit strategy kick in. Right now, we’re benefiting from the "honeymoon phase" of a platform that needs growth more than revenue, but history suggests that the bridge to true decentralization needs to be fully built before that dynamic inevitably shifts.

I did just leave Twitter. For me, it played out fine.

> Bluesky is built on ATProto, an open protocol. The pitch is simple: your data is yours, your identity is yours, and if you don't like what Bluesky is doing, you can take everything and leave.

Is that actually the pitch? I thought the pitch was that Bluesky is not Twitter.

I find it strange to think of my social media posts as "my data". I intentionally posted on someone else's website. The posts are part of a public conversation and in large part make sense only in context. (Think of HN comments without the submissions or threads.)

In my opinion, the most crucial part of social media posts are the links, the URLs. On any social media site, you might be able to export your data, but that's kind of pointless, because your "data" lives at a certain URL, and it won't help to have an export if the links are broken.

There's actually a fate worse than acquisition: closure. This happened to the social network app.net, for example, which I was on years ago. All of my posts are gone, the site offline. At least my old Twitter URLs still work (they redirect to x.com). In any case, you know there's only one way to guarantee that the things you post online stay online: self-hosting. Maintain your own website. No social network can solve that problem for you.

> In practice, running your own mail server is painful and everyone just uses Gmail.

This is not even remotely true.

It is true that a lot of people use Gmail, but there are plenty of other email services. I personally have accounts with several different providers. My main one is my web host.

> And then there's the money. You don't raise $120M at a $700M valuation to run a public utility. Those investors need a return.

I think this is the most important point in the article, but not because of the protocol or decentralization. The question is, when and how will Bluesky be enshittified?

I don't care if Bluesky goes away, gets bought, whatever.

Social media is disposable like a retail outlet. I'm sad if the coffee shop around the corner goes out of business, but there are 99K coffee shops in the US. I can go to another one.

As it is, I don't use Meta or X.. because they're led by despicable beings. Bluesky gets a pass for now, and has enough interesting people that I show up and have a chat. Like a coffee shop or a bar.

Don't they have to give you your data upon request? And the cheapest way is to offer an export function? Wasn't this thanks to the EU (GDPR Article 20)?

Yeah, I left.

(And in fact I am wary of all social media.)

1. Strongly encourage backups.

2. Force users to migrate off the "official" PDS until it has less than, say, 40% market share.

3. Make the mobile apps use third-party relay/appview by default (could be randomized).

Who would've thought true decentralization means everyone hosting their own server? Yes, each user would have to pay and maintain it, but that's the cost of decentralization. ATProto at least makes it easy to jump ship if shit hits the fan and not have to start from scratch. Try doing that with Twitter/Instagram/Etc.

Several people have mentioned that "you can just own your own data, so that's enough, right?"

Interoperating with Bluesky requires you to either 1) opt into the did:plc standard, which is a centrally controlled certificate transparency log, or 2) have all your users create did:web accounts by manually setting DNS records.

So it is not possible to build on Bluesky at all without opting into this centrally controlled layer. This original post covers this, but maybe not in enough detail to stop commenters from missing the point.

Bluesky the company controls 95%+ of PDSes in the system, which control users' private keys, and they're extending PDSes to include more functionality that prevents users from easily exiting the network, e.g. private data is being implemented in a way where Bluesky LLC can see all your activity. The protocol changes often and with limited community input.

This is being done because "there are no other ways to do it" and "our users are okay with it". The community does pretty consistently attack people who dissent (e.g. look at what happened when Mastodon leaders objected). There's a lot of cheerleading for people who do opt into the system, and there's really no incentive for informed criticisms.

It's not really decentralized or neutral infrastructure; it's a great network for a number of specific subcultures who have a nice space away from X, and I hope the team embraces that.

But people do and it is reportedly fairly easy so the majority of people are on Bluesky's layers while all is well. But also I don't understand why any of this is a reason to be "wary", it's a great place to be with some unique technical properties - it is way more "open" than any other platform of similar scale.

Yeah, it played out with my whole social circle leaving, as evidenced by the fact that all my friends link me to the bluesky post whenever there's something happening now.

This is a for-profit company running this service. It ain't free to operate.

If you don't like that, go elsewhere.

If there is one thing that has been a resounding success on the internet it is this: free services that you pay for with your clicks. Just look at the plethora of free services you get.

In no other economy would that be even remotely possible.