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I stopped reading when the "journalist" asked this question:
How did you end up starting a decentralized social platform?
How little research must one do to credulously repeat that PR talking point for a platform that is in fact completely centralized?
I think that it's fair to want the interviewer to ask more critical questions and in general be more precise with their phrasing but
repeat that PR talking point
is a very cynical and uncharitable take on bluesky and decentralization. Cynical takes aren't necessarily wrong but they're not necessarily correct either.
The AT protocol is by its own account an ongoing project with problems that still need be solved before it is able to provide a social network with all the properties that they're interested in.
I don't think that it's accurate to say that bluesky is "completely" centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it's de-facto centralized. One reason for this is that it's prohibitively expensive to self-host relays. This is something that the AT protocol devs have plans for addressing, so it's possible that this de-facto centralization is a temporary stage in the evolution of bluesky and AT proto.
It is of course possible that they are lying or that they will be unsuccessful despite best intentions but taking for granted that it's just a "PR talking point" is, once again, very cynical in a way that I don't think is completely motivated.
I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that bluesky is “completely” centralized (it is less centralized than most social media) as much as it’s de-facto centralized.
That's like me calling myself a millionaire because I could theoretically be one at some point in the future. I am de facto not a millionaire, but I also have more than zero dollars. so I'm not completely a non-millionaire.
So first of, the part of my comment that you quoted doesn't make sense because what I'm saying is that bluesky theoretically allows for decentralized relays but it's impractical in practice. Your analogy doesn't really apply to that.
I do think that it's misleading to call bluesky decentralized today (at least without any caveats). The goal of the project however is to eventually create a more meaningfully decentralized social network and they have tangible plans for moving in that direction so I think it's unfair to dismiss this aspect of bluesky completely.
If they do achieve decentralization in the future I'll gladly call it decentralized, but "tangible plans" don't warrant use of a descriptor like that. If someone is training in the hope of making their country's Olympics team they don't get to call themselves an Olympian. You have to have gone to the Olympics to justify that title. Working towards decentralization is the same thing. You don't get to call yourself decentralized just because you wrote it down as a goal on your roadmap.
I agree that the interviewer shouldn't have implied that they are decentralized today! I don't know if bluesky even say that they are decentralized themselves, on their website it says that they're "building an open foundation for the social internet" which is more accurate but maybe they mischaracterize themselves somewhere else.
What I don't get is why anyone would ever choose commercial social media again given there are Activity Pub clones for practically everything now, where you aren't the product. So many people learned nothing from the ongoing Twitter debacle and the zillion Facebook privacy scandals apparently.
Try using Mastodon and Bluesky at the same time. Bluesky is a twitter clone and perfect replacement. Mastodon is an excellent micro-blogging platform, but has none of the features people actually liked about twitter. People love recommendation algorithms and quote tweet dunking. That's the core of what it's all about. Mastodon is glorified RSS, which is great if you miss those days.
Follow a few interesting hashtags and you have your recommendation algorithm, but one you're in control of.
Have you seen the average person recently? They like to be spoon-fed content in a passive way. Look at Instagram Reels or TikTok.
Mastodon is fine for geeks like us, but the average Joe would find it dead and boring. Bluesky managed to fill that hole left by Twitter.
In that case, I wish the "average person" a lot of fun on corporate internet. Meanwhile we'll have more fun on the federated indie internet.
Perhaps open federated systems should have recommendation algos too, just optional and open
It would be cool to download different algorithms people created to see how it feeds
fuck people liking shit .. and fuck people going back to american corporate tech... yes, I'm mad like that.
They just follow the herd. I wonder who directs the herd...
Fediverse software tends to be kind of hostile to convenience features people have grown accustomed to. Recommendation algorithms, for example. Lemmy is on the cutting edge for having a "Hot" sort.
I know Mastodon has historically been pretty hostile to even more basic things like being able to search posts.
I get why they think like that, and I honestly agree with some of it, but it inevitably creates a culture shock for outsiders coming from corpo media. I think that plus the network effect means the fediverse will always be kind of niche.
Commercial software has advertising: people whose job is to advertise it. That means TV and web ads for Bluesky, influencers talking about it. It also means a team of software engineers building parts of the system specifically to draw people in, whereas non-commercial software often rejects that (lack of infinite-scroll on Lemmy's default UI, for example).
Activity Pub also requires a different mind-set that doesn't exist elsewhere on the internet today. You need to decide which instance to join, or maybe to host your own instance. But it doesn't really matter, because you can federate with other instances. But you have to drive some of that federation, so it does matter a little. It's pretty complex and confusing and its a problem that only exists in this one niche of software.
Bluesky gives you an infinite feed that feels like you're connected to the entire Internet without you doing any work. I think the AP service are doing really well, considering what they're up against.
Now if only I could get a meaningful reply to a bug preventing complete account deletion, either on github or from support. It seems they modeled their support structure on Google's.
"What are doing today, Jay?"
"The same thing we're doing every day, Kate. Trying to take over the social internet!"
Oh no, the twitter people going back to twitter after sold them out. This will end in tears.
The fediverse will still be here when bluesky is killed by VCs