Comment by BryantD
2 years ago
I think this is a really good question. Let me offer one possible answer:
It might not be necessary or useful to have multiple aggregators right now. However, I do feel better knowing that if Bluesky the company goes under or changes to a degree where I'm not happy with their decisions, it's possible for someone to stand up a second aggregator.
For that matter, if someone's a free speech absolutist and if they care enough about it to spend the money, they could stand up an aggregator right now with more permissive standards.
Even at scale, running a Relay should be well within the means of a motivated individual or org that is willing to spend hundreds of dollars per month. Right now it'd cost just tens of dollars per month to run a whole network Relay. Some people are already doing this I believe.
Running an "AppView" (an atproto application aggregator/indexer/API server) is generally an order of magnitude more expensive and complicated. But still not beyond the reach of a user coop, non-profit, or small startup.
So these services should all be well within the capabilities of at least multiple companies operating in the atproto ecosystem as it scales.
And in many cases it should make good sense for these companies to do this since it will improve their performance by colocating their services and enable them to do things like schedule their own maintenance windows, etc.
Thanks! "It costs thousands of dollars a month, which is feasible enough that people will find a way" sounds pretty reasonable.