Comment by bccdee
2 days ago
Yeah they're describing a real problem, but the cause of that problem—a seamless centralized sign-up funded by VC money—is the reason bluesky took off to begin with.
Bsky offers an on-ramp to a more decentralized experience, but most people won't pay the money and experience the friction to move take that ramp. Platforms like Mastodon are entirely decentralized, but that means the friction of decentralizing happens immediately upon sign-up. The people who don't want to self-host PDSes never signed up for Mastodon to begin with.
I try to be skeptical, but I feel like bsky (or something like it) is the best way can do re: bringing decentralization to the masses.
> Platforms like Mastodon are entirely decentralized
They are not, they're federated and that distinction really matters here. A decentralized platform would be designed to make running your own single user or at least small instance the default but neither ActivityPub nor ATproto do that.
Or you get a Facebook XMPP situation where the federation is a cool feature few use until the platform’s mature enough to say actually no.