Comment by kevinak
5 hours ago
That’s a very narrow definition of decentralisation. In any case - both atproto and fediverse are massively centralised compared to something like Nostr, and it’s not even close.
The fact that the PDS in practice owns your identity in the vast vast majority of cases is such a dumb trade off that it’s honestly laughable. Should Bluesky decide to splinter off of the network there would be like 50000 people left.
Stop telling people that it’s decentralised in any meaningful way and be honest about it instead. That’s the issue. The dishonesty and tricking users.
> The fact that the PDS in practice owns your identity
This is incorrect.
1. a PDS stores data, it does not own the identity.
2. Your identity is controlled by a DID, of which most users use DID:PLC.
3. This means the PLC directory controls who owns the identity.
4. Users can upload their own keys into the directory to ensure they have control.
5. At this point, the threat vector is "PLC directory lies", which is why there are transparency logs and independent mirrors.
Nope. When I’m talking about identity I’m speaking strictly of the keys that sign your messages and the pub key derived from it. In every other cryptographic system that is your identity. It is absolutely correct that the PDS has complete control over your keys when it comes to 99.99% of users. I challenge you to prove the opposite.
> When I’m talking about identity I’m speaking strictly of the keys that sign your messages and the pub key derived from it.
Me too.
> I challenge you to prove the opposite.
https://web.plc.directory/spec/v0.1/did-plc
2 replies →
There are two kinds of people.
1. People who have no idea what decentralized is.
2. People who would try to figure exactly how decentralized something is.
If you are the latter, you would instantly question the data model of Bluesky and of Mastodon as well. If you are the former then that just sounds like a buzzword.