Maybe Bluesky has "won" (Technical blog post on Bluesky vs others)
November 15, 2024
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. Ive seen a bunch of takes about this recently, but I keep seeing things I disagree with. I figure thats a good enough excuse to write more about this weird-assed social network.
Decentralized? Federated? Neither.
When writing about Bluesky, Ive seen folks mention that its either federated or decentralized. Im here to tell you that its currently neither. This one really irks me because the service is getting the credit for work it hasnt done.
One problem here is that the whole decentralized thing is complicated. I believe the Bluesky team is putting in a lot of good-faith effort to becoming a decentralized platform. But, this work is tricky because their architectural choices are quite novel.
As Ive written previosuly, the AT Protocol (atproto) that powers Bluesky is really complex. Its made up of three main parts: Personal Data Servers (PDSs), Relays, and App Views.
SNIP
Maybe Bluesky has won
I dont know what the social media landscape will look like in 6 months, but Id bet things will change. If Bluesky comes out as a winner and more posting happens there, I think Im generally fine with that. At least for now.
The whole Twitter mess has taught me not to attach myself too closely with these things anymore. I hung on far too long to Twitter while it made me feel terrible. My goal going forward is to post more to my own site and aggregate to any social channel I currently care about. Im happy to interact on any that Im a part of, but Im also going to be much quicker to pull the ripcord if things start going down hill.
Full blog post
https://anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/maybe-bluesky-has-won