this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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it's not yet federated properly, or would not be completely, but it's still a good player in the game for now. I'll advocate against it if shareholders start shenanigans.
It's not a non-profit like Mastodon so, seems inevitable
I get the mentality, but that’s the problem with enshitification. It always starts good, but once all the twitter traffic moves over, and the world becomes dependent on BlueSky the way it still is for Twitter, what do they become next?
It would be better to push people away from the closed platform and towards the actual open platform.
Edit: maybe BlueSky is open source. In such case, if they start fucking around, maybe it would be simple to fork this source code and form your own community. I think until other instances gain tractions, it is hard to consider BlueSky comparable to mastadon.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app
The network effect makes this extremely difficult, even with the source code, it's basically starting from scratch again.
It's not from scratch; every piece of old data is public. I've sent a link somewhere else here.
In theory I guess. But you'd need a ton of funding just to get the server power for that, and there's no guarantee that users will switch over to your service. And if Bluesky starts turning bad then they could start blocking your instance. Also the users are much more valuable than the data. There's lots of ways this could fail to pan out. The Fediverse is much more flexible to new instances joining.
True. There's reassurance in Bluesky plus many open-source endeavors getting that funding, though. One might look at organizations like SDF. There's millions of insane people out there like me and at least one of them has a big-enough nest egg.
That happens only when user count and platform lock in are past the point of no return. This sentence is the essence of why platforms have been allowed to do this again and again.
Its already too late for bluesky, because even if they started federating now, any other instance would be in such a minority that it would have zero sway over the wider federation if bluesky HQ went rogue.
That's exactly what Bluesky was designed for: so that anyone can clone their qubibytes of data and start a new central platform anytime without any account loss (though this mechanism relies on user domain owners staying the same). You can read more at https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ from the 'Bluesky is centralized, but "credible exit" is a worthy pursuit' section on.
Is this possible to do now? If BlueSky was bought out by somebody like Trump, could he disable this feature?
BlueSky is not open source, is it? The entire premise of things like mastodon and Lemmy is that they are open source and federated at their core. Nobody can change that.
BlueSky is not federated at its core or there would be other BlueSky instances.
@danc4498 @Aatube I'm not quite sure how it's set up, but someone is trying it: https://bsky.app/profile/transrights.northsky.social/post/3lkm5ii4mo22w
Sure, but the federated aspect is not at the core of its functionality the way it is for Mastadon/Lemmy. If Elon Musk ever bought BlueSky, would he be able to shut down 3rd party instances? Or stop supporting them with security updates? Would the instances be forced to abide by whatever rules Elon says in order to stay active?
This is a hypothetical scenario, but if the answer is “yes” to any of those questions, then it is not worth the risk of moving to BlueSky. You’re just kicking the can down the road.
There is no way for Elon to come in and take over mastadon. He could buy the organization, but the software is open source he cannot ever stop that. Meaning he could never force his values onto the fediverse the way he did with Twitter.
@danc4498 agree! Just interesting to note that someone is trying a new instance. Unclear, as you say, what control they will have.
I did some digging, and it seems like BlueSky is open source. I’m not sure the process of creating an instance, or how easy it is for an instance to interact with the main instance. So maybe I take back much of what I’ve said.
There is a recent community project that focuses on federating Bluesky without the Bluesky devs' involvement:
Free Our Feeds wants to build a social media ecosystem ‘resistant to billionaire influence’ | The Verge
This would be good. I just hope it can do so while still being a part of BlueSky (as it is today).
The devs also made it clear that if ever bsky became crap, the system is made so that you could just jump over to another instance and go from there.
So far so good, but yeah I get it, the more they talk about investors, the more I'm reluctant to jump in fully.
Except they haven't actually backed that up with a way for you to jump servers. If the central Bsky server goes down, it takes the network with it. Until they actually let other people host, it's just meaningless posturing. Without a way for people to leave their network you are as captive there as you are on Twitter
They do let other people host; it's just that they're not going to be federated and one has to clone quite a lot of data. And there's people mirroring Bluesky's servers.
I mean, they will. It's inevitable. So why bother? BlueSky also ultimately retains the final word on moderation as well.