(fuck, i just realized “concentration” is also a “center” metaphor; i meant it in the chemistry sense, the inverse of dilution, but words are hard, and all words are metaphors, and all metaphors are physical, and the physical world has implicit rules unintended by the analogist, and our poor monkey brains can’t keep it all straight (arg, another physical metaphor, damn it!))
shaka, when the walls fell 🥲
maybe the term “centralize” is too physical a metaphor for this abstract debate, since it implies a radial axis, along which the opposite of central is decentral, but that’s not how social networks work: there are always many centers
(the details of the network topology are important, but ultimately a red herring)
what we’re talking about is *concentration* of control
it’s all about power
who gets to call the shots, for whom, with whose consent, for whose benefit
and power corrupts
Here’s another, better, even deeper dive into how #ATProtocol handwaves at true decentralization while failing to implement it:
Content warning: long, bsky, atproto, on the impossibility of multiple relays
Neuromatch Social (neuromatch.social)
And here’s a discussion of my top post here (
I’m flattered
️) on hackernews https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41952994
which actually has some good back-and-forth with some actual #BlueSky devs and others. I think the #BlueSky devs and #ATProtocol hobbyists have some good ideas and good intentions, but they’re also being used and confused by a company that’s owned by assholes and driven by greed.
@summertime oh wow thanks for the link
It’s been a while since i got slashdotted 
I love how most of that thread is bickering about the correct definition of “decentralized” —
the [Dictionary Fallacy](https://effectiviology.com/appeal-to-definition/) is such a booby trap for clever passionate people, totally flips a conversation from collaboration into competition and rage
— while ignoring the core fact that #Bluesky is *owned by goblins* who are totally gonna push it down the #enshitification path no matter what its network topology looks like.
(goblin owners including the *actual guy* who fucked up Twitter and then sold it to the second worst person on the planet)
I wish ATProto was a proper old-school open standard, since there’s a lot of cool ideas in it, and some well-intentioned dedicated hobbyists building a community around it, but it’s still mostly a wishful-thinking stalking-horse for a single company and their greedy #utilitopian owners.
I’m gonna have to look at that page more after I get some coffee.
And, they just announced subscriptions. Here comes the rent!
https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3l7bifd4rwd2g (direct link to the sub subskeet) has a bunch of cheerleaders replying “take my money”, as if that will forestall the inevitable degradation of service, and as if they weren’t secretly planning this business model shift all along
it’s #enshittification stage 2: charge rent for full functionality, then add ads to the free tier — first for self-promos, then to buy subs for others, then “partners” (advertisers) including crypto scams from their new co-owners, and influencer-hustling pickaxe salesmen
(referring to the real profiteers of the gold rush)
— then add ads to the paid tiers too
(that’s stage 3, right @pluralistic ? it’s hard to keep the stages straight since they’re all happening so quickly these days)
**https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc**
"We originally titled the method "placeholder", because we didn't want it to stick around forever in its current form. We are actively hoping to replace it with or evolve it into something less centralized - likely a permissioned DID consortium. That being said, we do intend to support did:plc in the current form until after any successor is deployed, with a reasonable grace period. We would also provide a migration route to allow continued use of existing did:plc identifiers."
the road to software hell is paved with "actively hoping to replace it"
So, you know how Facebook is a corporation with a lot of spread-out servers that talk to a centralized database and algorithm that controls and manages all your posts, opaquely, for profit.
And so is Xwitter. And so is LinkedIn. And so is TikTok.
And so is BlueSky. 
BlueSky's big claim is that they're "decentralized" with "no algorithm". And yeah, technically, ironically, everything's an algorithm, but I'm not well-actuallying that word. Their current default feed algorithm is not The Algorithm; it lets you see all the posts from all your friends and that's great. It also lets you block at will, and won't shove spam on your feed, or shadow-ban your friends' political posts. It's not evil (yet). It's fine.
But. It's not decentralized. #BlueSky is a centralized corporate app, running a theoretically-decentralized network protocol that currently has only one (1) active node on the network: BlueSky. The other minor members of the ATP network are just piggybacking on BlueSky's 13 million captive users for auth and reach.
It (allegedly?) uses #ATProtocol to pass messages between its edge nodes. But all its central features are still centralized, and the protocol allows "reach" to be centrally managed separately from "speech" (to enable centralized blocking, and goosing and filtering in various feeds), and the protocol isn't even fully implemented as designed.
For example, ATP allows for "DID"s for identity portability, so if you later want to switch to a hypothetical GreenSky competitor, you won't lose your followers and blocklist and post history.
But the actual BlueSky app does not implement DIDs. It's called "did-placeholder" on their github. It's a stub. It's TBD. It's not a feature, it's a feature request.
And guess who just bought a seat on BlueSky's board with a $15M Series A round? That's right, a crypto vulture named Blockchain Capital.
Their general partner Kinjal Shah -- whose cryptocurrency-fueled career has careened from Bitcoin to NFTs to DAOs to VC -- is now on the BlueSky board, and methinks the press release doth protest too much when it defensively claims, with just a pinky promise, "the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)."
Go ahead and enjoy BlueSky. It's better than Facebook. It's easier than Mastodon. It's sassier than TikTok. It's not motherfucking Xitter. But it's not decentralized.
links:
Bluesky now exceeds 13 million users, the AT Protocol developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped highly requested features like direct messages and video.
Bluesky (bsky.social)
Public Ledger of Credentials: a cryptographic, strongly-consistent, and recoverable DID method - did-method-plc/did-method-plc
GitHub (github.com)
