Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter-like social network, is pausing new signups “temporarily” to try and resolve performance issues it’s been experiencing after Twitter introduced limits on the amount of tweets you can see in a day. Even though you still need an invite code to be able to join Bluesky, it seems that the influx of new users has been a problem.
But it claims it will become decentralized (unless something has changed in the last month or so).
bluesky is crap. it requires an invite and id verification. 100% will turn into a fascist navel-gazing network.
bluesky is crap. it requires an invite and id verification. 100% will turn into a fascist navel-gazing network.
The rest of the platforms which will still be using anonymous access will be invaded by AI’s astroturfing their stuff into your face. Which one do you prefer?
No. It’s decentralized like the Fediverse, but it doesn’t use ActivityPub. I think there are some 3rd party developers working on an ActivityPub-Bluesky bridge, but nothing concrete yet.
Isn’t it also just not open to federation at the moment? So the federated/decentralized aspect could just be vaporware and never happen. I don’t even begin to take their word for it until it stops being de-facto centralized.
I’m no expert, but I found this blogpost insightful: BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization
The more I read about BS’s protocol, the more I think this is done on purpose.
Why? Because it allows BS to pay lip service to decentralization, without actually giving away the power in the system.
[…]
Another pretty good sign that BS’s decentralization is actually b.s. is the fact that the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) used by BlueSky are currently “temporarily” not actually decentralized. The protocol uses something imaginatively called “DID Placeholder”. If I were a betting man I would bet that in five years it will keep on using the centralized DID Placeholder, and that that will be a root cause of a lot of shenanigans.
[…]
it decentralizes the cost to the central authority by pushing data load onto volunteers, while planning to keep control by being the biggest kid on the “reach” block.