Are we decentralized yet?

ATProto also has the downside of being supported by a corporation and investors with various backgrounds that will eventually want to earn something out of it all and there is no telling how this will happen.

There are lots of ways they could make a sustainable income without disrupting Bluesky's current status quo and be comfortably rich for the rest of their lives... but that's completely out of character for them and will never happen. I do think the geeks currently running Bluesky are sincere in keeping it decentralized, but the money people will someday probably force them out and squeeze the user base for a quick buck. A hardcore nerd minority will splinter off, though, and keep the decentralized version running, so whatever. History repeats. Frog swims, scorpion stings.

Is it a quick buck? How long has bluesky been funded for with no return?

> There are lots of ways they could make a sustainable income without disrupting Bluesky's current status quo

Like what?

ATProto also currently effectively relies on https://web.plc.directory which is a centralized service, making the protocol effectively centralized.

Off the top of my head: Paid hosting/services on top of the protocol, reddit-gold style tipping and gamification, being a transactional middleman (there are a lot of artists selling things, famous people promoting things, and so on), promoted posts and ads (easily blockable, but some users wouldn't bother).

Bluesky is a small team of like ~30 people, if they keep running lean they have at least a chance of a decent profit margin. But none of that will make anyone a multi-billionaire, so never mind.

I meant "quick buck" like flooding the place with ads, tracking, dark patterns, closing the API/protocol, or doing some sort of crypto scam, with no regard for the platform's long-term health. It's been funded for a few years? That's not really that long for such a small team. But I have no idea how their investors think it might make "Facebook money", and isn't that always the goal?

This is true but it's worth noting that (1) the entire point of this node is to be globally agreed on since it's the root of the identity mechanism, (2) it is auditable (https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc?tab=readme-...) and operations themselves are self-certifying (https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc?tab=readme-...). There are some potential issues (like PLC could choose to deny some operations), and the plan is to upstream PLC into an independent entity so that it isn't tied to Bluesky the company.

Quick meaning it's short term from when it starts. The time before it starts doesn't factor in.

>There are lots of ways they could make a sustainable income without disrupting Bluesky's current status quo and be comfortably rich for the rest of their lives... but that's completely out of character for them and will never happen.

Sounds like reddit 15 years ago

I think you are wildly overestimating the user's willingness to pay online, and underestimating the costs to run a large scale site. Even if you remove developer's salaries and server costs, the fines could be worth 10s of millions of dollar per country just for delay in removal of hate speech[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act

How does Meta's adoption of ActivityPub play into the corporation and investors supporting / dominating a protocol in the long run?

They could also follow the Gmail playbook.

For consumers, plenty of ads and plenty of tracking. For businesses, heavily-restricted user-to-server APIs and features gated behind subscriptions, think custom domains with Bsky hosting, multi-user post approvals, integrating DMs with customer support systems etc.

You can do all of that while still being fair to and interoperable with the rest of the ecosystem. As long as you don't want the convenience, features and UI of Gmail, you can still communicate with Gmail users from any other provider, and the same could be true about Bsky.

Anything that is funded by venture capital WILL become worse. You can complain all you want about things that don't have infinite funding having issues, but they'll probably just stay at the same level or get slightly better over time. VC-backend companies only get worse after their early peak.

A quick buck would be the time from when you put your money in to when you get back your money and a profit.

If you have a sudden massive change in plans like this, it resets the timer. You were doing long term, but now you want a quick buck and you don't care much if the company survives.

If I set up a get rich quick scheme based on overhyping and selling land, it doesn't matter whether I buy the land today or it's land I had for decades for a completely different reason. Either way I'm going for a quick buck now.

But they didn't have this for completely different reasons. They invested money years ago, that they could've bought government bonds with and just earned interest, and instead it went into BlueSky. At some point they'd like a return that would substantially beat the government bond they could've invested in with zero risk.

They invested for the long term. If they suddenly want the company to go all-in on short term profit extraction that is a big change in plan.

I agree, but I doubt from their perspective it's a quick buck. I appreciate from the perspective of people who got a free service and it's now getting monetised it might feel quick, but surely not surprising at some point. And they got a quick buck up front from not having to pay for the service, which is nice :)