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Are we decentralized yet?

(arewedecentralizedyet.online)
487 points Bogdanp | 4 comments | 30 Aug 25 19:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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d4mi3n ◴[30 Aug 25 19:39 UTC] No.45077410[source]▶
Neat! I'm not surprised at the findings here. BlueSky (for the average user) is pretty much a drop in replacement for Twitter.

Despite the smaller total numbers in Mastadon, it's great to see that the ecosystem seems to be successfully avoiding centralization like we've seen in the AT-Proto ecosystem.

I suspect that the cost of running AT proto servers/relays is prohibitive for smaller players compared to a Mastadon server selectively syndicating with a few peers, but I say this with only a vague understanding of the internals of both of these ecosystems.

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isodev ◴[30 Aug 25 19:52 UTC] No.45077507[source]▶
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.
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gary_0 ◴[30 Aug 25 20:28 UTC] No.45077747[source]▶
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.
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1. YetAnotherNick ◴[30 Aug 25 20:36 UTC] No.45077800[source]▶
> There are lots of ways they could make a sustainable income without disrupting Bluesky's current status quo

Like what?

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2. gary_0 ◴[30 Aug 25 20:57 UTC] No.45077947[source]▶
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.

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3. YetAnotherNick ◴[30 Aug 25 23:32 UTC] No.45078949[source]▶
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

4. miki123211 ◴[31 Aug 25 07:15 UTC] No.45081076[source]▶
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.