I like the skepticism against Bluesky, and I agree that where VC money is involved things are mostly sketchy.

However, this post was about the at protocol, which seems like you just hand-waved in one sentence:

> The AT Protocol used by Bluesky has some interesting features, although to be honest I don't know how many of these are just impossible to achieve on ActivityPub or are just WIP lagging behind due to funding constraints.

I don't think the debate between them is super useful because their architectures are very different.

You also mentioned an issue with the bluesky relay, but others already exist so it's not techincally tied to Bluesky. Heck, I think the fact multiple can exist at the same, while degrades the social aspect, still makes it decentralized.

As for the identity management issue, they announced just last week that it's getting branched to an independent entity: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org

> I don't think the debate between them is super useful because their architectures are very different.

Sure, that's true, but I, personally, care mostly about one question: Who holds the keys to the kingdom? In this respect, I think the AT Protocol fails spectacularly, mainly due to the lack of a credible strategy to implement really self-custodian identities.

> You also mentioned an issue with the bluesky relay, but others already exist so it's not techincally tied to Bluesky. Heck, I think the fact multiple can exist at the same, while degrades the social aspect, still makes it decentralized.

Yes, but this is also true for Nostr, Diaspora, Mastodon, etc. The difference being, last time I checked (and of course things might have changed in the meantime) with AT Protocol it was only possible to self-host part of the infrastructure (and hosting the relay is insanely demanding).

> As for the identity management issue, they announced just last week that it's getting branched to an independent entity: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org

This is another example of gaslighting from Bluesky that just makes me angry. How in the holiest of Hells does an "Identity directory controlled by a Swiss Association" make the whole thing better?

Sorry, not buying it. I don't have a horse in the race, but won't fall for the marketing.

I agree with the sentiment and I wouldn't call Bluesky "open social"- I don't trust them either. But I still don't find these to be arguments to be against the protocol per se, which I find really interesting.

> Who holds the keys to the kingdom? In this respect, I think the AT Protocol fails spectacularly, mainly due to the lack of a credible strategy to implement really self-custodian identities

From what I've read, you can still own the entire stack from top to bottom, none of it is necessarily tied to bluesky. Even the identity managed being discussed only applies to bluesky, and whatever ecosystem subscribed to it; but in theory, you could create your own social platform with a new one (you'd obviously lose that ecosystem). But then again, this would also apply to Mastodon, since whoever owns the instance could always nuke it, and if you own your own instance, you need to build an network that trusts you. There's always an authority involved.

> The difference being, last time I checked (and of course things might have changed in the meantime) with AT Protocol it was only possible to self-host part of the infrastructure (and hosting the relay is insanely demanding).

Well it's definitely not the "50TB" you mentioned e.g here is someone running a relay on a $34/month vps and isn't going to accumulate more disk: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l But it's importance is overblown anyway, it's just a json transmitter for signed data. I think the pds and identity managements are the better concern, and I hope there's a better way to decentralize those (if that makes sense).

EDIT: You're still correct that to fully spin up a new bluesky on your own you'd need an insane amount of storage for hosting all that data that's currently stored on bluesky (especially the did:plc and pds). All good arguments against the company, but that's only because people are choosing to store their pds repositories on bluesky. You could just as well point your repo to your own server and use a different social media. They could go under and someone else can create a new app view. I find that really cool; still leaves the identity issue open.