Christine Lemmer-Webber asks, How decentralized is Bluesky really? and offers a critical perspective on the topic. While it’s a technical read, it provides interesting insights into the Fediverse, ActivityPub, and the broader conversation about the decentralized internet. Follow-up article here.
Under these definitions, Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either. However, this is not to say that Bluesky is not achieving something useful; while Bluesky is not building what is presently a decentralized Twitter, it is building an excellent replacement for Twitter, and Bluesky’s main deliverable goal is something else instead: a Twitter replacement, with the possibility of “credible exit”.