this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Reading this article, and especially the end ...

CEO Jay Graber told The Verge that the plan is to hand over control of the AT protocol to a web standards body like the Internet Engineering Task Force.

... it almost sounds as if Bluesky is (going to be) as community-run as Mastodon.

But I'm suspicious. What is the catch?

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[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 days ago

The catch is that the whole system is effectively centralised on BlueSky backend services (basically the relay). So while the protocol may be standardised and open, and interpreted with decentralised components, they’ll control the core service. Which means they can unilaterally decide to introduce profitable things like ads and charging for features.

The promise of the system though is that it provides for various levels of independence that can all connect to each other, so people with different needs and capabilities can all find their spot in the ecosystem. Whether that happens is a big question. Generally I’d say I’m optimistic about the ideas and architecture, but unsure about whether the community around it will get it to what I think it should be.