Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter-like social network, is pausing new signups “temporarily” to try and resolve performance issues it’s been experiencing after Twitter introduced limits on the amount of tweets you can see in a day. Even though you still need an invite code to be able to join Bluesky, it seems that the influx of new users has been a problem.
Irrespective of the popular success which Bluesky / Mastodon may receive, I am simply glad that enough platforms exist for anyone to seek refuge in if the rapacity by these giants becomes the norm.
Is bluesky part of fediverse?
No. It’s decentralized like the Fediverse, but it doesn’t use ActivityPub. I think there are some 3rd party developers working on an ActivityPub-Bluesky bridge, but nothing concrete yet.
Isn’t it also just not open to federation at the moment? So the federated/decentralized aspect could just be vaporware and never happen. I don’t even begin to take their word for it until it stops being de-facto centralized.
I’m no expert, but I found this blogpost insightful: BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization
The more I read about BS’s protocol, the more I think this is done on purpose.
Why? Because it allows BS to pay lip service to decentralization, without actually giving away the power in the system.
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Another pretty good sign that BS’s decentralization is actually b.s. is the fact that the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) used by BlueSky are currently “temporarily” not actually decentralized. The protocol uses something imaginatively called “DID Placeholder”. If I were a betting man I would bet that in five years it will keep on using the centralized DID Placeholder, and that that will be a root cause of a lot of shenanigans.
[…]
it decentralizes the cost to the central authority by pushing data load onto volunteers, while planning to keep control by being the biggest kid on the “reach” block.
I’m rooting for the federated platforms, but there is clearly a need for a basic simple twitter replacement.
It’s unfortunate that this drop in replacement isn’t in the fediverse though. Bluesky’s success isn’t technical (yet), it is better marketing and connections with VIP users.
